Ometepe Island Part 2

Me on my horse, near the entrance to a plantain or "platano" farm. Plantains are similar to a banana, but not as sweet. It's a staple food in the Nicaraguan diet. Syd on the beach with Volcan Maderas in the background.

View of Volcan Conception from Finca de Magdelena on Ometepe Island.

Another view... While on the Island, Sydney and I had this one day that was absolutely perfect...the kind you envision that never seem to happen. We decided to rent horses and try to find this swimming hole that a local told us about. We took a bus to Santa Domingo, a community that lays within the little stretch of land that connects the big volcano to the little volcano. Here we rented horses for $2.00/hour ($2.00!!!!). Yet, another example of the stark difference between Nic. and the U.S... I told them I wanted to rent the horses, they saddled them up, brought them to us and said "have fun." No rules, no restrictions, NO WAVER FORMS! They didn't even ask for my name before I left with them. Can you imagine!?!? So we take off down the road, and Sydney's freaking a little bit, because the saddles were a sort of modified western saddles made into an English saddles...i.e. no saddle-horn to hold onto. Use those thighs, baby, and hold on for dear life, because these horses wanted to go. We took them to the beach where as soon as their little hoofs (is it "hooves?") hit sand, they took off in a full gallop. I finally got them to slow down, but they were constantly trying to at least trot. We found the swimming hole, where we tied the horses up and went for a swim. They had this cool rope swing that Sydney and I kept jumping off of, over and over. The water was crystal clear, and a perfect temperature, which I don't quite understand. The locals said it was spring-fed, but I thought all groundwater that comes out of a spring is the same temperature...like a FREEZING 67 degrees or something like that. Do you think the thermal activities happening underground due to the volcanoes have anything to do with the warmer temperature? Hmmmm. After leaving Ometepe Island, I planned to to make it all the way to Leon--in the Northeast part of Nicaragua) by nighttime. But, I had forgotten how grueling of a treck it is back from the Island, plus, I was looking for any excuse to stop in Granada for one last night....

Ojo de Agua (Eye of Water) swimming hole. Sydney swinging on the rope.