Volcan Concepcion from Moyogalpa

Saturday September 25th - Tuesday October 5th 1999

From San Pedro, we made our way by boat to Panajachel. Veronika was not feeling too well, perhaps as a result of something she ate; we bought some medicine from the pharmacy with the help of Benji, whom we met again (the first time was in Antigua) while having lunch. The place we stayed in, Mario's Rooms, was probably the nicest since the Kloster in Guanajuato - the room was spotless and shiny, the bed very comfortable, we even had a small sofa to sit on. There was also a large balcony sheltered from the (heavy) rain where we sat and chattered to Benji. The strange thing about the room was that it actually had a private bathroom, but this was locked and we were not charged for it; I think the plumbing might have died. Attached to the hotel was a small restaurant where we had excellent breakfasts.

On our first night in Panajachel (Saturday), I went to an Internet cafe to update the web site and check my mail. While I was doing so, a middle aged couple and their daughter came in, speaking in broad Scots accents. Turned out that the daughter was working in Guatemala City and her parents had come out to visit her. I didn't talk to them for long, but I did check out the Hearts score for her dad, who was a jambo (they won 2-0 away to Dundee United). After I'd done my net stuff, I made to leave and I noticed that it had become very dark, and that it was raining exceptionally heavily. I waited for a short while for the rain to ease off a bit, and when I realised that it wasn't going to do so any time soon, I decided to run. The main road in Panajachel (Calle Santander) had become a fast-flowing river, and only the fact that it was cobbled prevented it from turning into a swamp; the water was so muddy that it seemed that the rain had brought half of the mountain down with it into the streets. I tried to avoid the puddles at first, but it soon became apparent that this was a futile task, so I merely concentrated on getting to the hotel as quickly as possible; I needn't have bothered, as by the time I arrived I was soaked through.

The next day (Sunday) we went to Chichicastenango with Benji to visit the most famous market in Guatemala. The trip to Chichicastenango was easy enough by bus, and the market was quite something - sprawling, chaotic, utterly disorganised and so colourful that for days afterwards our dreams were of bright Guatemalan textiles. We bought a few things - I picked up a very fine shirt for $3, Veronika bought a hair band, a little purse and a key fob. We encountered a semi-Catholic ceremony at the church, had a very fine cappuccino and mostly avoided the incessant rain - the market stalls are in many places so close together that they actually provide very good shelter.

On the way back, we initially waited for a regular bus. It was here that I came to the conclusion that, while Guatemalan women are the salt of the earth - smiling, friendly and helpful - many Guatemalan men are a breed apart. While not quite as offensively/aggressively money-grubbing muchachos as in Mexico, they do have a trait which rapidly becomes wearisome - they will say almost anything to you in order to get your custom, and that usually involves much friendly lying. So for example, "direct" means "stopping everywhere conceivable, and you have to change buses three times"; "the bus leaves in five minutes" means "I'm going to keep you waiting for at least half an hour"; and "I don't have any change" means "You don't really expect any money back do you?" After sitting in a largely empty bus feeling like prize fools for about twenty minutes, we eventually opted to hop in a minibus for the return trip to Panajachel, paying an extra 10 quetzales for the privilege. This turned out to be a good move - the constant heavy rain had led to a landslide which meant that the road from Solola to Panajachel was blocked by a large boulder (or had been washed away entirely, depending on who was telling us), so the only way back was along a dirt track (mud) through a cornfield, past some very surprised looking Indians who were obviously entirely unused to seeing much traffic and were extremely surprised to see a minibus full of gringos passing by. When we got back to Panajachel, the driver tried to charge us an extra five quetzales for the trip, but I walked off refusing to pay more than what had been agreed in advance; maybe this was me being the "ugly tourist", but by this stage I'd had enough of being lied to and was not in a mood to pay any more.

