Ometepe

Two volcanoes rise from the fresh water of Lake Nicaragua, joined by a low, narrow isthmus into a single island shaped like an hourglass. The name Ometepe comes from the Nawat words for "two" and "mountain". To the northwest stands Concepción, an active volcano with an unusually regular cone, 1,610 metres high above a base about 16 km across. To the southeast is Maderas, 1,394 metres high, considered extinct or dormant, with a lagoon in its crater and its slopes covered in rainforest and coffee and tobacco plantations. Ometepe is the largest island in the lake: about 31 km long, 5 to 10 km wide and 276 square kilometres in area.

The two cones are geologically young, both believed to have formed in the Holocene. Concepción woke in December 1880 after a long quiet spell and erupted again in 1883, 1889, 1902, 1907 and 1924, and it has had smaller outbursts in recent decades. A local farmer named Casimiro Murillo first reported the crater lake on Maderas in 1930. Volcanic ash has made the island's soil so fertile that it can be farmed year after year without lying fallow, and plantains are the main crop. In 2022 the International Union of Geological Sciences named Ometepe one of its first 100 geological heritage sites, as a textbook case of volcanoes spreading and interacting with the sedimentary basin of the lake.

People have lived on Ometepe for a very long time, possibly since around 2000 BC. Its strongest mark on the island is carved in stone. A volunteer survey between 1995 and 1999 covered part of the Maderas half and recorded 73 archaeological sites, with almost 1,700 petroglyph panels carved on about 1,400 boulders. Spirals are everywhere in the carvings, and a pair of linked spirals is often read as a picture of the island itself. Stylised turtles and human figures with round faces are also common. Basalt statues carved by the Chorotega and Nicarao peoples survive as well. In the colonial period, pirates sailed up the San Juan River from the Caribbean and raided the island, and its people moved higher up the volcanoes for safety. The two main villages are Moyogalpa, the island's main port on the northwest coast, and Altagracia on the northeast side. Ometepe is said to keep more religious and folk festivals than anywhere else in Nicaragua.

Getting there

Ometepe lies in Lake Nicaragua, in the Rivas Department. The city of Rivas is about 23 km away. Most ferries and smaller boats cross from the port of San Jorge, near Rivas, to Moyogalpa; some go to San José del Sur. Ometepe Airport (OMT), opened in 2014, has domestic flights. The nearest international airport is Augusto C. Sandino International Airport (MGA) in Managua, about 93 km away in a straight line.