Volcanic islands

Whilst waiting for Sam and Rob at the bus station (I say bus station, just a random, pot-holed patch of land that happened to have a few buses in it) some random drunk/drugged-up/crazy guy tried to punch me and shouted something at me in Spanish.  There was no chance of him actually hitting me.  This had nothing to do with my cat-like reflexes but more to do with him nearly falling over backwards as he brought his arm back to punch me.

Anyway, that incident aside it was quite a dull journey to San Jorge to catch the ferry to Ometepe.

The ferry itself was a wooden marvel of the 1920s (which was when it was last painted too).  Most boats have a pump so that water that has got inside the boat can be pumped back into the lake or sea or wherever it came from.  This ferry had a pump of sorts that just pumped water from beneath the deck to on top of the deck, where it just sloshed around and made peoples feet wet.  Brilliant!

As a lot of people know, travel can be hindered by many things.  Political uprisings, landslides, buses that break down, buses that don't arrive.  In our case, travel has been hindered by the World Cup.  Seeing as the bus journey to where we wanted to stay was about 3 hours and Brasil were playing in about 1 hour, we had to miss the first bus, watch the game.  It was the only sensible thing to do.

Ended up staying at Hacienda Merida, which was pretty nice even if the owner was slightly weird.  The food was pretty damn good and the all you can eat breakfast and dinner buffets made renting mountain bikes a necessity.  Managed to see quite a lot of the island by bike (in between the chains on the bikes snapping) and also walked up to a waterfall nearby.  Didn't bother climbing the volcanoes as everyone we'd seen coming back from the walks was plastered in mud from head to foot and nobody went 'Wow!  You've got to do it!  It was amazing!'  They all just said that it was 'Nice'.  We didn't really want to get covered in mud and be absolutely knackered just for 'Nice'.