Aaron Hodges's Blog, page 2

Hitchhiking Ometepe

Some days you just decide you’re going to have an adventure. And I have to admit, there have certainly been a few more rough and tumble days since Jon rejoined me on my adventure. Having two of us means we can take a few more risks, which leads to some interesting occurrences to say the least. We’ve certainly royally screwed up on at least a handful of occasions in the last month. But I’ll get to those in later posts.

For now, I’ll tell you about our adventure on Ometepe Island, which somewhat miraculously ended up okay!

Ometepe is an island in Lake Niaragua, formed from two volcanoes (as you can see above!). The views from all over the island are rather spectactular, but when we got there we kind of struggled to find things to do. The island is actually pretty massive, and you definitely need a vehicle to get anywhere outside the ‘main’ city (which consists of two streets).

At first we decided we would try out kayaking, only to be told that left from a completely different city, and that we would have to take an expensive taxi to get there. Right about this moment we saw a chicken bus that was about to leave the city though. We both just looked at each other, and then Jon just said. “Let’s get lost.”

So we jumped on the chicken bus to… god only knew where. But at least we were doing something!

Off we went around the first of the big volcanoes, with some sort of hope that we might get to the beach between them. The bus, as per usual, got very crowded, but there were a couple of other foreigners for once. From them we learned the bus was headed for the second largest city on the island (not the kayaking one), which was pretty much directly opposite where we’d been across the volcano. So we enjoyed the views of the volcano for about forty minutes, and then jumped off at the intersection to the bus.

Along with two german guys with machetes… Because they needed them for some race? I dunno, its Nicaragua.

Anyway, the guys were heading for the beach too, so we started walking the four km down the road to the beach, trying to hitchhike as we went. Eventually we were lucky enough for a hotel van to pick us up (it even had airconditioning), which got us to the beach without any problems.

The views were pretty impressive, I have to admit. Although you could really only see the far volcano properly (the trees hid the other one). The water wasn’t exactly clear though, so that was a little disappointing. But I do believe it could have been due to the volcanic ash the highly active volcanoes around the lake tend to deposit every few years, rather than pollution. We were certainly far enough away from any large cities.

After about an hour there, and plenty of discussion, we decided to try and head up to Ojo de Agua, some beautiful freshwater springs we’d heard about. The other option was some Petroglifos down the other end of the island, but we’re not that cultured

Islets of Granada

You know how you sometimes have those days where you do nothing, and then you have those days when you go out for lunch and end up on a boat in the middle of a hundred islands on the tenth largest lake in the world?

This was one of those more adventurous days.

The worst part of those days is we weren’t really prepared for the adventure we were getting ourselves into. Surely we should have at least had two full water bottles!

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here. We started by heading down the street and grabbing some fried chicken and chips for lunch. Healthy I know! But at least it was only $2.

 

Then we headed off to check out the central park, take a few photos of the cathedral, a few churches, and so on. You know, standard affair when you’re travelling through Latin America.

Okay, photos done, we decided to head down to the lake a see what that was like. Que pretty decent thirty minute walk in the boiling sun. Whoops! At least it was all downhill, and it wasn’t like there was an easier way to do this (okay actually we were offered a boat tour from the square for $25 for two that included transport)….

When we reached the lake it wasn’t exactly what you’d call overwhelming. Like so many places here in Nicaragua, there was a lot of trash and pollution that were definitely ruining the poor lake. But it was nice enough. But that was when another boat tour salesman approached us.

After a bit of harassment and bartering, we finally decided to go for it at $8 each for an hour. Only problem was the boat was right on the other side of the town – about a twenty minute BIKE RIDE away… (oh this guy had a bike).

So we started walking, not really knowing the above details due to our salesmans lake of english. After five minutes, low and behold our captain shows up on another bike! Yay, two bikes, four people… They both proceed to give us their bikes, and then… the captain jumps on the back of mine. Well at least we get a free bike tour as well, right?

