Beth's adventures: NPH Ometepe pictures

Here's the ferry coming to take us to Ometepe the first night!

And here's Ometepe as the sun sets. The volcano on the left is Concepcion (the active one). NPH Casa Santiago (where I am) is slightly to the right of the center of Concepcion (I think). The other volcano is Maderas, and is not active.

This was the front door to the volunteer house a few weeks ago. We had some key issues when we first arrived. It's not possible to open Nicaraguan doors from the outside without a key. So we had several people who left their rooms without a key, and then the door blew it shut. However, it's not too difficult to open with a spoon. (If you really want to lock your door, you have to turn the key to shut the bolt.) However, this time with the front door, one of the volunteers had messed around with this little knob on the inside without knowing what it did. Then we shut the door and went off somewhere. When we got back, we couldn't open the door even with the key. It turns out that the knob moves something to put pressure on the latch so that it won't open even WITH the key. (I know, that seems completely senseless: why would you want to make your door impossible to open? But you can also use the know to lock the latch OPEN so that if the wind blows your door shut, it won't latch.) Anyway, so our door was shut, no one was inside, and the key would not open the door. So one of the volunteers who had been here for a while went and got a maintenance guy and he took a huge knife and a hammer and chopped a hole in our door, reached in, turned the little knob, and opened it with the key. Magic! But it was pretty funny watching him chop open the door. He'd put the knife in, then use the hammer on the end to pound it in deeper, then move it a little farther over, etc. So our door had a hole for maybe two days, and then the carpinters fixed it and now it's normal again. But now we know the function of the little knobs on the door latches!