オメテペ島 パート1 – モヨガルパでの第一歩！🇳🇮

オメテペ島 パート1 – モヨガルパでの第一歩！🇳🇮

Good morning, and welcome to my latest stop here in Nicaragua. I am in the island of Omotepe, more specifically, Moyogalpa here, the town on the island. And this is sort of our first of three stops here on the island over the next number of days. I arrived here last night after my wonderful few days at Laguna de Apollo. And we are here to check out everything that Omotepe has to offer. It’s been on my list of places to visit for quite some time. And I’m really excited to be here and to see this part of Nicaragua. If you haven’t heard of Omotepe, it is a dual volcano island that sits in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua is one of the 20 largest freshwater lakes in the world. And this sort of sits not quite in the middle, but it was about 40 minutes from the mainland on the ferry. So I’ll talk a little bit more about how to. Get here all the particulars of that stuff. One of the things I’ve decided to do while I’m here is I’m going to rent a scooter to get around the island and explore it a bit on my own. The last time I was on a scooter was over 20 years ago, so I talked to a rental place here who has some good prices, quality. scooters and even offers some practice lessons if you want to do that first, which I will be. So let’s head up the main street here a little bit. I’ll show you a little bit of the city of Moyogalpa and then we will continue on from here. So the name of the island, Omotepe originates from two Nahuatl words, Ome which is the word for two, and Tepetl, which is the name for a mountain. So, two mountains, which makes sense considering that’s literally what this island is. It has been inhabited for thousands of years. There was quite a bit of archaeological work done here in the last hundred years or so, and they have found all kinds of historical artifacts and rock carvings as well. some 70 or 80 different sites across the island. They found all kinds of petroglyphs and other things here on the island. So as I said, I’m here in Moyogalpa, which is the largest town on the island, and it’s generally the starting point for a lot of people when they come to Omotepe. The The ferry comes into town here. Just basically at the bottom of this road right where I started is the ferry terminal. Ferries run here about. Well I think there’s there’s two different types. So there’s a larger car ferry which travels over about every two to three hours and then there’s also smaller launcher boats which come across every hour. I came over on the bigger ferry boat yesterday simply because the time lined up. I got to the ferry terminal on the mainland about. I don’t know, about 45 minutes before it was scheduled to depart, so that was easy enough to to catch the ferry. You basically have to go to the town of Rivas on a bus or however you’re getting there. So once you get to Rivas, you take however you choose to get down to the port in San Jorge, which is only a few kilometres down the road. I decided to take a tricycle taxi, bicycle powered taxi yesterday, which was a lot of fun. And but there’s no shortage of people when you get off the bus in in Rivas looking to get you down to the port. So you have lots of options. So just a quick explanation of exactly how I got here from Laguna de Apollo yesterday. I got a hired taxi from. The lagoon, the Alvaro, the caretaker at the house I was staying at, he was able to call and arrange a friend of his to come and get me, which was fantastic. That taxi took me to Masaya, which is sort of the first town near the lagoon. That was, I think, a $10 or so US taxi ride. So unless you have your own vehicle, really getting in and out ofThe lagoon by taxi is is really probably your only option. Still absolutely worth it for the place that I was at there. That was just incredible. And so once you get to Masaya, you get to the bus station and you basically just wait there and eventually a bus to Rivas will pull up. The bus to Rivas arrives, it was only a 10 or 15 minute wait I think, so it was pretty good. And it was 100 Cordoba to go from Masaya all the way down to Rivas. It’s about an hour and a half, hour, 40 minutes or so. Sort of an older style Greyhound bus. Super comfortable, great ride, no problems at all. And then when you get to Rivas, you get off the bus and you will be surrounded immediately by lots of people trying to get you down to the port to get to the ferry. Cause that’s actually in San Jorge, which is sort of the next town, although they’re kind of blend together, they’re pretty close. So anyway, there was lots of options. There was taxis, there was tuk tuks, there was bicycle, trike, taxis, those types of things. And the first taxi guy to come up to me said he wanted $10 to go down to the port, which would have been like a two-minute drive. And I was like, no, that’s too much. So I ended up going with a tricycle taxi, which was kind of fun. It was a longer ride. It was, you know, it was a good 15 minutes at least. That guy really worked his butt off to get me down to the port with my heavy bags and me. So you know, I was quite generous when I tipped him and stuff afterwards too. But it was a fun ride. It was a fun experience sitting open air in a chariot of sorts and and then once you get to the port, there are two tickets you have to purchase. There’s one at the front gate for tourists