Journey to Ometepe Island...

Day Four- Saturday, February 27. 2010

Today we trekked to Ometepe Island. We took an hour and a half bus-ride to the ferry. We had gorgeous views of the two volcanoes that the island is comprised of, La Concepion and Maderas. We spent the hour-long ferry ride on the top deck. It was very hot and sunny. Everybody was tanning, and the majority of us got very burnt. As we stepped of the ferry, there was a kid holding up a sign reading, “Welcome Ross School.” We got in our three vans dropped our stuff of at the hotel, which was located right on the beach, changed into bathing suits and headed to lunch. After we headed over to a lagoon with mineral water directly from the earth. It wasn’t quite what we expected, because it was man-made and filled with algae. Then we got back into our vans and headed to a tiny museum. We had a quick tour and saw petro glyphs with spirals that symbolized eternity, and urns that symbolized fertility. We vetoed the plan to go to a petro glyph museum about an hour away, because of the heat and the very bumpy roads. We returned to the hotel, Charco Verde, which means green lagoon. We had some free time and most of us chose to swim in Lake Nicaragua. The sand is very different from the Hamptons; it was black, volcanic, and very fine. We then went to dinner at the hotel with the waves splashing in the distance. The power went out, so we had our first session of journal sharing on the beach with flashlights. Journal sharing consists of the teachers and students sitting in a circle and each sharing an experience from the last couple days. Bosco also made a speech as did Mr. Faloon about how lucky we were to have had Bosco as our tour-guide because that day was his last day. We were all upset and each one of us thanked him personally. That night it was windy, stormy, and it was also raining even though it was the dry season.

-Rose and Isabel