Lago de Nicaragua from Volcan Concepcion

The next morning we decided to catch the bus to Guatemala City. Looking for the bus stop, we were met by a representative of the bus company, who told us that the bus would be along at 10:30 (and not at 10, as per the timetable), so we hung around waiting. 10:30 came and went, and we were then told that the bus would be there at 11:00. Come 12:00, he told us that the road was out and that the bus may or may not turn up, and that he had known this all along; conveniently (for him that is), he had a friend with a minibus who was prepared to drive us to Antigua for a price. Having checked out the alternatives (basically, $20 for a scheduled minibus to Antigua, or wait another night and hope that the road was cleared), we decided to go to Antigua for the night. And so it was that we found ourselves back at the Posada Ruiz 2 for one more night. We spent the night in a different room, larger but darker than our previous one, and the lady who runs the hotel recognised me and greeted me with a friendly smile, so that we immediately felt very welcome. It's amazing how the simple, small things can make such a big difference.

Early the next morning we caught an inevitably crowded bus to Guatemala City, and managed to negotiate our way through the bus system to find the International Bus Terminal, where we bought 2 tickets to San Salvador. The bus journey to San Salvador was largely uneventful; crossing the border was fairly simple, although I had to pay a small bribe before we were allowed to leave the country. Once again at the border, I was struck by the difference between the men and the women; the money changers, exclusively male, were pushy, aggressive and obnoxious; the food-sellers, exclusively women, were pleasant and friendly, and understood that no meant no. In the end though I did change $20 for colones. Back on the bus, I sat back down next to a guy who was a few teeth short of a mouthful and had just the strangest accent, making my comprehension of him minimal to say the least. Still, we managed to sustain some sort of conversation for a short while; it emerged he was a card-carrying priest who had travelled to Canada and ex-Yugoslavia and was friendly enough, although I started to tire of the conversation because it was a real struggle to understand anything he said thanks to his weird speech and my poor Spanish.

The hotel we opted for in San Salvador, the Hotel Cuscatlan, was pretty much a dump, but a friendly one at that; the place seemed to be run by a mother and her two sons, and had a solid metal gate at the front entrance, with signs, intended to be reassuring but somehow ending up being somewhat less than comforting, announcing that for our safety and security, the gate would be locked at eleven o clock each night. The room itself was basically acceptable, but only just, and we wouldn't have stayed there if it had been for anything more than one night - the walls of the "bathroom" stopped about a foot short of the ceiling, and the floor looked as though it had never seen better days, as if it had been built dirty. Still, it was cheap and it was convenient, and the people were friendly. After offloading our stuff, we went in search of the bus station to find out about buses to San Miguel and on to the Honduran border. The bus station was difficult at first to disentangle from the seedy market, no more disorganised than those in Guatemala, but infinitely more threatening, unpleasant and dirty. Several people had told us not to bother visiting El Salvador, and I was beginning to understand why. After some slightly confused wandering, we eventually found the despatch office which seemingly also served unofficially as an information desk. The people there gave us the information we were seeking and were so helpful that I forgot about the extremely rickety-looking gantry that was trying to support the platform on which the despatch desk was located.

The next morning we caught a very early bus to San Miguel in eastern El Salvador, a singularly dull and uninteresting journey. Almost immediately on arrival in San Miguel, we caught an onward bus to the border, another boring journey with a layover (same bus) in Santa Rosa de Lima, a dirty unpleasant little town that quite literally stank of crap. By the time we got to the border at El Amatillo, we were very glad to be leaving El Salvador.

The crossing into Honduras was fairly straightforward, and we caught a bus on to Choluteca soon afterwards. We arrived at Choluteca in mid-afternoon and decided to stop for the night; we found a fairly pleasant if not terribly cheap hotel. They originally wanted to give us the most expensive room in the place (not an uncommon occurrence, it must be noted), but after asking if there were any cheaper rooms, the manager with a bit of bad grace showed us an alternative room which was reasonably pleasant. We decided to eat lunch at the hotel, and managed to lock ourselves out of the room, even though we had the key - the lock was just playing up. After about a quarter of an hour, one of the people working in the hotel managed to get the door open and then offered us another, considerably smaller and less pleasant room; as we were just staying the night before moving on again, we declined the offer and decided to run the risk of staying in an unlockable room. We both had badly needed showers after the long and dusty journey and went to bed very early again.

