If I had to explain in one word why we absolutely plan on visiting Nicaragua again, that word would be “Ometepe”. The first time I saw it in our itinerary, I thought it sounded spiritual and mysterious, with a note of an ancient ceremony, and a hint of volcanic eruptions. I was right. If you look at a map of Latin America, you will see the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea with a thin sliver of land in between, Nicaragua. Once you zoom into the land, you will see a large body of water, Lake Nicaragua, and if you keep scrolling, you will see a small island in the middle of that lake. That’s Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes, Concepción and Maderas, and when viewed from above, the island has a symbolic shape resembling an infinity sign. I say it’s symbolic because it symbolizes the amount of time I am willing to spend there, which is infinite.
There are blogs and travel forums that will tell you to spend anywhere from one day to three nights on the island, and I can tell you in full confidence that they are liars and cheats, or maybe misinformation bots or AI running amok. No normal human being has ever landed in Ometepe, looked around, and said, “Oh yeah, I’ll just leave tomorrow.” I refuse to believe it. We were there for three nights, partly because we were naïve and trusted the internet and partly because we only had two weeks to see the whole country. Also, a major part of this miscalculation was not fully realizing just how big the island is, how beautiful it is, and how much there is to do. By the second day, I knew we had made a grave mistake and that in the future we would need to buy a one-way flight to Nicaragua and a ferry to Ometepe and just see how long we last.
But back to the beginning. The three days on Ometepe were very hard to plan, mostly due to the logistics of transportation around the island. The island is surprisingly large and takes about two and a half hours of driving to get around it. Only the main road around the island was paved (in some areas quite decently, in others just symbolically), and reaching hotels, museums, beaches, and other attractions often meant braving an unpaved, rocky, often steep path which required a four-wheel drive, a scooter, or an ATV. As I mentioned in an earlier post, before we saw the state of Nicaraguan roads, we rented a small two-wheel economy car. The plan for Ometepe was to take our car to the island on the ferry and… figure it out. It didn’t help that the eco-resort that we booked was also a thirty-minute hike up a volcano. This was a “fly by the seat of your pants” type of situation, and we were up for it.
Our plan fell apart the moment we pulled up to the ferry dock.
“Holiday weekend!” the parking attendant announced, “No more car ferry! Park car here, ferry for passengers only!” He then tried to tell us that the “island was full” and that we would need scooters to get around and that all scooters were sold out, but of course as luck would have it, we could rent the scooters through him. For only $40 per scooter. From my previous research, I knew that scooters should be around $25 per day. I quickly googled a scooter rental place on the island and contacted them through WhatsApp. They confirmed that they had plenty of scooters available and it was $25 per day. I glared at the parking attendant. Was he lying about the car ferry being sold out as well? There was no way to know.
We parked the car and got in a long line for the ferry. About an hour and a half later, we boarded the tightly packed ship. There was barely any room to stand, much less to sit, and the story about the car ferry being sold out was starting to look feasible. I took a few pictures of the deck packed with people sitting on the floor on their suitcases, and if I posted it online with a caption “ship full of refugees detained”, no one would question it.
As we sailed towards Ometepe, Victor and I discussed our options. I’ve been on a motorcycle maybe twice twenty years ago and Victor has never ridden one. Would we be able to learn to ride just like that? Certainly, we would not be able to rent scooters and just ride with our large backpacks up a volcano to our hotel today! We settled on taking a taxi to the hotel that evening and renting the scooters in the morning.
Once in the taxi, a four-wheel-drive SUV, we realized two things. The main road was absolutely drivable, and the traffic wasn’t too bad. On the other hand, the unpaved road up to the eco-resort was completely unpassable for anyone who didn’t have a lot of experience on a motorcycle. We would need to park our scooters by the main road and hike up and down the mountain to the resort. We spent the evening at our resort, watching the sunset, enjoying dinner, and trying not to think about the challenges that tomorrow would bring.
The next morning, we walked down to the main road, a steep 30-minute hike to find that our scooters were already waiting for us. All we had to do was provide our U.S. driver’s licenses, no previous motorcycle experience necessary. The two young men who brought the scooters helpfully showed us all the important details – how to open the helmet compartment, how to lock the motorcycle, where the gas tank was…
“And… um… how do you start it?” I asked, sounding casual, “And how do I break? And where’s gas?”
Maybe I imagined it, but the guy let out a tiny little sigh.
“We haven’t had a lot of experience,” Victor said diplomatically.
For the next ten minutes we were given an impromptu riding class right on the main road. Riding straight was easy enough, we quickly figured out how much gas to give and how to brake gracefully. The road even had a slight incline, and I had no issues navigating it. Just as I was starting to think that we had nothing to worry about, I passed Victor struggling with his scooter in the ditch. Apparently, he was feeling confident enough to make a U-turn and instead of leaning the bike into the turn, made the rookie mistake of just turning the handlebars and drove right off the road.
His riding instructor was running towards him. Once he pulled Victor and his scooter back onto the road, he just said, “No turn around! Stop, get off, walk the scooter!”
And that was it. According to the men who quickly glanced at our driver's licenses, had us sign a release waiver, and showed us how to break and accelerate mere ten minutes ago, we were now ready to take our new scooter skills on the road. They drove off in a truck and waved at us. I briefly wondered why they didn’t have us pay for the scooters in advance and decided to take it as a good sign of their confidence in our ability to survive the next few days. After all, dead people are unlikely to pay their debts.
With that, I slowly exhaled and mentally readied myself. I had my helmet, a cool scooter, and an open road in front of me. I was Evel Knievel performing a death-defying stunt.
“Where are we going?” I asked Victor, trying to sound confident.
“Our first stop is three minutes down the road. Try not to die.”
I slowly twisted the throttle, and the scooter rumbled. Here we go!
