Ometepe Island: The Nicaragua Stop I Immediately Fell in Love With

When a friend sends you a message asking if you want to backpack all eight countries of Central America by land in three weeks, there is really only one correct answer.

YES.

Nicaragua was country #53 in my dream of one day visiting every country in the world, and it was the third country of this trip after Panama and Costa Rica. Ometepe Island was our first stop in Nicaragua, and I swear I knew almost immediately that I loved this place.

Panama had been mixed for me. Panama City didn’t impress me that much, while Bocas del Toro was cool but didn’t quite live up to what I had imagined. Costa Rica? Definitely not for me, and by the time we crossed the border into Nicaragua, I was more than happy to leave.

Ometepe Island was completely different. This was the kind of place where, if I had been traveling alone with nowhere I needed to be next, I probably would have accidentally stayed for weeks.

Arriving on Ometepe Island

The second we got off the ferry, I was happy.

Right outside the port, we found motorbikes for rent at a really cheap price for 24 hours, and I immediately knew I was about to get the kind of island experience I absolutely love and usually miss when I travel alone because I cannot drive a scooter or motorbike myself.

My friend rented the bike, and somehow I climbed on behind him with my two backpacks, a tote bag hanging off the side and, for some reason, his backpack as well. I basically had nowhere to hold onto and was just hoping my introduction to Ometepe wasn’t going to be me falling off the back of a motorbike five minutes after arriving.

Very organized backpacking as usual.

Staying at Cocos Hostel

We stayed at Cocos Hostel, where we paid just $12 total for a private room.

If you are new to this blog, you should probably know that almost nothing was booked during this Central America trip. My friend and I were showing up somewhere new almost every day and figuring out where we were sleeping once we got there.

Our budget was around €20 a day each, so the plan was always to find somewhere cheap and keep moving. We went a little over budget in Ometepe because of the motorbike rental and because of my food choices. I’m perfectly capable of eating the local meat, rice and beans, but eventually I need pizza or something different before I start losing my mind.

Still, $12 for our own private room was an amazing deal. That was only $6 each!

We were far too excited to explore to sit around the hostel, so we dropped our bags, changed into beach clothes, got back on the bike and went looking for our first beach.

And this was basically when Ometepe completely won me over.

→ Check Prices for Cocos Hostel here

Exploring Ometepe Island by Bike

Black sand. Warm water. An active volcano in the background that we could actually hear roaring.

I swear, if Ometepe Island is not somewhere on your bucket list, I don’t know what you are waiting for because even writing this years later is making me want to go back.

Being the passenger princess on a motorbike while exploring an island is apparently one of my happiest places. Everywhere we went, Ometepe just felt ridiculously cool.

It felt local. We barely saw other tourists. We were just riding around the island, stopping wherever looked interesting and looking for beaches.

And this is my kind of paradise. Not some completely deserted island with nothing happening, but an island full of local life, kind people, beautiful beaches and TWO volcanoes sitting in the middle of it.

Magic.

Unfortunately, the next morning I decided to ruin this peaceful island experience by going to see a waterfall.

The Waterfall Hike That Nearly Destroyed Me

We left the hostel early because we wanted to explore the other side of the island. We had heard about a waterfall and decided we had to go.

I had never seen a waterfall before and I was SO excited.

This was before I understood one very important thing about waterfalls: they are often annoyingly located somewhere that requires hiking.

To reach this one, you could either walk all the way up from the bottom or pay to take the motorbike part of the way. Obviously, we took the bike.

The road quickly became so steep and difficult that our little bike didn’t have enough power to carry both of us. Several times I had to jump off so my friend could get the bike farther up while I walked behind him, then I would get back on whenever the road became manageable again.

At this point I was already starting to suspect this was not going to be the nice little walk to a waterfall I had imagined.

Eventually we reached the parking area, left the bike and found out the waterfall was still around an hour away on foot.

Fantastic.

Apparently I Thought Hiking Meant a Paved Path

For some reason, as someone who had NEVER hiked in her life, I had imagined we were going for some kind of pretty paved walk through nature.

I did not imagine that I was about to hike through an actual jungle.

That realization turned into drama very quickly.

Not only had I never hiked before and was absolutely not someone who enjoyed walking uphill for an hour, but this jungle had howler monkeys living in it. And if you have never heard a howler monkey before, they make one of the most terrifying noises imaginable when you cannot actually see where they are.

I was convinced some giant monkey was going to jump out of the trees and attack me at any moment.

Then my brain remembered that jungles also contain insects. And snakes. And every other animal I do not want to meet.

What I thought was going to be a nice little waterfall adventure suddenly felt suspiciously similar to my Costa Rica experience: me voluntarily entering nature and then remembering that I absolutely do not want to be in the animals’ house.

