A Boat to a Volcanic Island Paradise

Friday and Saturday, Jan. 18 & 19—San Carlos to Altagracia

Resigned to the fact that I had to move toward a place with a MasterCard ATM, while at the cyber café I researched the MasterCard site to see if my alternative destination, Ometepe Island, would work.  It shows that there are 8 ATMs there that will take MasterCard, all in the major city of Mayagalpa.  Therefore, I bought a boat ticket for thegovernment ferry which would leave at 14:00 and arrive outside Altagracia on the island at midnight.

Foreigners are required to buy first class tickets on the boat.  Those, however, only cost about $7, so it is still a bargain.  It’s the upstairs part of the boat.  Half is enclosed with padded benches, air conditioning, and TV on which they play DVDs.  The other half is open deck with deck chairs and a canvas cover to shade it.  Right on time, the boat took off with a loud horn announcing our departure.  We entered the Lago de Nicaragua, a fresh water lake that seems as large as one of the Great Lakes. 

Because we were all foreigners, lots of conversations started up among passengers.  I visited with three different couples.  One was American, teachers who had moved to Prescott, AZ, after retiring in Portland.  One was Canadian, university professors (microbiology and engineering) from Victoria Island.  The last was a young Costa Rican man accompanying his mother-in-law home to Altagracia after a visit with him and his wife.  All were interesting.  The two North American couples have been traveling here since early December and will stay longer than I am.  The American one had also run into money problems when a boat that was to bring them from the Caribbean coast broke down and they were stranded for 8 days.  The Canadian couple had crossed both remote borders that I had crossed in getting from Panama to Costa Rica and from Costa Rica to Nicaragua.  The American couple got off at an earlier stop in our trip at the town of Morrito which is not mentioned in my guidebook but looked really nice from the boat.

Fortunately, each of us had our own long bench in the enclosure so that we could recline to sleep as it became nighttime.  And just at midnight, there was an announcement that we were approaching the port at Altagracia.  The Canadian couple were coming here, too, and were planning to stay at the same hotel.  Both of us had written for reservations but had not gotten a reply.  They travel like I do, so we had also agreed that if the taxi drivers wanted too much money to take us into town, we would just walk the 3 km from the port to there.

We were lucky that the mini-van driver only wanted $1 each to drive us, because the road was unbelievable. It was unpaved and was rocky.  A four-wheel drive vehicle should have been used to get over it.  There were places where multiple huge stones bulged up.  The rickety van just bounced and waddled and the engine grinded as the driver kept going. It would have been very difficult to have tried to traverse that road with a suitcase. 

Hotel Central was full when we got there, and the manager showed no concern that we had written for reservations.  The van driver took us to an alternative place, but it was full, too.  Then he suggested taking us to another town for $5 each.  I was concerned at that point that they might be trying to take advantage of us.  I asked for my suitcase, paid, and walked away thinking that I would stay at the park the rest of the night if I couldn’t find a room.  I went to the El Castillo, and the guard there went for the manager.  The manager implied there were no rooms, but the guard seemed to remind him of one that could be rented.  I couldn’t tell if it was a room not normally rented or one which had been reserved without the people arriving.  Anyway, as I waited for him to get the key, the van pulled up with the Canadian couple and another man from the boat and asked for rooms.  The manager sent them away saying he only had the one room for me.  I felt so guilty, yet I was so happy not to be staying the rest of the night at the park.

The room (my room is the one on the far right of the image) was clean with a fan, a TV, a bath and two nice windows and cost only $10.  It was so much better than where I had stayed the last two nights!  Although I should have gone to sleep immediately, my sinuses were swollen to the point where I couldn’t breathe well. Also, there was the sound of banana trees scraping the back of the room as the wind blew.  I had to put in my earplugs, do relaxation exercises, and eventually turn off the fan so that I could breathe and fall asleep.

This morning (Saturday), I went out to explore.  What an exciting little place Altagracia is.  It’s a very small town on Ometepe Island which is formed by two dormant volcanoes which rose in the lake and merged in an hour-glass shape.  It’s remote enough that there can be consistency problems with utilities.  The electricity sometimes fades and comes back.  And just as I was shampooed and soaped from head to toe in the shower this morning, the water went off.  I checked the sink, and some water was flowing there which was maybe leftovers draining from the pipes.  I started rinsing as fast and as much as possible.  But then I noticed the water flow increase.  I went back to the shower, and water was on there again.  What a relief, since the water from the sink wasn’t going to be sufficient to do a good job.

I went out exploring around 10:00.  Altagracia is a charming little town.  It’s like stepping into the past for the most part.  Many of the buildings are very old wooden or stucco ones with old tile roofs.  The most common shop in town is the kind where you stand at the counter and tell the owner what you want off the shelves like in the 1800s in the US.  There are old painted signs that are stylish and interesting to see.  One of my favorites was for the Tiendita Guadalupe—a yellow exterior with a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe and stenciled lettering for the words above it.  Another interesting aspect was that the shop is run by a person who is obviously a transvestite.  Transportation is often by ox, donkey, or other kind of animal.  I even saw a man using a cow to carry firewood which was strapped on either side of its back.  Only a few of the streets are paved, many are uneven dirt streets with the dirt being volcanic stone dust.  Apparently, a street is only paved if the home or shop owners pay to have it paved in front of their place.  It’s common for many homes to have a hog tied up in the yard.  

When I returned to my hotel at noon, the two Canadians were sitting in the restaurant having coffee.  They had gotten a room across the street at another hotel.  I was so relieved to find that they hadn’t had to go to the next town after I got the last room here last night.  They, too, had been wandering the town.  We sat and talked for a long while as they drank their coffee which they were having here because the coffee was so weak at their hotel.