So here is the story that made me decide to start this blog, read and enjoy one of my most random stories – here we go:
Once upon a time, when I was still in Austria, I had to book an exit ticket for Costa Rica in order to be able to even enter the country. When it comes to travel, I don’t like commiting to a plan far in advance, so at that point I had no clue when I would want to leave Costa Rica nor where I would be going. I checked some options (and rankings about safety in different Central American countries lol) and ended up booking a bus to Nicaragua. Three months after I would enter Costa Rica, I would have to leave anyways plus the ticket was cheap, so in case I would decide to go somewhere else, I wouldn’t loose a lot of money.
Anyways, fast forward 3 weeks in Costa Rica, 6 weeks in Panama and another 2 weeks in Costa Rica and it was time for me to get on that bus to Nicaragua. I booked the ticket to Granada, so all I had to do was book a hostel there for a couple nights to give me some time to figure out where to go next. After spending a couple days in Granada, my pretty spontaneous plan continued and led me to Ometepe. Ometepe is actually a pretty interesting place as it is an island that consists of two volcanoes located on a huge lake. Sounds kinda random but it is definitely a place I did not want to miss while in Nicaragua.
Ok enough background information, here is the story that I was going to tell: So as soon as I arrived on the island I thought it would be beautiful and a super cool activity to go horseback riding. As most places were closed due to the Easter holidays in that week it took a couple days until I could finally book my tour.
I had two routes to choose from: either a ride along the beach OR up a volcano. I have always dreamt of riding along the beach one day, honestly since I was a child, BUT these days I was crazy about volcanos so as soon as I heard volcano I jumped and was sold for that tour. 30$ for a private 3 hour tour including a guide seemed pretty good and I was really excited. A couple hours later my guide came to pick me up.
And this is where the adventure begins:
The tour started on a dirt road, between banana fields and forests – very chill, very nice. This was going to be a really nice activity, just sitting on a horse seeing some volcano views, just like I imagined!
Until… the path began to get a bit steeper, rockier and featuring lots of little tripping traps. Shelly, my horse for the day, actually tripped a couple times so I was just sitting there hoping not to fall. As the path continued to get more and more tricky, I gave Shelly some “space” and just trusted her to know where she is going and hoped that this would minimize the risk of me falling (lol?).
So far so good, but I was a little scared as I’m not really experienced and the path was like a hike but for horses. Anyways around 45 min into the tour the guide (whose name I actually don’t remember lol) asked me if I wanted to go further up – and I said “Si, por qué no?” cause it wasn’t even halfway through the booked time. Well little did I know where we were about to go.
We went through a little gate that lead to… uhm… jungle? Forest? I don’t know what category it would fall in but all I could see was plants growing into each other and no path whatsoever. Shelly and I stopped and waited for the guide to lead the way, as I most definitely couldn’t see where we were supposed to go. He must know the way, right? So we continued, straight through the bushes and the further we went – the crazier it got. Riding literally THROUGH the bushes – full of thorns and branches directly in front of my head. At some point I even had to do some limbo on a horse aka laying down on the horse’s back in order not to get knocked out by the next branch in front of me.
And in this moment I remembered how I thought “This is gonna be soo nice!!” before the tour started – Ha Ha no one told me this was going to be a JUNGLE EXPERIENCE? But this is Nicaragua, what else was I expecting? I mean it was nice, kinda, but definitely not in the way I imagined.
You might think okay okay she’s exaggerating, so as a little visual representation of how overgrown it was up there – please look at this picture that I took when my guide took HIS MACHETE to cut out a way for us.
I couldn’t believe what I got myself into, without knowing I would get myself into it? But at this point there was no going back so we continued to make a path through the woods.
At some point he told me that we would be walking from here to see the view. I thought ok GOOD cause I trust my own legs more than the horse’s legs when it comes to hiking. And while walking after him, in the middle of the jungle-like wilderness, in the middle of nowhere on a volcano in Nicaragua, I couldn’t help but think that this activity could’ve actually gone very wrong, considering the location, the fact that I was the only person on the tour and the fact that that guy had a machete right there, buuut sometimes you just gotta trust people right?
Anways on the left you can see the promised view. I mean it was cool yes, but I am not sure if it was worth all that horse-climbing-through-the-bushes kind of thing.
It was at this point when I realized that my legs were full of scratches from all the plants and thorns along the way. And I thought horseback-riding would be chill little afternoon activity. Ha Ha.
Whenever doing tricky hikes, or tricky paths on a scooter or as of now also tricky paths on a horse – I am usually thinking going uphill is hard – but going downhill can be even harder and in this case also scarier. Honestly I was not looking forward to going all the way back down. Going downhill on a horse is kinda scary to me anyways, but going downhill on horse on a tricky path with rocks and roots and branches in my face and fighting against all kinds of plants – yeah that was tricky.
But I have to say it turned out to be a pretty chill ride down (apart from the fact that a huge bull double the size of my horse was blocking our way at some point but ok).
To conclude this story, it wasn’t a very talkative afternoon as my Spanish failed me once more, it could’ve also gone very wrong and I enjoyed it a little less than I thought I would. BUT alright I made it back home without any mayor incidents and only took away a bunch of random scratches looking like I was attacked by who knows what. (And funfact: Those scratches on my legs and arms actually were visible until 2 months later cause they didn’t tan that fast and so I was left with a bunch of white lines to show and tell stories even 4 countries later)
And I have no clue how or why I end up in such random situations sometimes but okayyy I got a new story to tell and in that case also the final inspiration to start sharing my random stories on a blog.
Hope you enjoyed this first post and stay tuned for more!