Colors so different here!

Craig and amy on the island of ometepe, 5,000 miles away from home. so quick,we got here! our plane touched down in Managua, Nicaragua 6 hours ago. within minutes we were in a world where buildings are in warm orange, warm red, intense aqua, kelly green, sometimes all at once. Buses are painted the same colors too, school buses serving general transport use. actually so are ferries!
The landscape is dominated by volcanic peaks and fresh lakes, but there is lots of cattle country and fruit and banana/plantains also. The country is poor, but everyone dresses as clean and pressed as they can, ad the young girls are sometimes wearing knee high boots even though it is 86 degrees fahrenheit. look cute though! '

We came over on a ferry, leaving just when we got to the lake, not able to take the "Che Guevara" which was the car ferry leaving in half hour. Our own ferry was full of locals and also local travelers from around the world, cute young things in cutoffs. Far far across the lake was the two peaked island of Ometepe which when it got closer was beautiful. the closer higher peak was drier and the coast is green. we almost imagined we were coming in to Old Lahaina from the south, trying to decide if we wanted to stay in Ho`okipa or Kihei, but everything in miniature!

Tomorrow, we will wind our way around some of the island highlights to an old plantation, where we can drink local coffee and hike to waterfalls. But now we are in a very nice town, maybe 10 blocks of local fish eateries, a few hotels, a few shops, where graceful people carry bags of groceries on their heads and the local buildings have those caribbean balconies and also open gardens just like the warm caribbean air needs. A trade wind of sorts is blowing down from the uplands and local music favorites, everything from mexican ranchero to jawaiian caribbean to romantic nicaraguan songs to whatever the rest of the world hears, are blaring from six radios at once.

Soon we will figure out how to upload pictures to give a better idea of this scenery. meanwhile we are licking our fingers and licking our chops having consumed a mojito,a rum smoothieand two freshly grilled fish with cabbage salad. VERY tasty. accosted by various friendly tour guides who are solving our problem of not many buses running sundays and needing to get to the other side of the island. though small, it still takes several hours to get over there and we want to be there before the heat of the day.