Ometepe, Nicaragua

(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome back to "Eternally Evolving." Sorry it's been an extra few days since the last episode, but I was having some weird recording issues with like my software, my microphone, but I think I've got it figured out now. It's just taken a little bit of extra time, but I knew that I wanted to record this episode today because I've been meaning to record it for a while. I know I said this was gonna be the episode before the last one, but I am glad of the order like that I made the episodes in because I think it's just gonna give a little bit more context to what I'm about to talk about. But like I said in the episode with Sierra, which if you haven't listened to that one ghost into it, she's a really great friend of mine, and an incredible mentor in the travel community. But like I said in that episode, I'm gonna be talking about omatepe. And I feel like a lot of people haven't heard of omatepe. Unless you've been to Nicaragua or know somebody that has, you probably haven't heard of omatepe. I certainly never had. And even the first time I went to Nicaragua back in September, I don't know why. I just like never really even thought about going to omatepe. So many people told me they were going and so many of my friends told me that I had to go. I absolutely had to go as the best place ever. But I just felt this like resistance. I don't know, maybe I didn't do enough research into it. Maybe there was just something stopping me, but everything happens for a reason because I will explain throughout this entire podcast episode, but omatepe is probably the most deeply spiritual place I've ever experienced in my life. I don't think I will have the proper words to describe the way that omatepe makes me feel and the things that happen to me there. But everything happens the way it's supposed to be and omatepe is my biggest example of that. And if I had gone in September when I was in Nicaragua the first time, I mean, who knows what would have happened. But I wouldn't change the experience I had this time going for anything in the world. It was one of the most profound travel experiences I've ever had. And I actually ended up going to omatepe twice. And both times just absolutely changed my life and changed my perspective on things. And I'm gonna get into that. But I do have to split up my two experiences in omatepe because they were different and they were, like one was solo traveling and the other was traveling with my friend Sierra that I'd met in Bigfoot in Nicaragua. And so technically I guess I was still solo traveling but like we were traveling together at that point. And we traveled together for a couple of weeks which was amazing. But we had both started out solo and just started traveling together, which fun fact. As much as I've solo traveled, this was the first time ever I met someone along my trip and traveled with them for a few weeks. It was crazy. I'm just, I'm so glad that I was able to experience that and that she was the first person I did that with because she's incredible. But yeah, so I'm gonna split my experiences up in omatepe. But they're both connected, they're both extremely connected. So let me set the scene for you. I knew I wanted to go to omatepe but I was supposed to go with my friend who was traveling with me in Nicaragua for the first two weeks that I was there. She ended up having to go home early and I was like kind of freaking out about solo traveling there. I don't know why. And it goes back to what I said before of like in September where I didn't really feel a particular need to go. Like I had heard so many people say good things about it but it wasn't really just like that high on my list I think. I don't know. But the overall point that I'm trying to make is that I felt a resistance to going to this island. And for those of you who don't know, I feel like I should have explained this before. Omatepe is a volcanic island in the middle of the biggest lake in Central America. So it's not in an ocean but is basically an island made up of these two volcanoes called Maderas and Concepción. And it's one of the most sacred places in Nicaragua, especially to the indigenous people in Nicaragua and there's a lot of history there. And it's also very, very not developed. So the entire island doesn't even have a road that goes all the way around it. There's no like big resorts, or at least you can't see any big resorts. Like they're all pretty like even if they're nice resorts they're not like built up. It's very untouched in a lot of ways. Even more so than other parts of Nicaragua it's one of those like if you know you know places. I mean most people get around with motorbikes. It's a lot of family-owned businesses. Well let me just put it this way. It's one of those places that you're either going to love it or hate it. And if you hate it it's because energetically the island is probably rejecting you. So I did meet a lot of like you know party, frat boy adjacent types who hated it. They're like it was so boring. There was nothing to do there. Oh my god, I got so bored. That's probably because you were getting literally ejected by the island's energy. And I swear this is a place that has an energy and a power to it in a way that I can't explain. And I've said that about a lot of places but Omatepe is the epitome of that to me. That is the most energetically powerful place I've ever been. But yeah, so it's a volcanic island. Absolutely beautiful. The lake is beautiful. Anyways, what I was saying. So even though I knew it was a beautiful place and I knew that everyone was telling me I would like it I still just had these big resistances to going there. And that resistance was made even more so when I thought I was going to be solo traveling there when I like found out my friend had to leave and I was like, should I even still go? Like there was just something really like mentally blocking me and really, really making me anxious about going there. And I can't explain why because usually when you get that feeling, it's for a reason that's like you should listen to because something bad will happen. Or there's a reason you're not supposed to go there. That's one type of gut feeling. But it wasn't exactly that. It was more so like a