MUNGO EATS Latin America

Our cute little tour guide was late this morning, but we were okay with that.  It turns out that ordering and getting breakfast in this place takes longer than 1/2 an hour.  Walter was our tour guide today and he was a young, energetic little guy.  Again, he only spoke Spanish, so I think I got the most from the tour, but everyone enjoyed it.  Our first order of business was to visit the San Ramon waterfall.  It took almost an hour to drive to the falls, even though it was probably only about 30 km of  driving.  Only the first 4 or 5 km were on a paved road, the rest was dirt or gravel.  We opted to pay a little extra and drive to within 1 km of the falls, instead of walking 3 km.  I know, we are so lazy, but it is really hard to think about walking uphill for 3 km when the sweat is dripping off you as you stand in the parking lot.  This 40m high waterfall is located on private land, belonging to a former minister of tourism of Nicaragua.  He also has a “camp” set up for visiting scholars.  I guess a lot of people come to study the howler monkeys, and the wildlife in the cloud forests etc.      We walked up a beautiful forest trail to a magnificent waterfall.  Apparently the waterfall is a bit thin this year as there has been less than the average rainfall, but we still thought it was great.

There was a nice breeze once you got to the top and you could walk right up to the falls and stand in the spray.  We sat at the base of these falls for quite a while.  Very, very nice.  Walter was very nice, and on the way back to the van, he showed the kids a certain type of fern, which had white spores.  If you laid the leaf across you skin and gave it a little slap, it would leave a spore tracing on your skin, instant tattoo.  The kids thought this was pretty fun. He also showed us a termite nest.  If you are lost in the woods and come across a termite nest, there are two things you could do with it.  The first use, is as an energy boost, you could eat the termites.  I just couldn’t bring myself to try one of the nasty little creatures, but Kevin and Sara were game, and they said they kind of taste like juniper berries.  Now, how many 11 year olds can say they ate a termite on their birthday?  The second way that a termite nest could be helpful to you is as a bug repellant if you burn  bits of it.  So now you know!

After visiting the waterfall, we moved on to viewing some petroglyphs.  These were carved into volcanic stone, by pre-Columbian indigenous inhabitants of the island.  The oldest petroglyph on the island is 4000 years old!!  My favorite was this one.    Archeologists think this represents the Island of Ometepe itself.  Each spiral represents one of the two volcanoes and the line beneath is the connecting isthmus.  Pretty cool. 

We had also planned to go to some natural springs to sit in the pools, which supposedly have healing powers.  Our guide said that they have the power to change your sex if you happen to bathe on a certain day of a certain year…yeah, okay!  We stopped for lunch before visiting the springs, and wouldn’t you know it, my kids ended up in the waves again.  They were having so much fun, that we decided to skip the pools altogether.  Who wants to change sex anyway? 

We have decided to stay on Ometepe for one more day.  We will not have a tour tomorrow.  We will just spend time on the beach, maybe rent some kayaks.  There is a really nice nature walk starting outside our doorstep at the hotel, so hopefully we can take advantage of this. 

One last thing…Happy Birthday my little Sara.  Hope it was a good one, termites and all.