or foreign tourists. I think it is only and that was 37 Cordoba, which works out to about $1.00 US. And that’s basically just like a port entry access fee. And then from there, you go into the main area, you pick up your ticket for the ferry. The ticket to the ferry was 50 Cordova, which is like $1.25, $1.40 US, something like that. And that’s it. And that, like I said, was about 40 minutes on the larger ferry. I believe the launcher boats are a bit cheaper. They are maybe 40 Cordova. But they are much smaller and you know, the water was pretty rough yesterday. So I think being on the bigger boat was probably a good decision. I don’t get seasick, but it’s just nice to not have to hang on for dear life, so to speak. But anyway, it was good. It was good overall and it was a good experience, very smooth transition to go from Laguna de Apollo to here. Once you arrive here, of course, you arrive, like I said, here in Moyogalpa on Omotepe Island, and you can kind of go from here. There are numerous ways to get around the island. There are chicken buses that actually encircle the island. I think you may have to switch up at certain spots, like there’s not one that runs continuously around the whole island or anything. Like you may have to go to one town and then hop on the next one. But those buses would be super cheap, probably. 20 or 30 Cordoba, something like that per town or per piece of the trip. There are taxis, of course, there are tuk-tuks to get around. One of the things I learned about Olmotepi before I got here was that it’s actually quite large. It’s it’s over an hour to go from one end of the island to the other by vehicle. So when you get here, don’t think for a second, oh, I can just hike it to the next. town or the next village or whatever, it is too far to walk. Um So one of the most popular options to do here on the island if you’re traveling and visiting is to rent a scooter. So I haven’t been on a scooter for 20 plus years. The last time I was on one I believe was Thailand, I think, and that would have been 2004 roughly. So we’re talking 20, 21 years. So I thought that it might be kind of interesting to do that while here. It’s a good place to do it because the ring Rd. that encircles the island is in very good shape. It’s all fully paved, nice flat Rd. There’s not a ton of large vehicles here. It’s mostly motorbikes, mopeds, tuk tuks, those kinds of things. And I thought it’d be a good opportunity to sort of learn, relearn and get comfortable on one again and. You know, have a shot at going around the island on my own, which I think would be a really good time. So that is my plan for while I’m here is I did some research. There is no shortage of places to rent scooters here on the island. Everywhere you go, when you walk down the road, everyone’s, you know, I’ve got scooters for rent, I’ve got motorcycles for rent, I’ve got quads, ATV quads for rent. Some people have cars for rent also. So there’s many, many different options here across the island. Generally speaking, most of the scooters are the automatic, you know, just the gas and the brake, and that’s it. And they will usually run you between $14 or $15 per day, and then it gets a little bit cheaper if you do it for a longer term. My plan was to rent one for the week that I will be here, and I spoke with a rental group just down the road here, and they said it would be $13 per day for a week, which is not too bad. That’s like $91 for seven days. And then there’s a deposit of $70 or your passport while you have the scooter. I will just, you know, pay the $70 deposit, to be honest, ‘cause that’s just easier for me. And I like making sure I always keep my passport on my person. So. So that’s my plan from here. I have two more stops that I’m going to make around the island here while in Omotepe. I plan on going to Balgue, which is on the other half of the island over by the 2nd volcano, and then finally wrap up in the town of Merida, which is also on the far side of the island. So it’s about 40 to 45 minutes from here to Balguay and I’d be heading there tomorrow. I’m only here in Loyo Galba for two nights and which is the usual. I think a lot of people just kind of come here to get their footing, get themselves straightened away and then head out to explore the rest of the island. So that’s my plan too while I’m here. So from here I’m just going to take a little walk up the rest of the road here. This is a nice little walking street that they have set up. The cross, you can see the crossovers obviously are accessible with vehicles, but this main drag up the main road here is just pedestrian only. And we’ll take a little walk up just to have a look. There’s not a lot to see in Muyogalpa in terms of like history or museums or those types of things. It is very much a tourist town with lots of hostels. cheap accommodations, good restaurants, and rentals. One of the things I do plan on showcasing here, as always, is where I’m staying in Muyogalpa. I’m going to show that to you today on this video. It is officially the best deal that I have found in my 16 months on the road now. And I want to give them a special shout out here because, yeah, I mean, it’s a great deal if you’re looking for, you know, you’re looking for true budget accommodations. with a private bedroom, with a private bathroom, this is definitely the place you’re going to want to