Day 25: Granada to Isla d’Ometepe, Nicaragua

Oh, what a glorious breakfast at The Garden Cafe—literally the best place to eat in all of Granada, maybe the whole world! Saben had the world’s most delicious French Toast and Lin had some delectable chocolate & banana pancakes (so I love pancakes, alright?!) with the best orange juice and coffee ever (even better than Antigua, and that was some amazing coffee & OJ at Hostel 5). We just took our time over breakfast and wandering down to the ferry dock since our ferry to Ometepe didn’t leave til 2:00.

(Imagine a photo of the most amazing french toast ever, here)

We made it down to the ferry dock a little early, tickets were pretty cheap ($3 for a 5 hour ride). We got on the boat and settled into some seats (more like bleachers at a highschool basketball game). There are several TV´s onboard and they had some “entertainment“ which consisted of a dvd with five 80´s music videos on it, played over and over and over again, and a really sad movie about the holocaust!?! We didn´t quite realize how far the island was and every 30 min or so the ferry would (for no obvious reason) start heading towards shore. So we are thinking, great we are almost there! But, no… as we were getting close it would just turn back out to the water. We did this every 30 min for the five hour ride there.

When we finally arrived after hours of torture by the song “Born to Be Alive,” we joyfully disboarded in the dark and tried to find a cheap taxi to our home for the night. Since it was dark, we lost a lot of bargaining power and ended up paying $5 per person (down from $20) for a pickup truck taxi that stuffed in/on 8 or 9 passengers. We were heading for Finca Magdalena, a farm & hostel near the tiny town of Balgue (pronounced Bal-gway). It was a fun but incredibly rough ride, and it really did take an hour like the taxi driver said, so it was actually worth the $5. The roads were, well, not roads by any account that I could have ever imagined. In fact, I’ve seen creek beds that are in better condition than the roads on Ometepe (no joke). When we arrived at Finca Magalena, there were some hippies playing music on the porch while some other guests ate dinner or looked on. We were shown to our beds—a tightly stretched piece of tarp over a homemade X-frame, kind of like a cot (really wish we had a photo of this!). There were 6-8 other beds in the “dorm” (barn) but we were right next to the bathrooms so we didn’t need to venture very far for a much-needed shower. The beds were only $2 but there were also $40 private rooms upstairs and hammocks for $1.50 outside on the porch.

We were just barely in time for dinner (stop serving at 9pm) and had a delicious, huge plate of food for about $3. What’s really cool is that reception keeps a sheet with your name on it and they write down your expenses and you just pay for everything when you check out. This was a wonderful surprise for us since we hadn’t gone to the ATM in a while and were really short on cash. Anyway, it seems like a really cool place but we’ll have a better idea in the morning when we can check things out in the daylight.

Travel Tip:

The ferry from Granada to Ometepe only runs Mondays and Thursdays. There’s an early morning ferry and an afternoon one, but be warned, the trip takes around 4-5 hours on the slowest ferry in history and the on-board entertainment is a mixture of 1980s music videos and then a German movie subtitled in Spanish about the Holocaust (talk about a downer…geez). There will be lots and lots of passengers on board so it’s a very hot, stinky ride. You can buy a first-class ticket but we saw both first and second class ticket holders all sitting in the second class area where we were. Not sure what the difference is.