The next morning we caught a bus at 6:30 to Guasaule on the Nicaraguan border. Leaving Honduras was not a problem; getting into Nicaragua was a bit more bothersome, as in addition to the border formalities we had to fend off the many bothersome money changers who insisted that we wouldn't be able to change lempiras in Nicaragua and didn't seem to understand that we didn't have any lempiras to change. Also irritating were the numerous bike-taxi drivers/riders who insisted that we would need their services to get to the Nicaraguan immigration service and to the buses, which, they told us, were several kilometres away. Having crossed the bridge into Nicaragua, we reached the customs office within a couple of hundred metres and went through the formalities. I asked the border guard how far the buses were, and he told us that they were fairly far away; by this time, the cyclists had upped the distance to three miles. In the end, we relented and agreed to accept a lift from one of them for 15 cordobas. He took us to the buses, which were no more than a couple of hundred metres away, and then informed us that he "didn't have any change" for the 20 cordobas I gave him in payment. In the end I accepted this and got into a minibus which took us to Managua. In Managua, we found a bank to give us some dollars and cordobas on my credit card and then hopped in a taxi across to the other bus station. There we caught an express bus to Rivas which turned out actually to be an express bus, not stopping once we had left Managua until we reached Rivas. It then took us on to San Jorge in time for the boat to Moyogalpa on Ometepe. In one day, we had travelled by bus, taxi, bicycle-taxi, minivan, foot and boat.

Volcan Concepcion reminding me of Scotland because of the fog

We arrived in Moyogalpa and headed for a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet, only to discover that it was a real dump; after a brief consultation, we headed for a place across the road not even mentioned by LP and found it to be much better. After a huge soup and main course dinner and a couple of beers, both Veronika and I were exhausted and collapsed into bed at 7:30 in the evening.

The next day we were too tired to do anything other than sit around reading and relaxing. Once again we were in lazy mode, but that was ok. The day after that, it started raining in the morning, and simply didn't stop; we're starting to understand why they call this the rainy season. Sunday came, and it was a beautiful morning, so we went in search of a guide we'd been recommended for a trip up a volcano. He was nowhere to be seen, and the people at the hotel told us that the volcano we wanted to climb - with a crater lake - was difficult, possibly dangerous, due to mudslides. We resigned ourselves to not climbing a volcano on Ometepe. Finally, however, on Sunday evening we were sitting in our room reading when there was a knock at the door; it was Berman, the guide, who had come looking for people to lead up a mountain. We chatted for a while (in English!) and then agreed to meet up the next morning bright and early (ten to five) to climb Volcan Concepcion.

Next morning sure enough we got up, although later than intended since my alarm clock had mysteriously lost half an hour and set out for the volcano. We caught a bus to the trailhead and then set off through beautiful jungle. As the morning wore on, the humidity and heat increased, and I was suffering increasingly as a result; I had to take my glasses off because they were constantly steaming up. We stopped for a rest on a giant ceiba tree and then actually started climbing. It was a good thing we had hired a guide, as the path seemed to disappear with disturbing regularity, merging into the dense undergrowth. Berman proved to be very knowledgeable and spoke good English so it was a very interesting trip - we saw many leafcutter ants marching along the jungle floor, heard again (and saw for the first time) howler monkeys, and saw many types of butterflies, birds and interesting insects along the way, as well as a huge variety of plants: anise, cat's claw, wild coffee and banana among others. We even managed to eat some freshly picked, if not quite ripe, bananas, and not for the first time I wished I could have a banana tree in my garden, while Veronika wished the same, except concerning coffee in her case!

Resting on a giant ceiba tree, Volcan Concepcion

After about three or four hours we came to the end of the jungle, and suddenly there was daylight. We could see the lake at least somewhat - the clouds were starting to close in, and apart from the tropical vegetation, I started to be reminded of Scotland a bit. Eventually, we came to a plateau, where we stopped to eat some pan dulce and drink some sorely needed water. As we sat there, the clouds closed in some more and the rain started to fall, and we decided that a steep two-and-a-half hour ascent to the summit was not going to be worth it as we would see nothing at the top and would get soaked in the process, so we opted instead to go back down, vowing to return at some stage in the future during the dry season and climb the other volcano to see the crater lake.

The next morning we got up early again (this is starting to become a bit of a habit) and caught the 6:30 ferry to San Jorge, a connecting bus to Rivas, and then a second bus to the Costa Rican border. I'd been wanting to come to Costa Rica for so long having grown up with stories about the place, and the time had come to find out whether Ticos are really as friendly as they're supposed to be.

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