Isla Ometepe: Volcanoes!

But not volcanoes that I climbed.

The view from the ferry.  The two volcanoes grew up through Lago Nicaragua and met in the middle, forming a single island.

Seriously, though: you have two options.  The taller of the two is supposed to be an easier climb, but it's kind of, well, active.  So you can't go all the way to the top.  The shorter volcano is, for whatever reason, much wetter, so it's a 6-8 hour muddy slog through the jungle.  Sure, there's a very pretty lake at the top.. good for swimming and all that.  But guess what you have to do after you go swimming?  Riiiiight.  The climb was described to me as "something I would not wish upon my worst enemy."  So what else is there to do on this island?

If the lady wants to go horseback riding then we want to go horseback riding.  They weren't the most active of creatures, but they seemed to know the way and were content to saunter along at their own pace.  Not your pace, bud, nosiree.  Their pace.

How did she get the camera?  Sneaky little...

Our destination: a little spit of sand affording lovely views of the volcanoes.  Naturally, this sort of "land's end" inspires all manner of photography..

..some rather silly..

..some more somber.

More silly than somber, though, on the whole.

It's a girl on a horse on a beach on an island.

In case of volcanic eruption.. you're pretty much fucked.  But to take your mind off your imminent doom, try fleeing this way.

It would have been nice to stay out at the beach for the sunset, but we didn't fancy riding the horses at night along the road.  The vantage from town wasn't too bad though.

If you don't like climbing volcanoes and you've already gone horseback riding, the only other thing going is "Ojo de Agua" (Eye of Water), a natural spring.  I was picturing something more rustic and natural.

But it was more like kitschy touristy.

A pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, nonetheless.

Far more fun than the Ojo de Agua was our mode of transportation that day.  Only $20 and this bad boy was all ours, all day.

After hanging out at the springs for a few hours we decided to continue around the island to check out a place we were thinking about staying.  The further we went the worse the road got, until it took all my attention just to keep the scooter upright.  At one point, we turned off the main road and up a steep hill.  Displaying a remarkable level of control (if I do say so myself), I guided the scooter up one of the 18" wide ribbons of concrete laid in the dirt road to allow cars to ascend the slope.

Hmm.. that's not the best of descriptions.  And I can't find an illustrative picture on the interwebz.  Suffice it to say that there was very little room for error and Michal was quite impressed.  And isn't that all that matters?

Unfortunately, I seem to be better at driving than teaching driving.  I failed to explain to Michal that on banked turns there is a minimum speed that must be maintained, otherwise you drift into the turn.  Later that day while Michal was driving us back and we started drifting, she did the natural thing: slow down.  This only caused us to drift even more.  Thankfully, by the time we drifted off the road and into the weeds we were only doing about 10 mph.  Still, I managed to lose a chunk of flesh the size of my thumbnail out of the heel of my palm and picked up a nice patch of road rash on my forearm.  Michal actually came out of it better than I, with only assorted scrapes and bruises.

It doesn't look like much now, but trust me: it was deep.

Pretty funny, though, in retrospect: me, an enlightened 21st century male teaching Michal, an empowered 21st century woman how to ride a scooter and what does she do?  She lives up to the oldest of sexist stereotypes.  Sigh.

Women.