resistance in my mind because I think like the parts of me that were very unhealed at the time at the time that I first went to Omatepe. They were resisting the type of shift that Omatepe was gonna bring me. Simply because like I knew it was gonna be powerful. Like something in me knew it was going to change me. And I don't think I was ready for that at the time. Or like my brain was trying to force me to not be ready for that at the time because I didn't want to accept what I knew that it would mean. Does that make sense? It probably doesn't. But like the resistance was not because I shouldn't be there. The resistance was because it was such a powerful place that like it seemed easier to not go there. It seemed like it would just be the easy way out to go. Wherever my other friends were going, I think they were going to San Juan del Sur and just go sit on the beach and go party some more. Like that's where my brain was trying to take the easy way out instead of doing the work and like having to face that energy. But anyways. So the story of how I got there the first time was I went to the tree house party in Grenada which if you've been to Nicaragua, the tree house party is this massive rave every Friday in the tree house in like outside of Grenada. It was my second time going. I ended up going three times. We were the big group of my friends from Bigfoot Hostel and just so other people would met along the way and we had an Airbnb. So we woke up after that party. I mean we barely slept. I maybe slept for like an hour and a half, maybe two hours. But we had to wake up pretty early. Anyways, just to get out of the Airbnb. And just at the scene like we were in my Nicaraguan friend's car and he was driving us. It was like me, him, another American girl from Bigfoot and then these three Swiss girls and we were all hungover kind of fighting for our lives. We left Grenada together and they were all going down to San Juan del Sur. And I was just thinking like maybe I should just go with them. But I knew I wanted to go to Ome Tepe. I had had my heart set on it. I knew I was going to do it. So that morning when we woke up, obviously I was like not mentally the strongest but I was literally like crying, like freaking out. Like why am I doing this? Am I going to be like, what is wrong? What is the issue? I just was so unsure that I should go there. But you know, my friend dropped me off at the ferry for Ome Tepe and I got on and when I got on the ferry I immediately met some other people that I knew from Bigfoot. Girls that we had done this massive overnight hike with. And they were so nice. They immediately invited me to come like hang out with them. Once you get to the island on the ferry, you have to take a car like an hour away to get to where most of the people like stay most of like the backpackers stay. And so I didn't know how I was going to do that because I can't just pay for that all by myself and get like one by myself. So we all just split one and ended up being $5 per person which was nothing. So that immediately worked out. That was my first sign. That was the first synchronicity that happened to me on this island. The first of so many. And now I need to brace myself for when I tell this next part because I cry every time I tell this story and I'm not going to cry on the podcast. I'm not at that level, okay? But this is one of the most incredible things that's ever happened to me in my life. I get to my hostel on Ome Tepe. I was staying at Reindance, which is a great hostel, by the way, I absolutely loved it. It was really comfy too, anyways. And I was just mentally exhausted. And I wanted to eat dinner, go to bed 'cause I hadn't eaten anything all day. So I walk to the nearest little restaurant to my hostel. Literally it's a five minute walk away. It's already dark. I'm walking by myself and I just want to eat food and then leave. And I was really unsure about this place too. It was called The Locals Collective. Remember that name 'cause I'm going to talk about it a lot more in the rest of this podcast episode. But I don't know. Again, I was just nervous, I was a mess. So I go there and I just get a plate. It's like literally folding tables and local women serving food that they've made. And there was a group of other people my age. I think they were from Germany. They weren't talking to me, but it's communal style. So you're all sitting at a table together. It's like one long folding table. And I was just eating my food in silence and I was about to finish my food. And I noticed this big group of Americans that were all coming up hugging each other. And they were a much older than me. I think they were probably 30 something to even 60 something. Like they were much older. A lot of them were couples. And I was just like, oh, that's weird. There's a lot of Americans here 'cause there's just not a lot of Americans in the Garagua in general, but they all knew each other. It was clear that some of them had just gotten in. They had just arrived in the Garagua that day. They're all hugging each other. They all sit down and they all eat. And I just start talking to them. They were sitting next to me. And the main couple actually starts talking to me. They were so nice. They were actually from outside of Philadelphia and they lived in Florida. But they'd been living in Garagua for the last few years. They actually owned this restaurant that we were at, the local's collective. And it was this whole backstory that I'll explain in a little bit. They also own a property and Airbnb that they're getting started, all of these things. And then they told me that all the other Americans were their friends from the US that had just arrived today. And they were going to be exploring the islands, helping them with some stuff, whatever. And I start talking to the woman across from me and she's from Louisiana. She's from Shreveport, which is like, if you guys have listened to my New Orleans podcast episode, my whole family's from New Orleans, I'm Cajun. New Orleans is like, I call it my soul city. It's my soulmate in a place. But it's literally me. Like you can't know me without knowing my connection to New Orleans and to Louisiana in general. So we're talking. And for context, this is February. And we're sitting at this folding table