 Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios  Around the World We had a full day of planning and traveling today which can be pretty tiring but we still got to see a lot of the countryside of Nicaragua. We started off our day with a little sleeping in and a nice breakfast at our hotel. We pretty much got the same breakfast as yesterday which was the Breakfast Americano (eggs, bacon and potatoes) but once we find something we like, we tend to stick with it. Plus, we are still trying to play it safe after having both of us get sick. We made good use of our free internet in researching places to stay on the Isla Ometepe and we used our Skype intenet phone to call a couple of hotels and made one reservation and then ended up cancelling becuase we decided $45 was too expensive :) Comparatively it is a lot of money for the island... so we decided to try other options.
We climbed up 2 flights of the boat to sit on the top level, where we settled in for the 1 hr 15 min ferry ride to the island. We met a couple of guys from Boston and since we were still a little undecided on where we wanted to stay, decided we would stay where they were staying, the Finca Magdelena. We found 2 others going there as well and split a mini-bus ride with all of them which ended up being only $5pp even though it was about an hour and half ride. The top half of the island has nicer brick paved roads but the bottom half has only dirt which has been washed out and made for pretty slow going. We arrived the Finca and found the only rooms left were dorm style and all 6 of us would be staying in one room with another girl who was already there. The beds are cot style but instead of a matress, there's only a tarp with a sheet on the bottom and one for the top. Can't complain much though, as it only cost us $2.50pp per night!! This is our first "roughing" it night !!
Tomorrow we will go on a hike up the Volcano Maderas, where we heard there is a lake inside the crater where people can swim (not sure if we will want to do that or not...) but it should be an adventure none the less.
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It was a big debate whether of not we should try to catch the ferry from Granada directly to the island or to take a bus/taxi/boat combination instead. The ferry seemed easier but we kept hearing different times of departure varying from 12pm to 4pm and then heard various travel times of 4-6 hours on the boat. Since we were going to have to have our full packs with us the whole time and possibly be waiting for many hours, we decided to take the bus instead. This entailed walking about 10 blocks (I should mention here it was very hot and sunny today in Granada) to the bus parking lot. The "chicken" bus, a retired US school bus, cost 22 Cordobas or about $1.25 each, and we had to put our packs on the top of the bus but we tried to secure them as much as possible with our locks. After we got on the bus we had to wait about 20 minutes while they were calling out for more people "rivas, rivas" (the town we were going to), after which the bus driver threatened to leave a couple times and more people came running to get on. We finally got on our way and the ride was pretty pleasant for the most part, even though we did have to stop many times for various people to get on and off, and the bus was fully packed with people standing. About half way through, we stopped at a pit stop where people came on the bus and were trying to sell anything from tacos, bread, and toothpaste to the people riding the bus and people were buying it!
We arrived in Rivas and hooked up with 2 other travelers who also needed to take a cab to San Jorge, the town on the banks of the lake where we needed to catch a ferry. Because of that it only cost 40 Cordobas ($2.50) and got us to the boat docks very quickly. 
The scenery on the island has been so beautiful and most of the land is covered in unique looking flowers, lots of banana trees, and other tropical crops. This place definitely seems to be an unfound paradise and we are so happy to have discovered it. The Finca Magdalena is a working co-op farm where they have beautiful gardens and grow many crops including coffee and bananas. Some people choose to live here long term and can work on the farm in exchange for room and board. We enjoyed a $2.50 meal of chicken, rice, and beans and a few cervezas to finish off the night with our new found friends. 