Arg, turns out biking with someone on the back for twenty minutes on a crappy bike is actually kind of hard! Didn’t help when Jon started coasting off the back of me by grabbing the captains hand either (Grrrr). My legs were kind of burning by the time we got there.

And then we were on the boat and off to see the islands! At an increeeeedibly slow pace. Put put put. It was seriously ridiculous. But the islands were nice enough, alot of nice jungle and trees and houses. A few cranes, and a tiny little island hat even had monkeys! That was pretty sweet, especially when the captain managed to get one to come right up to the boat. Sadly we had no food though, so the monkeys decided to stay in their tree (darn it).

When we finally got back to the shore, the captain seemed totally uninterested in collecting our money. We probably could have actually walked off for nothing, but nice people we are we paid him. And were then told we had to walk all the way back. Yayyyy.

Fortunately Jon managed to con a hotel driver to give us a ride back to the entrance where we’d started off, which was lucky because it was ALOT further than we’d thought.

After that it was just a hop, skip and a starving stomach filled by a hotdog back to our hostel.

Not too bad a day, all up. I think I’d recommend it, although it may have been worth paying the extra money at the hostel based on what some of our friends experienced.

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Climbing to the Top

Sorry for the long gaps, turns out travel is getting busy – even when you’re not doing anything particularly exciting. Still, my friend Jon and I have still managed to get a few interesting things on the books in Nicaragua. Like a few days ago, we managed to climb a fairly small hill beside the little town of Matagalpa.

Just a little hill o.O

As you can see, the view from the top wasn’t too bad either. Thankfully Matagalpa was a bit further up into the mountains than most places in Nicaragua, so the temperatures weren’t tooooo bad – I’m talking high 20s rather than 30s! (celcius that is).

That was the marker at the top of the hill – also pretty cool. Anyway, after spending 30 minutes up there cooling off and recovering, we took the more jungle path down. And it sure got pretty rough compared to the road we followed up. I was definitely starting to wonder whether we were even heading the right way halfway down – right about the time we had to clamber down half a dozen boulders.

Jon didn’t handle it nearly as well as me

One other thing I forgot to mention. The water in the whole town had been turned off the night before for ‘maintenance’. So we hadn’t had a shower in a day, and there was no prospect of having another one until the next day. So you might say we were getting a little bit smelly… Fortunately my kiwi senses were tingling (or for those scientists among you, my Fluvial Geomorphologist skills told me), and I guessed there was a stream further down in the valley. It was extremely dry though, so I wasn’t too sure there’d actually be any water in it… But there was! Only I tiny bit, but just enough to have a little bath

Fantasy Lovers Book Giveaway

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Well? What are you waiting for? Click here to enter the giveaway.

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Becoming A Rescue Diver

You know its going to be an interesting couple of days when the first thing your instructor does is running screaming off the dock and into the water. Thus began my rescue diver course.

That first day was a long one, with us spending about four hours in the water off the end of the dock. As I’ve already mentioned, it began with my rescuing the two instructors in more basic ‘drowning situations.’ As in, I was extremely tempted to drown them by the third time they decided they’d jump off the dock and start screaming…

After that performance (my instructor Carole was great, but boy was her ‘drugged up diver impression just the worst’) we finally suited up to practice some of the diving related rescue skills. This involved everything from simple out of air situations (they turned my air off…) to rescuing unresponsive or panicking divers underwater or on the surface. All very interesting stuff, when its just at 2m deep.

The next day, our open water dives were a whole different story…

For starters, it was an hours boat ride to the dive site. During which time, our dive instructors made it clear we (at least there were two of us students this time) would be diving with two very drugged up dive buddies… As in, by the time we reached the dive site, they had managed to climb on the roof of the ship, swing off the sides while moving, crawl into a little hole and refuse to come out, swing knives around, go into full blown panic about sharks in the water, set up their BCDs just wroooong, and so on.

And then we had to get in the water with them…

Once in the water, I quickly discovered my ‘divebuddy/instructor’ had managed to turn their tank off AGAIN when he ran out of air about 5m down. After resurfacing and dealing with that, down we went once more.