in a little like pavilion eating local food on this tiny island in Nicaragua in a very, very small part of an even smaller island in Nicaragua. Like we're in the middle of nowhere. And this woman from Louisiana, it's Mardi Gras season because it's February. She goes to her suitcase and she pulls out an entire Mardi Gras kingcake. Like Mardi Gras is a big holiday in Louisiana. Nobody else in the US celebrates it really. It's a Cajun thing. And not only that, but we eat kingcake for Mardi Gras. There's a ton of different types of kingcake. Everybody's passionate about their own brand. You know the bakeries by name. Like they all have very specific names. It's a big deal. And it's like a local thing. And she pulls out a kingcake. And it's not just a kingcake. It's a Gambino's kingcake. Gambino's is the bakery near my aunt's house where we've gotten every birthday cake, Christmas dessert, kingcake. We've gotten desserts there for my whole life. Gambino's is literally next to my aunt's house. And I'm in Nicaragua in a tiny little place with this woman who I just happened to meet. Eating like something from my childhood that she had happened to bring with her on the plane fresh that day. It was mind blowing. I was literally crying. She was crying. And then the owner, Richelle, she was crying too. It was like the biggest synchronicity. And then I keep talking to them as we're all eating kingcake. And they want help with marketing their place. They want help with taking pictures. They're shutting a website. Everything. That's what I do. I do social media. So I was only there for a few days at time because I was still working at Bigfoot. But I got this couple's number. And I promised that when I came back to Omatepe, I would get in touch with them. And so that's the first story that you need to know. One of the most mind blowing synchronicities and the biggest sign in the whole world that I was meant to be on that island. I had the craziest random connection with this woman out of nowhere. And it was just like the biggest slap in the face from the universe. You are meant to be here. You did the right thing. So for the rest of the weekend that I was there, I basically just explored the part of the island that I could kind of access. So the way that you get around Omatepe is driving motorbike. And at that time, I mean, I've driven motorbikes before I drove them in Croatia and Greece. But when I tried to do it in Thailand the last time, I couldn't do it at all. I was like, maybe I lost it. I don't know. But now I kind of understand that it wasn't my fault. They just, when I was in Thailand, they gave me a bike. That was so big. My feet couldn't touch the ground. It was too heavy. I couldn't even hold it up. So I didn't have the balance anyways. I didn't want to risk renting a motorbike by myself on Omatepe. So the first day there, I just walked around the area I was in. I stayed in the area called Baleway. I feel like that's where most people stay. But there's kind of three main places to hang out in Baleway. There's LPTAL chocolate paradise, which is a beautiful, kind of more upscale hostile slash farm, slash co-working digital nomad style place. And it's amazing. It really is. I didn't stay there, but I hung out there for most of the day. It's got beautiful views of the lake. It's like right on the water. And they've got an amazing cafe with really good food. It's a bit more expensive, but I hear it's really good. The second place is Ray Dance, the host of that I was staying at. That's a little bit more like kind of backpacker revives, hippie, but not too hippie, and definitely like party. Because they have a party once a week, but that's kind of like the real only actual party on the island. It's called Wet Wednesdays. And I actually still never went to Wet Wednesdays. I don't know. Maybe I would have, but I just wasn't trying to party when I was in a motepa. That's just so not at all what I view a motepa as in my mind. So I never went, but Ray Dance is really fun. It's definitely social. And then the other one is El Sopilote, which is also a farm. It's also a hostile, definitely like less of an upscale hostile, but a lot more like camping, one with nature, cacao ceremonies, yoga, everything. I mean, it is your own with nature. They've got people sleeping in hammocks, detends to cabins, to everything imaginable, but it is really beautiful. And they've got a lot of social events too. Like pizza nights, community activities, stuff like that. But it is really, really, really hippie vibes, which I personally love. It's very much like a wellness spiritual community, but not in a way that feels like fake or commercialized in a lot of ways. So I really appreciated that. But I loved hanging out at El Sopilote too. And their food is really good. But yeah, those are the three main places to hang out. So that first day, I just hung out in those main three places. My second day, I had met this girl at my hostel, who was actually a volunteer there. And she had just gotten there. So she wanted to explore the island. And we rented a motorbike together, and she drove it. And we wanted to go to Cascada San Ramon, which is the only waterfall on the island that non-locals are allowed to go to. It's a bit of a hike. It was definitely more of a hike than we were told. Nobody really tells you how much of a hike it is. But we rented the motorbike pretty early, and we took it out to the entrance of the waterfall. Basically, that's the part of the island that isn't paved. So once you get on that non-road part, it's a little bit difficult with the motorbike. And I'm praises to her. She handled it like a champ. I don't know how we didn't have issues with the motorbike more so than we did. But we drove it all the way to the base of the waterfall and started hiking. And we met up with these Italian guys that we met. And it was like this big group of us. We all just hiked up to this waterfall in the jungle. And it was beautiful. This was just the sweetest little waterfall. And I don't even know how to describe it because the way that the water would come down, there were these huge rainbows at the bottom. And you could go stand in the rainbow and let the water just fall down around you. It was incredible. And then you look up, and since you're at the