look at. Having said all that, and now talked for far too long, let’s head up the road here and have a little look around, and then go down and check out our scooter. They’ve obviously had some wind here. It’s been windy this morning, so see all this carpet kicked up at the moment, but This is just coming up to approaching the sort of center square area here in the town. Obviously they’ve got the ever-famous, ever-present city sign for Moyogalpa. It’s just over here, sort of behind, there’s a playground here. The school is very near here as well. Let’s take a walk up and have a look at the church, which is closed, but take a walk up and have a look. This is the ring Rd. here that circles the island. Sort of a figure 8, but you can see it’s both directions around the whole island and is in very good shape. So if you are coming here and wanting to get around, the main road is quite good. Somewhere that little park that’s sort of here in the square. It’s a really pretty little town. And of course they’ve got the big church here at the end of the road. So let’s head back down and check out the, we’re getting a little sprinkle of rain here all of a sudden. And we’ll head down and check out the rental situation here for a scooter for the week. Well, we are good to go. I have my new trusty steed for the next week in a Yamaha moped. And yeah, just out here on the main road. This is sort of back towards Moyogalopa where I am. This is just kind of heading around the island a little bit. I’m just going for a little short cruise with my helmet on here just to kind of get used to the bike. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on one, but so far so good. We’re just going to head this way a little bit further, take a look around and then head back. I’m going to see if I can find a place to hook this camera up on the bike just to get you a little bit of an action shot, but yeah, pretty easy and good to go. I will say that I got my bike from Willy’s Rental here on the island of Omotepe. and they were really good. Um The rental cost for a week was $13 a day which is 91 bucks and then the deposit damage deposit was $70. I paid all that in cash in local Cordoba and after we paid that they actually took me up to the baseball field here in town to go through a little test run just on the ball field so I can get comfortable with things which was really nice and anyway no problems everything’s goodGreat little bike, even got a little bit of a storage in here. Tomorrow I’m going to my next stop. I’ll be using this bike carrying my gear and stuff so I’ll be taking my time with it but I don’t anticipate any any major issues. So I thought I would give you a quick room review here of where I stayed in Moyogalpa. This was, as I mentioned earlier, the cheapest room I have stayed in in my 16 months on the road and for $6 USIt’s worked out great. So it’s got a nice double-sized bed, couple pillows, no air conditioning but there’s a good sized fan here which helps keep it cool all night. And then in through here is a private bathroom. So there is a nice walk-in shower, cold water only, but it’s warm enough here that you don’t really need a hot shower. And then of course the sink and toilets and all the usual stuff. And yeah, it’s a great little family owned spot here. There is only, I think, five or six units in the place available and it was on Booking.com. So I got it because they are in a seasonal discount right now and then I also get my Genius discount on top of that. So I think regularly it’s like $12 a night, $13 a night, but I got it for six after the discounts and Even at the regular price, this place is great. They even let me store the scooter inside for tonight before I head out in the morning to my next destination. And yeah, everyone here is very friendly, very helpful and it’s been really good. So if you’re in Moyogalapa and you’re looking for a nice, low priced, affordable budget place to stay, I’ll put the information here on the screen. But Casa Kaimana is definitely a place to consider.

Stunning Ometepe Island Adventures begin here! 🇳🇮

In this first part of my 3-part Ometepe series, I start in Moyogalpa, the island’s main port town. We’ll cover how to get here from Laguna de Apoyo, explore Moyogalpa’s streets, get our scooter rental sorted with Willy’s Rentals, and review the cheapest place I’ve stayed in 16 months of full-time travel — Casa Caimana!

Whether you’re planning your trip to Ometepe or just curious about this volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua, this video is a perfect introduction.

Special thanks to my first partner, Mult.dev which is the site I used to create the animated travel map in this video. They’re great, really affordable, and their customer service is top-notch. I’ve been using them off and on for over a year before I decided to be an ambassador for them.
If you’re interested, check them out with my affiliate link here: https://mult.dev?affid=wanderbeard

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WanderBeard is the vagabond name of Ian Daye, former IT specialist for over 25 years who’s decided to go wander the world and share his adventures here. I’ve been traveling full-time across the Americas for over a year, sharing my experiences from diverse cultures, people, and histories along the way.

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