I was already struggling with the uphill hike when my anxiety started getting worse. The howler monkeys kept roaring somewhere in the trees around us, and because I could hear them but couldn’t see them, my imagination was having a fantastic time.

My friend kept trying to distract me and make fun of me while we walked. Meanwhile I was crying, trying to keep going and attempting to control a level of anxiety that was getting harder and harder to manage.

And Then My Friend Disappeared

At some point, I realized I couldn’t see my friend anymore.

At first I assumed he had just continued ahead because he was tired of walking at my ridiculously slow pace. But then the path started becoming harder to follow and there was still no sign of him.

I started shouting his name.

Nothing.

Obviously my first thought was that he was hiding somewhere to prank me because that would absolutely be something he would do.

Except he wasn’t.

Eventually I reached a point where the trail split into two. One path seemed to keep going farther up into even denser jungle, and suddenly I had absolutely no clue which way he had gone.

That was where my anxiety completely won.

I was screaming his name, crying and struggling to breathe while standing alone in the middle of the Nicaraguan jungle. Eventually it became pretty obvious that he had continued toward the waterfall without me, and now I had to decide what the hell I was going to do.

One option was to take the tiny path going deeper into the jungle without knowing whether he had actually gone that way.

The other was to turn around and try to remember the route back down by myself.

The parking area was about 2 km away.

And because apparently I had prepared perfectly for this experience, I was wearing Birkenstock sandals.

No hiking shoes. No gear. Nothing remotely useful.

I had dressed for the beach and somehow ended up alone in the Nicaraguan jungle having to figure out how to get myself out.

My Solo Escape From the Jungle

I was too scared to choose the wrong path and accidentally send myself even deeper into the jungle, so I turned around.

The only thing I wanted at that point was to get out.

And yes, if you’re reading this thinking, Jesus Christ, this woman is dramatic, you’re probably right.

But I had never hiked before. I had never been in a jungle before. I am terrified of practically every animal and insect in existence. The howler monkeys were screaming somewhere around me. I was alone. I was anxious. And in my head I had somehow become a contestant on a survival TV show.

So I walked the roughly 2 km back down while crying, trying to calm my breathing and making a very deliberate decision that if I heard any suspicious noises, I was NOT turning around to investigate.

Whatever lived there could stay there.

Eventually I made it out of the jungle and could finally breathe again.

For approximately five minutes.

Of Course There Was Then a Man With a Giant Knife

I sat down near our motorbike to wait for my friend.

Then a man appeared.

He sat down nearby.

And then he pulled out one of those huge knives people use for cutting vegetation in forests.

NOPE.

Maybe he was a completely harmless man taking a break. Very possible.

But as a woman who had already traveled alone through more than 50 countries, I had absolutely no interest in sticking around to find out.

I was alone, in the middle of nowhere, at the entrance to a jungle, with a man I didn’t know holding a giant blade.

Time to leave.

So instead of waiting there, I started walking the rest of the way down toward the bottom.

At least this section was an actual road instead of jungle, so I had graduated from crying to simply walking downhill while aggressively cursing the entire situation because I was TIRED.

Eventually my friend appeared again and found me waiting around the little security building farther down.

I immediately asked him why the hell he had left me alone in the jungle.

His very calm response?

“You left me. I went to the waterfall.”

Fun times.

Needless to say, if anyone invites me to hike somewhere to see a waterfall now, I ain’t going!

Back to the Ometepe I Actually Loved

After our wonderful waterfall adventure, we continued exploring the island for a while and managed to squeeze in some more beach time before heading back toward the hostel.

And because apparently the morning had not been chaotic enough, when we checked out I realized I had lost the room key.

Of course I had.

I had to pay another $5 for the lost key and officially decided that perhaps I should no longer be responsible for room keys or other important objects because I lose absolutely everything.

Trying to Leave Ometepe Island

The plan after Ometepe was to continue to Granada that same day.

That did not happen.

We rushed back to the port hoping to get a ferry to Rivas, only to discover that we couldn’t get tickets for the ferry we wanted. We ended up having to wait another two or three hours for the next available one, which completely messed up our timing.

Eventually we made it back to Rivas, but not far enough to reach Granada.

So instead, we ended up spending the night there.

And that was the end of our ridiculously short time on Ometepe Island.

Yes, there was a waterfall hike that traumatized me enough to put me off hiking for the foreseeable future. Yes, I cried in a jungle. Yes, I lost the hostel key.

But none of that changed how much I loved Ometepe.

If anything, the fact that I can look back at all of that chaos and STILL say I would go back tomorrow probably tells you everything you need to know.

Next time, though?

I’m staying longer.

And nobody is taking me anywhere near that damn waterfall.

Read My Nicaragua Guides

Costa Rica to Nicaragua: Journey to My Country #53/197

Disclosure: Some posts on this blog contain affiliate links. If you make a booking through one of my links, I may earn a small comission - at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping me keep my dream alive!