Our dive buddies then proceeded to make the half hour dive… interesting, to say the least. We started with panicked divers, who then proceeded to drop their weight belts, lose their masks and fins, undo each others tanks, get tangled in their own reel of string, attempt to swim into caves, literally swimming around in circles, and try to steal our regulators. Needless to say I haven’t gone through air that quickly since my own Open Water course…

Finally we ended the dive with another out of air situation. That was actually a relief after all that!

The second dive was far simpler, we just had to track down a ‘lost diver’ and then perform an underwater rescue of a unresponsive diver. And on the surface get them back to the boat. No problem, at least they kept their mouths shut this time

Volcano Boarding in Nicaragua

Well, as promised I ended up going volcano boarding a few days after my bout of food poisoning, because why wouldn’t I?

What is volcano boarding you ask?

 

Yeah, its pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Its riding a thin piece of wood down the extremely steep gravel slope of a volcano. Completely logical Monday morning activity, right? Just as crazy as pulling yourself out of bed to go sit in an office all day I reckon

Sick in Paradise

Arg. The title says it all, doesn’t it? Sick in the paradise of Nicaragua. Worse of all? From food poisoning – for the first time ever. Yay… And from a hamburger at a hostel of all places…

NOWHERE IS SAFE!

(Especially not the killer waves…)

Anyway, I’ve been sick for three days, but I am alive. And my friend Jon showed up just in time to witness me spending the night throwing up so… at least company right? Of course, he’s now getting sick with a cold or something, so yeah[image error]

I think I’m finally getting better now though, so hopefully tomorrow will at last be time for Volcano Boarding!

 

Because nothing say being better than hiking up a mountain just to throw yourself off, right?

In other news, I had a eureka moment last night for the perfect title of the next book – Firestorm. Sadly, its already taken… So back to the drawing board

Massage from a Blind Guy

Not the most exciting post I know, but I don’t have much else to update you on today. Oh, other than I am now up to Chapter 6 of Book 2, and have written a brief outline of the whole book! I mean I had a draft outline before from the first time I ‘wrote’ the series (it was baaaaad), but now I’ve finally read through that terrible manuscript and taken out the best parts to keep for book 2[image error]

I’m leaning more towards Fire Mage by the way, what do you think?

Anyway, the massage from a blind guy. The reason I needed a massage? Well, apparently when you combine a 17 hour day traveling from Utila, Honduras to Leon, Nicaragua, with a good bit of dehydration the next day, you end up with a day long headache that just won’t go away. Which pretty much meant yesterday was a complete bust. Today I was feeling significantly better, but there was still a niggling threat of a headache in the tight muscles of my neck.

Low and behold, next door there is a blind guy giving massages.

And he was pretty damn good too! I’m feeling much better now.

The end

My First News Story!

So today I was lucky enough to be featured on the second page the Bay Weekender in my home town of Whakatane. On the second page no less. Feeling incredibly honoured!

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First Aid Qualified (Again)

I’m finding this blog is a great way to warm up my writing skills each day (in case anyone was wondering why I bother ;)), and some of you might be excited to learn I’ve uped my daily word count to 1500 words per day. So hopefully I might even finish the first draft in two months! That’d put me well on track for a June release[image error]

Anyway, its lunchtime already here. This morning I managed to complete the practical parts of my first aid course, so I am once again first aid qualified. I think this is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve completed the course haha. When I was younger I worked as a Residential Assistant for a University Hall (Grafton Hall in Auckland), and we needed a first aid certificate for the job. And it was certainly needed! During the two years I worked there I dealt with broken bones, serious gashes (blood everywhere!), blackout drunk people, people running through glass doors (see blood everywhere…), people I wish had been blackout drunk (seriously, stuff coming out of both ends), and a heart attack. Not to mention all the non-first aid injuries that were just as serious. Boy to my fellow RA’s and I have some stories… I definitely had more first hand experience than the teacher of the course