People Have Perished on This Volcano?

So today I climbed one of the 2 volcanoes on Ometepe Island on Lake Nicaragua. Maderas Volcano is about 1300 meters and before I decided to hike it, information and stories were circulating about the difficulty (very muddy and rocky conditions, especially now during the wet season), the length of time (8-10 hours), the view (mostly cloudy), and whether we'd make it out alive (apparently a handful of travelers "perish" every year trying to climb it. We saw reports from the BBC warning us of the danger of climbing it without a guide). I didn't climb any of the volcanoes in Guatemala, and kind of regretted not doing at least one (especially the one by Antigua where you can be about 2 feet away from lava and feel it burning on your face!). So I was determined to get my hike on in Nicaragua. Last night Lauren and I got word from our New Zealand friends who we worked with this summer that they're going to be in Costa Rica just for a couple days more and we really wanted to get together with them before they move on, so we decided to cut our stay on the island a day short, therefore forcing ourselves to decide which activities were the most important to do on our last day. Lauren wasn't really into hiking, and after working alongside the Volcano Arenal all summer, she was a bit over volcanoes. So I decided to go it without her (this was a fairly difficult decision, seeing as this would be the longest amount of time we spent apart in a month, haha). So I joined up with 2 Israelis and an Australian that were going up with a guide today.

Awesome tree that L and I climbed the day before my hike

I woke up bright and early at 6:45 and had a hearty breakfast of porridge and fruits at the hostel. After working out some minor details about the number of guides necessary for 4 people, we set off for the volcano. The hike wasn't as bad as I was expecting (last night I was honeslty preparing myself to climb Mt. Everest). The first hour was through rice and corn fields and just a little bit uphill. After that, the next 2 and a half hours or so were pretty steep and had us crawling under trees and over roots and grabbing branches to balance ourselves. The path wasn't really that well laid out either (my machete would have come in quite handy!), so we ended up getting soaked from water that was on the plants and trees from last night's rainfall. Within the first hour I had mud all over my legs and shoes and had managed to fully immerse my foot in some muddy water puddles. Luckily I was wearing proper socks and shoes and had brought the recommended 3 liters of water plus another liter just in case, so I wasn't too miserable. When we got to the top, I felt revitalized and accomplished, though this feeling merited more than the view offered. Unfortunately it was cloudy and off of one side where a view of the lake and other volcano should have been there was mist and clouds. Off of the other side luckily there was a view of a lagoon and another part of the volcano, which to be fair was pretty impressive. Of course after snapping only a few photos, my camera battery ran out on me and I was left to take in the view with my photographic memory.

hazy view at the top

Next came the hardest part, the way down. If I thought it was muddy on the way up, I found out going down was a real treat. It started raining, so there was even more mud, and I spent the next 3 and a half hours bracing myself while I slipped, skidded, and sunk my feet into every form of mud on the trail. When I got back to the hostel Lauren was there waiting for me wanting to see pictures and hear all about it. All in all, I'm glad I did it, even though the view was dissapointing. The BBC articles and reports from the embassies about travelers gone missing while attempting the hike just seem ridiculous now, it really wasn't that bad!

The sunset I came back to!

Maybe Not the Next Olympic Sport

Two days ago Lauren and I went volcano boarding, an activity that my friend Cait highly recommended after she tried it in Leon. It sounded to me like it would be something along the lines of snowboarding or sand boarding, but just on a volcano. I was mistaken; I guess I didn't examine the photos closely enough. After riding in the back of a pickup truck for close to an hour on pothole-filled dirt roads, we began our ascent of the volcano. The hike took about a half hour, not too bad, but doing it while carrying a tobbogan-like piece of wood, a backpack, and an orange jumpsuit that can only be described as belonging to a Guantanamo Bay prisoner (all of this in 95 degree heat mind you), I realized 1. How out of shape I am and 2. How much I really don't enjoy hiking. But then we got to the top and I completely forgot about the agony of the hike, wiped the dripping sweat off of my face, and took in the amazing view. From the top you could see a giant hole plus a combination of ash, sulfur, graphite, and calcium from when the Cerro Negro volcano last erupted (in 1992 and 1999). Supposedly it erupts every 7 years, but it didn't erupt in 2006 so they're still waiting...
After oohing and awing at the spectacular views, it was time to put on our jumpsuits and goggles and "fall off" the volcano as our guide put it. Being the only girls in the group, Lauren and I were made to go first because, as our female guide said, it's more fun to see the boys crash and burn from the bottom (sidenote: she was totally right!). Lauren was terrified, and I was a bit nervous but not admitting it. We were both going good at first, but we were given instructions to eventually put our feet out on either side and lightly tap the surface to break, but we were goign so fast (68 km/hr) that it was too hard to pull our feet back up on the board and we ended up spewing rocks all up in our faces and body. It was thrilling for about 5 seconds, until I ate so much volcanic ash that by the end of it I was about 3 skin shades darker. One guy we were with got so much momentum and couldn't slow down that he ended up flipping head over feet multiple times down the volcano, cutting his head and nose up. Perhaps the most worthwhile part of the trip was upon arrival, when our free mojito was hastily handed to us.


