Volcan Maderas

Ometepe is an island that I didn’t even know about until 3 days before I went on this hike. I planned to visit the city of Granada, Nicaragua for 5 days, and while there I met droves of people that were either visiting from or traveling to Ometepe. The island of Ometepe rests in Lake Cocibolca in Nicaragua. The largest freshwater lake in Central America. The island is dominated by two volcanoes, both reaching over 4,500 feet, and creating breathtaking backdrops from anywhere on the island. I cut my trip to Granada short and elected to travel to Ometepe for my remaining days and it was the most amazing island I’ve ever been on. It’s such a pleasure, to see so much undisturbed wilderness and to hear howler monkeys in the distance during nearly every waking hour. To hike a volcano, wasn’t even a question.

Even though I took the easy way out and chose to hike the smaller of the two volcanoes, it still ended up being quite the challenge on its own. With the rocks, mud and extremely narrow trails, it was just what I expected and hoped for, for my final hike of the country. The monkeys were a pleasant aspect of the hike and as always, my hiking group made the hike so much more enjoyable than the trail itself. After 10 hours of hiking, we finally completed our journey, and were grateful for our much-deserved showers. I’ll be back one day to conquer Volcan Concepcion, the big brother of the two volcanoes.