Apples to Manzanas: Pacha Mama

Nicaragua part II: Pacha Mama

Next stop on our jont through Central America: Isla de Ometepe. It is a beautiful island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua

The beauty is unfathomable in person!

So there are those moments when you come up with a brilliant idea, it starts out well and then takes a turn towards the unknown and your standing there scratching your head wondering how you got there. Well, not that any of you should be surprised, but our mountain biking excursion was precisely that.

Who is ready to mountain biking?!

We were headed towards a little village called PorVenir. We started out on a paved road, easy as pie, right? Everyone loves a leisure bike ride. But let's be perfectly honest, that road ended sooner than expected. Our bike ride went from leisure to pure mountain biking in a quick 5 minutes.

Volcano Concepcion

Kristin and I enjoying the view of the volcano.

We continued to bike on this ridiculously rocky and windy road. We were all dripping sweat and breathing heavenly, until I hear "Where the hell are we? We need to check a map." Unfortunately the map was of no use to us. But a local, kindly told us we had biked 4km too far..... WHOOPS!!!

Now let me clear this up, it is no ones fault, but I will admit Kristin and I were in front, we passed the sign without even glancing up. However, Jenna noticed the sign, but couldn't fathom how anyone could miss the green and yellow billboard. So she figured it must not be the right place to turn off for PorVenir.

So we turn around in hopes to find the town. As we are biking along, I see a rock painted white with a symbol on it and I was convinced it was the turn off for PorVenir (Jenna once again failed to mention that she had seen the green and yellow billboard for PorVenir and that this white rock was probably NOT the turn off). So we lock our bikes up and head up this path towards what we think is PorVenir. As we get to the top of this quite steep climb, we are greeted by a group of barking dogs and a nice Nicaraguan man trying to calm them down.

We weren't quite sure what we had stumbled upon....

But it turns out, it was a little Tantra community. I am no yoga junkie, but it seemed to be the mecca for those yoga/hippie junkies. Mellow vibe, minimal clothing, beautiful view and a "we are one" family vibe. It was pretty cool. They offered us delicious volcano water (sounded very mysterious, it was just fresh water from the volcano) and let us look around. But not before I had to wash our glasses with volcano ash because it is better for the environment. ;) Gotta love tree huggers.

Kristin and I "glistening" from our bike ride/hike to Tantra heaven.

We even got into the mood. Yoga on a volcano, check yes.

One of the Tantra Yoga rooms.

Seriously amazing!

Tantraville was great, but we were ready to chill out on the beach. So we said good-bye to our Tantra friends and gutted through the last part of our bike ride! Lucky for us it was downhill.

View from the beach, Volcano Maderas.

Kristin and I on the ferry headed back to the mainland. :(

We couldn't be too sad, next we were headed to San Juan del Sur. A cute beach town, located on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. This would be our final stop in Nicaragua.