The rest of our time in Leon was spent lounging around the hostel, meeting fellow travelers, walking around the city, and trying to find the best street food for the best deal. Oh, and we did get in our share of culture by going to the house where Ruben Dario grew up (Nicaragua's most famous poet), which is now a museum.

Halfway Through Central America

Lauren and I are in the third country in our Central America travels (well fourth if you count starting in Costa Rica), and we are loving it, especially after Honduras, which we spent all of 5 days in. Two of those days were fully devoted to riding squished in both mini shuttle buses and "chicken buses" as they're called (Central America pimped out yellow American school buses), and the other three days were comprised of me getting over my bout with traveler's diarrhea and other ailments while Lauren took my temperature and fed me pills and crackers. But here in Leon Nicaragua, everything is good, and we're back on schedule (if we ever had one).

Honduras was a fine country but there's not a ton to do and see, and most of the tourists falling the "gringo trail" as it's called, go to the Bay Islands on the Carribean to get certified in diving. Since neither Lauren nor I really felt the need to spend $250 and a week to get certified, we decided to go to a smaller town along the Carribean coast. Tela was supposedly built up for tourists, but it was dissapointing, and sketchy at night, so we only spent 1 day there. On our way to another part of Honduras, we had to switch buses in a main city and bus hub. While sprinting to the bathroom after our 4 hour bus ride with no bathroom breaks, Lauren heard her name being called and we found Itala, one of our coworkers from this summer, standing there in the mix of bustling people. She was traveling with my good friend, Cait, working their way up Central America from Panama, and we had tried to get together with them for at least a couple days in Honduras, but it wasn't working out. So I was ecstatic to see Itala and made her take me to see Cait immediately. Although it was only a couple of hours, I'm glad I got to see Cait and talk about the things we had done and places we had stayed during our travels while we both waited for our buses. Lauren and I had only been in Honduras 3 days and we were ready to leave, but we thought we owed it to the country to give it one last shot so we headed to a small town called La Esperanza (Hope) in the highlands with a lot cooler weather and seasonal fruits like apples, pears, and peaches that we were craving from back home. That was where I was sick, so Lauren thankfully made us get a room with a private bathroom and TV. We spent most of the time there in the hotel watching Grey's Anatomy and Friends while eating fruit and peanut butter sandwiches.

Luckily, those 2 days in La Esperanza were just the ticket I needed to get over my sickness so Lauren and I decided we were ready to move on to Nicaragua. Getting here was a bit of a struggle and it took 6 buses, one taxi, and 36 hours to finally get to our destination (a distance that should have taken a smooth 6 or 8 hour car ride back in the U.S. I'm sure). When we got to the hostel, the first things we asked about was their kithen and book exchange, because during the past week of traveling and not doing much, Lauren and I had 1. eaten too much packaged and processed food/greasy food from street vendors and 2. exhausted our reading supplies and were desperate for some good literature. We got a decent kitchen and cooked a fine meal that night, and though our hostel's library had a meager selection of books, we found some decent ones at another hostel across the street. For the most part the hostel is pretty cool, tomorrow we're doing the volcano boarding tour that it offers. My friend Cait did it and raved about it. I'm picturing snow/sand boarding but on a volcano. The pictures show big orange jumpsuits and the price includes a mojito, so sign me up! We'll be doing that tomorrow in the morning. Then on Friday we might do a 3 day hike up to a volcano which has views of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Pacific Ocean. It also includes swimming in a lagoon, which is Lauren's criteria for any hike we do. Fine by me!

