The other day we found a map that showed the location of one “Monkey Island” not too far away from us. For people like us who grew up with video games the name immediately rang a bell and reminded us of the great Lucasarts game series where one follows the adventures of the luckless pirate wannabe Guybrush Threepwood. Since we’ ve felt rather piraty anyway living in a sort of treehouse on a tropical volcano island for the last 2 weeks it was quickly decided that we had to see the monkey island with our own eyes.
We rented some bicycles and set off to Merida. It’s a little “town” at the foot of the volcano Maderas and only a few kilometers away from our location. Sadly none of the two volcanos that make up Ometepe island felt inclined to erupt so far. Maderas is dormant and volcano Concepcion went off in 2010 the last time. We’re kind of hoping it will wake from it’s slumber while we’re still here since we only just missed a volcano eruption north of San Jose shortly before we left Costa Rica.
There’s also a bus to Merida but there’s not what you’d normally call a road. It’s a dirt track wich gives the word pothole a whole new meaning most of the time. The so-called mountain bikes we had rented weren’t too good and we had a pretty bumpy and exhausting ride. After little more than an hour we had eventually reached the few buildings that are Merida. It was a bit overcast that day and we were glad about it. On a day with more than 30° and the usual glaring sun we would have perished on the way.
After a short coffee break where we also received some valuable advice from Angel the waiter we headed to the Monkey Island Hostel. There we rented a kayak to paddle out on lake Nicaragua to the tiny monkey island. There was almost no wind and the lake was very calm that day which suited us well while we crossed the few hundred meters of open water to the island.
When we neared the island we were immediately greeted by a few capuchin monkeys that came out of the trees and paced up and down the little stone landing. They seemed quite curious and not at all shy and they came as close to the kayak as we let them. Also they were very funny and cute to watch and the photos don’t really show the whole range of expressions you can see on their little faces.
When it turned out that we hadn’t brought any food offerings with us the mood suddenly changed noticeably.
We didn’t actually set foot on the island since the little guys seemed to be against it and became quite agitated. We just went around it in the kayak and also had a good view on the volcanos Concepcion and Maderas. No hidden pirate treasures or old and mysterious ruins were to be seen anywhere on Monkey Island so we decided that we had seen enough of it. It’s reall
After we had left the monkeys again we had lunch at the Hacienda Merida. The map we’d found that had guided us to the “Isla de los monos” was actually from there and had their ads on the back. The food was pretty good and the staff was very friendly too so we were content to have been lured there. Finally we headed back to El Zopilote because we felt that we had endured enough bumpy bike rides for the day and our butts needed a rest.
There’s also two pictures from Moyogalpa from the day before. We’d had to do the 2-hour chicken bus ride there to buy a few supplies and go the post office.
The christmas decorations are already up everywhere. December is high season and there’s just no time to do it later as we’ve been told. It feels weird for us to look a christmas tree while standing in the hot sun and not having to freeze like back in Germany.
