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San Jose, Costa Rica, 30 June 2003

Semuc Champey, El Salvador, Granada and Ometepe

Odv
2004-09-15 11:54:15

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of the intended 25 was quite obvious when he, mistaking us for Americans, put on an anti-American local radio program and further vented his anger by trying to run over a barking dog that was following the taxi.

The taxi ride with this loser was short and fortunately the next Nicaraguan we met, our neighbor on the bus to Granada, was very friendly and pointed out all the sites along the way, such as the stockpiles of smoke coming out of volcano crater Santiago near Masaya. Once in Granada he walked us to our hostel.

Granada is said to be the "Antigua of Nicaragua", but it is a small version of it, and our initial impression was therefore a bit disappointing. Fortunately we quickly met some people in our Hostel like Fara and Marc, who were working in a local bar called La Fabrica. A nice place to meet other travelers. The Danish owner of the bar takes care of the neighborhood street dogs.

Volcano Mombacho, near Granada, rises into the clouds and is host to a so-called cloud forest. Unfortunately when we arrived at the entrance it was kind of closed, since there was no transportation up the volcano. We were incredibly lucky when Hugo and his son Hugo (a doctor in Miami, spending a couple of weeks in Nicaragua visiting his family), came along in their 4-wheel drive and offered to take us up with them. We would not have been able to see the cloud forest that day without them.

Since the end of May, it has been raining nearly every day, usually for short and heavy showers, inundating streets.

After another visit to an active volcano crater, Santiago, near Masaya we left Granada by boat for the Island Ometepe, crossing lake Nicaragua, that contains a unique species, namely fresh water sharks. However we did not see any.

We stayed in Hacienda Mérida in the Mérida village on the southern part of Ometepe (the Maderas section). This was one of the cheapest places we stayed at, with bunks at 2.75 USD p.p, ...