Almost out of Guatemala

Today me and Lauren were supposed to leave Rio Dulce, Guatemala for Honduras, but we weren't sure about the bus schedule and missed the direct bus to the city we want to go to in Honduras. Oh well, we just have to spend another day here in this little town on the river, which the coast guard says is the best place for yachters in the area to store their boats during the hurricane season.

Lake Atitlan, with San Pedro Volcano in the background

So an update on the past week or two. After Antigua, Lauren and I went to the Atitlan Lake, which is a couple hours west of Antigua and Guatemala City. We took a small boat across the lake to this small town called San Marcos that was full of hippies, rainforest, and not much to do. The day after we arrived, we set off on a small hike to another town about a 3 hour walk/hike away. The path was right on the lake, set up in the hills a little, so the view was amazing, and we got some good photos, especially of me and my machete (the machete I bought in San Jose with my mom, which I was finally able to put to good use on this walk, as I had heard petty theft was not uncommon in the area).

Later that day I went to yoga at a nearby hotel and met some Irish girls who had been traveling through Latin America for the past 9 months. They told us to check out San Pedro, another small town on the lake, so Lauren and I went there the following day. When we got there, we headed straight to this market that was about 2 hrs away. I tried to haggle with a woman about a scarf/pashmina that I was set on buying for no more than 40 quetzales (about $5) and so when she offered it to me for, 50 I said no. Thirty seconds later, after debating about it in my head and Lauren finally telling me to go for it, I went graveling back to the woman and paid the 50 quetzales. Lauren did some of her own haggling as well and got a change purse and a headband (that we found out later could only be made for a child's head, as it barely fit around either one of our's thighs). On the way back to San Pedro, we met some Argentines who were more or less on the same route as us through Guatemala, so we joined forces with them and a couple of days later headed up north to Coban and then to Semuc Champey.

Don't really know how to describe Semuc Champey, but I've added photos so you can get the gist. We climbed up to a lookout point, which was amazing, and then went down to swim in the limestone, crystal pools. The water was cool and refreshing, though too cold for one of our Argentine friends, who finally went in after we splashed and pushed him in. Later that day we went on a tour of these caves near our hotel which were just incredible. Unfortunately we couldn't take a camera inside (and seeing as it was pitch black, there was no way it would have worked, even with a waterproof camera). The tour started with the guide handing each of us a candle, which we were to carry with us, lit, throughout the tour. This sounds easy, but when you have to swim and climb up cliffs and waterfalls, it sort of presents a problem. Especially when one of the people who are with can't swim. So there's the 5 of us, doggy paddling along with one hand and with the other holding a candle above our heads, trying not to let it touch the water, while bats squeak and flutter above our heads. A little terrifying, not going to lie. But it was an amazing tour. We got to jump off 3 meter high cliffs into water, scale up rocks, and slide down small waterfalls. It was one of the best things I've done all summer.

Me and Lauren with two of our Argentine friends, Mauro and Manuel, at the lookout of Semuc Champey

After we got back, we were exhausted, and had to wake up at 5 a.m. the next day for what turned into a long day of traveling consisting of 3 buses, one taxi, and a boat ride in order to get to Flores, in the northern part of Guatemala, near the Mexican border. From Flores we checked out the Mayan ruins of Tikal, which to be honest, were pretty impressive, but not as impressive as the ones I saw in Mexico (Palenque and Chichen Itza). We ended up doing an early morning tour (or late evening you could call it, the bus came to pick us up at 3 a.m.) to try to catch the sunrise, but it was too hazy and cloudy so we didn't see it. Oh well, the sunrise tour was worth it at least because it would have been way too hot to go any later than 8 a.m.

me, Lauren, and I think Mauro in the background on one of the highest temples in Tikal

After Tikal, Lauren and I had to part ways with the Argentines, which was quite sad, as we had been traveling with them for almost a week. But they were going to Mexico and we were set on not following them and making our way down to Honduras. So now we're in Rio Dulce and we went to the waterfall that the town is known for this morning. It's this hot waterfall that falls into a river of cool water and was another one of the best things I've done in Guatemala. When we asked the local kids who were there where the water comes from, they shrugged their shoulders and looked at us with a dumbfounded look, which seems to be the general reaction we get from all Central American teenagers

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Lauren jumping off of the hot waterfall in Rio Dulce