A very wet journey from Granada to Rivas, then a very expenisve (and as we discovered later, rip off!) taxi to the port village of San Jorge. We hopped onto a rather run down ferry for the hour crossing to Isla De Ometepe.

This means 'two hills' in the local language, however they are not actually hills but two seperate volcanos that emerged out of Lake Nicaragua, the lake itself is the largest volcanic lake in the world.

The volcanos are called Concepción (1610m) and Maderas (1394m) which apparently formed in the Holosene period about 10,000 years ago. The two volcanos are joined together in the middle as a result of lava flows which therefore created the one whole island!

Hurricane Jova to the north of us has spread destruction across northern Central America and the knock on effects for us is that the lake and volcanos are covered in low cloud, lots of rain and no blue sky at all. So even though we took the ferry towards it and spent 3 days on the island we never did see much of a volcano. The mist is very low so you see a steep hill that just dissapears into the gloom. No postcard friendly view of the volcanos but very mysterious and moody atmosphere which we enjoyed.

We decided to make life difficult and head for a small village in the far south of the island. This involved a 1.5 hour 4x4 taxi ride with around the edges of the volcanos, when you get to the middle section the roads disappeared and all you have left is muddy rocky roads. So the trip to our hotel was an adventure in itself.

We arrived at our new place, called Monkies Island. A small family run low key (no frills) establishment which is typical of the island (which is very rough and ready, not really a full on tourist destination as yet)

Only us, two German travellers and a strange America man were the guests. The Germans were very nice, they had been travelling for 3.5 years and return back to what is now a very different homeland in a few weeks. We really have no idea how someone can travel for that extensive length of time, but all credit to them!

As we have noticed over our travels, there is generally always one weirdo in a hotel, and this on was a rather odd American who just shouted at the hotel staff all the time (whats happening to my chicken!!! wheres the salt !!!! I want a beer now!! - that sort of thing, very rude we thought)

So our first day we decided to hike to a water fall. This involved a 2km walk along the (very rough) lake front. Then up the slopes of the misty volcano. After a good 2-3km treking we arrived at a section that had collapsed due to a landslide. After some head scratching we decided to push on and clambered over the rocks, cross fast flowing streams and then treks some more to an amazing twin waterfall, some 35m in height.

Emily immediatly stripped off into her swimming suit and made her way towards it only for large rocks to suddenly fly over the end and plummet 35m into the pool below. Emily then back tracked and got dressed again.

After another 5 or so km hike back we then got stuck into much deserved tasty food and 1 litre bottles of local beer (x 2 or 3, cannot remember) before getting into our mosquito net for the night.

The next day we attempted the volcano climb. Off we went at 7am and with our very young and quiet guide we started the climb. What started out quite shallow became very steep, and then involved being on all fours climbing up. Very muddy, wet and before long we entered the cloud forest which was rather magical. Not so magical was Dave almost standing on a Coral snake that wandered past him. As we found out afterwards these are highly venomous, a lucky escape!!

After 3 hours we were told we were half way, and that due to the cloud there is no view at all from the top. This then prompted Emily to declare that we have done enough up hill hiking for the day (well two days really) and we all agreed to head down. 6 hours hike in total, it would have been more like 10 if we had continued. We decided to leave the long treks for the upcoming Inca Trail........