Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

This place is so over run with Gringos it is really starting to get on our nerves. Even the $18.00/night hostel we stayed in Liberia had cable TV with all the major American TV stations CBS, TNT, Nickelodeon, Food Network, HBO, Cinemax, and others. I think it is totally crazy that all the room rates we have been quoted so far were in American dollars. If you actually want to pay in the local currency you have to ask them to convert the bill (which they do at a pretty shitty exchange rate).

We arrived in Liberia last night and after settling in our room we went out to the closest restaurant to our hostel. [read on]

We arrived in Granada with our friend Cy and spent two nights there. Granada is probably the most beautiful town in Nicaragua. It is an old colonial town with buildings painted in bright colors. There was a lively market and we took a boat ride out to an island and saw monkeys. This was a big hit with William and Julian. Granada is next to Lake Nicaragua and there a lot of small islands close to the shore. A lot of these islands have been bought by wealthy Nicaraguans and they build houses on them. One of the owners decided to put monkeys on his island. When he got tired of them he put them on a neighboring island and one of the big tourist attractions is to take a boat out and see the monkeys. William was hoping that we could go onto the island because he wanted to run with the monkeys. Unfortunately you can only float by. It’s a monkeys-only island.

Our next stop was Isla de Ometepe which is farther south on Lake Nicaragua. The island consisted of two volcanoes connected in the middle. Cy was interested in climbing the active volcano and Matthias decided to join him. They left at 4:45 AM and it took them 10 hours to climb up and down the volcano, but the experience and stories they have been telling sure seem worth it. (Although Matthias is still not sure what is easier – 10 hours without the children or 10 hours of sheer agony of climbing a 5000+ foot volcano.) They had a great guide who told them a lot about the animals and ecosystem of the place they were climbing. They even saw about a dozen howler monkeys and a coral snake.

[read on]

Sorry I can’t write a whole lot, but our friend Cy and I just returned from climbing the Conception volcano on Ometepe island in Nicaragua. I won’t be able to move for the ... [Continue reading this entry]