Frog in the Toilet, Scorpion under the Sink

I definitely didn't sleep as well as I did last night. It was hotter and so uncomfortable. I was up at 1:30, again at 3:30, and it seems that somewhere around 5:30 I was up for good, dozing here and there until I finally got up at 7:30. I went downstairs to have some breakfast. Sometime in the night I had woken up starving so by morning I was ravenous. We headed out, after some cereal, to get money from the ATM, knowing Ometepe, our next stop, would have limited options. Afterwards, we got ready and packed up all of our stuff to go to catch the chicken bus. Since we knew it would be a long day, and we were already hot, we took a taxi. The driver was talking in spanish, and the other passengers were laughing, but Jan could not quite understand what he was saying. He kept making the motion of cutting his neck...which was quite worrisome. Once the other passengers had gotten out, he finally made it clear that he could drive us to San Jorge, where we were going on the chicken bus, for the low price of $20 U.S. each! We politely declined and he let us off at the bus station. We had talked about going for "lunch", though it was 10 am when we left the hostel. But, because we would have to order food, wait for it, and then still get to the bus station for 11:30. We decided to skip it and head directly to the bus. We arrived at 10:30 and a good thing too as the bus was filling up fast and we were told it was actually leaving at 11! We settled in and waited on the chicken bus, basically a yellow school bus, which thankfully had racks above our heads to hold our luggage so it didn't have to go on the roof. We finally left at 11:30, so I guess the schedule was right after all. Most of the ride, I was falling asleep as I was so tired from my lack of zzzz's the night before. We finally arrived just after 1pm and were accosted by taxi drivers and men who have bicycles with seats in front. The man was saying that the ferry was leaving at 1:30 and the bicycles would take too long. We were so tired and overwhelmed that we agreed to take the taxi, at $5 U.S. each. To be fair, it was quite a drive, about 15 minutes, so would have taken forever on the front of a bicycle. But, when we arrived, we found that the ferry was in fact leaving at...duh duh duh...2:30, like we thought. We were tired, hungry, and frustrated at being taken advantage of. Not cool. While we waited, we ate our second peanut butter sandwich (we had eaten the first on the bus ride) and it wasn't too long before we were loading the ferry. Jan and I decided to sit on the top level of the boat as the second level was indoors with no air flow and gross uphostered seating, which gives me the heebie jeebies. Most of the way there, we chatted with an American woman who was travelling through Nicuragua with 15 members of her family. She was very kind and it helped take our mind of the rolling of the boat and the hot sun. One poor girl turned white and rushed to the front of the boat (dress fling in the wind revealing her bum!), returning only when we docked, and a little girl travelling with her parents threw up in a plastic bag.The waves were very choppy.

When we did dock, we found 3 other travellers heading in our direction and shared a taxi. We got him down to $5 each, which is a good price on the island, and didn't worry too much about how 5 bacpackers and their backpacks were going to fit in the vehicle, we assumed would be a car. Luckily, he was driving a big van with plenty of space for all of us, and more! He was friendly and gave us some ifnormation on the sights we were passing. The island of Ometepe was beautiful. We were dropped off in front of our hotel sign, but with no actual hotel in sight.

We had to walk about 350 meters down the road until we found it. It was cute, with beautiful flower gardens, tons of butterflies, and a gorgeous view of the volcano. 

While our room was quite open with nature, there were, at least, screens over all the openings. We were starved after our long day, so had dinner right away, and then decided to go down the road to get wifi as the hotel's wasn't working. We found wifi at a hostel at the top of the hill and even though we both ordered a drink, we had to pay C$30 for it...we needed to book our next stops accommodation and wanted to connect with the outside world so we bit the bullet. We were back in our room, showering before 8:30, exhausted. Jan fell asleep after reading for only a few minutes and I was working on my last blog post. Jan got up to get herself ready for bed and was in the bathroom when I heard her yelling. "Kirsty get in HERE!" When I got in there, she was yelling about a frog being in the toilet.

The ninja on the wall!!!

She said she was pretty sure it swam up the drain and it was working like a MOFO not to get flushed down. I hate frogs. They are gross and creepy and jump without notice. This was way worse than there being a spider or something. I've also had nightmares of things living in the toilet so the combination was just too much and I was freaking out. I told Jan it was all on her to get the thing out, and I left to sit on my bed and wait for news of the removal of the frog. All of a sudden, she was yelling again. The frog had jumped out of the toilet and onto the wall...like a ninja! I was just about ready to pass out from fear and couldn't handle the fact that we now had a frog that could climb walls, jumping around our bathroom. We had to get him out. We figured we could use a plastic bag and maybe the garbage can to trap him and take him outside, but while we were working out our plan this sucker jumped behind the sink where we couldn't get him (it had to be a boy). I left again, ready to have a full on panic attack. Jan pulled the bottom of the sink cover away. I came in with my flashlight and we still couldn't find the frog! He had disappeared! Jan pushed the sink back together but now the sink was leaking! A huge puddle was forming in the middle of our bathroom! Pullling out the sink again, we both leaned down to have a peek. What we found lurking under the basin was the corpse of a scorpion trapped in a spider's web. Awesome. Now, the scorpion may have been dead, but the fact that it had been there at all was slightly disturbing! O.M.G. How was I supposed to sleep now. Getting the sink back together and finding it not leaking, Jan and I crawled into bed. Apparently, Jan hates Ometepe...I can't really blame her! This ordeal had taken a toll and we were both laying snug in our sleep sack, wondering what creature would be waking us up next!