After Granada, we headed to the magical island of Ometepe on Lake Nicaragua. Ometepe island is the largest freshwater island in the world. What makes it so cool is that it is formed by two volcanoes. There sure are a lot of volcanoes in Central America! In order to get to Ometepe, we had to take a bus, taxi, ferry and another bus. Since we like riding around in boats so much, we were excited for the hour long ferry ride to the island. 
We spent the first couple of nights in Altagracia, one of the larger towns on the island. The funny thing about that is that it was a tiny little village with little more than a town square. Lots of locals get around the island using bicycles and we decided it would be fun to do a 25km round trip ride to a place called Charco Verde. Our rented bikes didn't have the best brakes or gears so it made for some really tough going sometimes. Yes, it's true. I walked it up more than one hill.
It was a scenic ride, though and we got to see lots of local life.
The cows of Central America are so cute: they have lopped ears. We love them!
When we got to charco verde, we decided to do a hike that went through some beautiful tropical gardens...
Past a family of howler monkeys...
And to the top of a hill where we had a scenic view of lake Nicaragua. We have discovered on our travels that we feel compelled to climb to the tops of things. It just feels like the thing to do.
The ride back was just as challenging, but we were rewarded with views like this:
We were completely exhausted when we got back so we were excited that we had a really nice place to stay. It was a great way to spend the day!
After a couple of nights in Altagracia, we decided to move on to the other side of the island, to a place called Finca Magdalena. It is an organic farming cooperative run by 26 families. They grow bananas, coffee, honey, and other fruits. We had to take a doozy of a bus ride and then hiked about 20 minutes uphill to get there because it is situated on the side of Volcano Maderas. We stayed in the white barn building, which was partitioned into rooms and had shared co-ed bathrooms. It was pretty rustic but they did provide mosquito nets and had yummy food at great prices. I was a fan of the palm tree jutting through the barn roof.
The views of Volcano Concepcion were incredible!
Finca Magdalena is located right by the entrance to the trail leading to the top of Volcano Maderas. People who hiked to the summit came back covered in mud from head to toe with tales of an "Ewok like forest", a lake where you sunk into silt up to your waist, and slippery muddy trails. We decided the summit wasn't for us but still hiked up for a couple of hours. We were accompanied by blue morphos butterflies and the sounds of howler monkeys. At one point, the path went through the middle of this fallen tree. It was pretty cool.
After a few days of chilling, we decided to leave Ometepe Island and head to the beach, which of course required lots of bus rides. There was a fair amount of waiting on the side of the road. Luckily, backpacks make great seats!
We finally arrived at San Juan del Sur and it was beautiful. It is situated on a half moon bay dotted with fishing boats and framed by big cliffs on each side of the bay. Although it is well set up for tourism, it still has it's charm.
We stayed at a hostel called Hotel Estrella, which gave a new meaning to the phrase "sea breezes". Our room in particular was kind of annexed onto the building and was more of an indoor - outdoor room. The walls didn't go all the way up to meet the tin ceiling and there were very large spaces between the wall boards. We were a bit concerned about bugs, since there were no mosquito nets, but the breezes from the ocean kept the bugs out the first night. On the second day, those breezes turned into an incredible wind that wouldn't quit! At night, we were genuinely concerned that the wind was going to pull the roof off of our room, or suck some of the loose wall boards away. We moved our bags against the interior wall and stuck in ear plugs to block the sound of the howling wind. I was still kept awake by the thought of a tree falling over on the building. We had to shake out our blankets every night because the wind blew all sorts of things onto our bed but the structure held up to the wind!
Despite the wind, the sunsets were pretty.
Since it was so windy when we woke up on our first full day there, we decided to wait to go to the nearby surfing beaches. Lucky for us, San Juan del Sur has something you can climb up! We had our activity for the day.
The views of the Pacific from the top were gorgeous.
The story of the statue is that a local man successfully fought cancer and decided to erect a statue of Jesus as a thank you to God for healing him. He paid a Costa Rican architect to design and build the statue, which is pointing to the local Catholic church in town. It was built in 194 pieces and then put together on top on the hill.
Here you can get an idea of the town.
And the wind!
I mean, it just wouldn't quit!
We were hoping the wind would subside, but it never did. In fact, it got worse. Eventually, you couldn't even walk near the beach because it kicked up so much sand into your eyes. We decided that Mother Nature just wasn't going to cooperate with us and scrapped our plans of going to the nearby surfing beaches. A travel agency told us the beaches would be a bad idea and that the wind would make swimming dangerous. Bummer!
We took things into stride. Things don't always work out the way you plan when you travel and we still had a great time together. The sunsets really were quite lovely.
On Sunday, we found a bar that was showing what would turn out to be the final Packers game. We sipped on beers and Tim made friends with this guy. 
Although he is allergic to cats, he loves them and they love him. He is even known by some as the cat whisperer. Who else gets away with repeatedly doing this to a cat?!?
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