San Roman Waterfall

Whilst staying at the lovely Hacienda Merida, we thought we should probably at least try some of the activities on offer, seeing as there was no chance of us trying any of the 8 hour plus volcano hikes. We decided we would hire mountain bikes, then cycle the half hour ish ride to the Estacion Biologica de Ometepe and climb the 3km to the Cascada San Ramon. As usual this proved to be a little trickier than we imagined.

The cycle was actually quite hard work, as the track was very dusty and all big loose stones. Poor Clairy reminded me that this was the first time she had been on a bike in about 10 years. She did really well though and apart from the rock hard plastic saddles seriously giving our bums grief, we got to the research station where the walk began pretty sharpish.

On the way we passed this bus just chilling out with the driver taking a nap. It was absolutely boiling mind, so I didn't blame him.


Once we had paid the 60 cordoba entrance fee, being thoroughly frazzled and sweaty as hell we had a little break at the restaurant on site and slurped a lovely freshly made pineapple juice. It, as always, was beautiful and set us on our way.

The first kilometer was reasonably ok, as we passed through banana and avocado plantations. Clairy gets extremely excited by the sight of a still growing avocado, so we had to have a little piccy. There were large signs up saying don't touch the fruit sadly though, so we just had a quick grope, but didn't steal any.


'Yeah its frickin boiling, so could you maybe take a picture of me once I'm in the shade!'. There wasn't a whole heap of shade on the first part of the walk, and as usual we had managed to be out in the hottest part of the day.


There were helpful signs painted on various rocks pointing us in the right direction. Unfortunately we came to realise that their distance measurements were pretty arbitary. The first kilometer seemed ok, but various others agreed with us that the the last 2 were probably more like 4 or 5 and the route got super steep.


Eventually we were climbing up large stoney rubble following a steel pipe, with no sign of any water apart from the gentle gushing sounds coming from inside said pipe. It wasn't very attractive and Clair was becoming increasingly doubtful that this 'so called waterfall' was going to be anything to write home about.


But eventually we turned a very steep final corner, and there it was in all its 90ft glory. Bloody beautiful.


The water comes from a volcanic lake above and is totally safe to drink (and splash about in).


Clair was rather boiling in her jeans so came up with this novel turn-up approach.


A vulture flying above. Possibly because it had seen us nearing death on the way up.


A gurt mahoosive dragonfly just hanging around.


The walk back down was an absolute pleasure compared to the one on the way up. Here we are looking only slightly pink, and yes, I am wearing a David 'metrosexual' Beckham style alice band. My hair has got to that thoroughly irritating stuck all over your face length and I had to do something about it.


Oh hi! This bizarre little fella watched us after we'd got back down to the restaurant and ate some lunch. We think he was some kind of black parakeet.


Inside the restaraunt were the most vast home grown avocados. Clair couldn't stop herself.


After lunch we headed back down to the bikes, which amazingly were still there despite us not having any way of locking them up. Having not ridden for quite a bit myself either, we both had that unpleasant sensation of the saddle poking you right where you're quite damn sore already. Clair was really suffering though, so I turned around, and headed back to see what was up. She actually had a very good reason to complain, as she was unaware that she had a totally flat back tire. No wonder she was bloody sore. When I had a closer look, the innertube had been pumped up with a small section actually caught and poking out from the tire rim. It seems she may have ridden all the way over with a flat tire as well poor thing.

In the end she insisted that I make my own way home on my working bike and she would walk her's back so that I didn't have to wait around for her. She's very good like that. I pegged it back, jumped in the shower and popped out to meet her just as she got back to the hostel 20 mins later. We were both totally pooped, but it had been a very enjoyable day.