The island of Ometepe...

Once we finally decided to move on, and leave the wonderful beach of Las Maderas, we crossed the Rivas province from part to part to go from the Pacific ocean to the Ometepe island within the huge Lago de Nicaragua. This trip involved a combination of a truck ride, a chicken-bus ride, a taxi ride, a lancha boat ride, and finally another two and a half hour chicken-bus ride... We left at 10am and got there at 6.30pm, yeepaw !

We stayed at Finca Magdalena, the farm of a former coffee plantation on the side of the Maderas volcano. This was our starting point for the 3-hour hike all the way to the top of the volcano !

The volcano is covered up with "cloud forest" : the following pictures are the best explanation for this kind of very wet and foggy forest !

It took us 3 very wet hours to get to the top, hiking through a trail turned into a narrow and muddy river... "Normal conditions", as a local guide would tell us...

Actually, in a way the conditions looked like a "Tahiti douche" TV commercial... Pierre definitely noticed that :

Obviously, there was absolutely no view from the top nor from the inner crater lake, but the atmosphere was just mystic !

The sky cleared up on the way down, so that we could have a nice view of the Ometepe double-volcano island :

And this is the sunset view from La Finca Magdalena, where we stayed for 2 nights :

We left at 7am this morning in order to be able to get on a chicken bus, catch a boat, get a cab and hop on a bus and reach the border with Costa Rica as early as possible.

After two and a half hours queueing to get our exit and entry stamps, we finally made it to Costa Rica !

We then made a first stop in Liberia, before eventually reaching Canas, where we ll spend the night.

Tomorrow morning we are going on a wildlife boat tour on Rio Corobici, and then we ll head to the Monteverde National Park to get some more wildlife watching !