base of the Maderas volcano, the smaller volcano, then it kind of feels like a place where nature moves differently. Like if you look up at the waterfall, the clouds are moving fast, whereas on the rest of the island, the clouds aren't moving fast. Or just the way that it kind of felt, it looked like it wasn't a real place. But you were there in your experiencing. It almost felt like a mirage, but it was amazing. So because it got to the remote, you have to go if you're on a matepe. And then afterwards, we ended the day with the sunset at Playa Mango, which Playa Mango is one of the best little, it's a beach quote unquote, but it's not really like BG 'cause it is a lake, so it's not like so much sand. But it's a cute little bar, and everyone goes there for the sunset. It's a really social vibe. There's usually music, and there's a swing, and you can see the most incredible view of Concepcion volcano, which is the really big one. And the sunsets and all my tepe are just unreal. Some of the best sunsets I've ever seen in my life. So I'm just going through that day really, really quickly because I want to give you like, that's the ideal day on Omatepe for me, those are two of my favorite things, and I will make like a comprehensive list of the actual things to do on Omatepe, but this podcast episode is even focused less on itinerary, more on the feeling, because again, like I'm going to say it a billion times throughout this episode, this place changed my life. So then the second time when I went back to Omatepe, I had been traveling with Sierra, who was on my podcast a few episodes back, and we stayed at the Airbnb property for the people that I had met, like I mentioned earlier. Basically, they had this entire property that they were still kind of like working the kinks out of. They had just finished these two beautiful Airbnb's. One of them was like, it's own house, like this massive, basically apartment, with like kitchen, stuff like that, so you can totally just stay in that one place, and then the other one was more of like a suite under their house, and we tried both of them out, 'cause we were kind of there to work out the kinks with things. First of all, they let us stay for free, which was so incredibly nice, and in exchange, we were like helping them, getting ready like for people to come and pay to stay there, plus we were taking pictures, and getting stuff for their website, so they can build like a website and an Instagram to help promote it, because again, this property is brand new. That's not exactly their area of expertise, but we have a lot of experience in that as we're both content creators. So that's kind of what we were doing there, and between just us staying there and spending every night, like talking to this couple and learning so much about them and their journey, and the work they do on the island, like that was, to me, one of the most amazing parts of going back to Omatepe, and getting to see a different side of the island as well. I can't really talk about everything that we did together on the island. Some of it is something that I'm gonna have to say for later down the line, but I will say this. As I mentioned before, this couple owns that restaurant where I met all of them at. It's called The Locals Collective. If you're on Omatepe, you have to go there. It's open like Wednesday through Sunday, and the food is really good and like the cheapest on the island. But their goal with that was to help locals on the island start their own businesses. Basically, Omatepe is really remote compared to a lot of places in Nicaragua still, and there's a lot of issues with rising prices for people on the island, you know, for the entire country overall, but specifically for people on the island, there's like, sometimes a lot less work, a lot less farm work, like people are making such little money for what they're having to pay now. And they wanted to help empower locals, specifically local women to help start their own businesses. So that's kind of where the idea came about because not only are these women getting to start their own, like what could become restaurants, what could become catering services, what could become like a more substantial means of income, but in the bottom part of this, they're going to start helping like local artisans, jewelers, people who make crafts, like people who make organic products, anything on the island, which there's so many things like that, because of just kind of the energy of the island. And in the bottom of it, they're creating like these stalls for other local businesses to start. Like, again, people who would never be able to get the proper permits, the proper whatever, like official ways of starting their own businesses, they're helping them. And they're doing so much more to help the community, like they really just have this connection with families on the island, with, you know, students, with younger kids, with even little like toddlers, where like they, they personally know these families so well, and I got to meet so many of them and make those connections myself too, that it was like one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had while traveling, the amount of love and time and dedication that they put into that island, and they put into those people that they're so connected to. It's really unlike anything I've ever seen, and I think they came to that island originally as part of their church, which they then separated from, and now they're just pretty much working on their own, and they're just fell in love with the place, like so many people do and decided not to leave, they decided to like put their roots there, and to me that's just so admirable, especially as someone who's like figuring out so much about what I want to do with my life, and like less traditional ways of life. Are they living still a pretty traditional way of life? Yes, but they've completely left the US, they're like choosing themselves, and choosing like exactly where they want to be, in a way that is really refreshing to see from like Americans specifically, where we're kind of always raised with, you have to state, why would you move to another country, much less, Nicaragua, like a quote-unquote, or a rural country? You guys know that I don't use that term, but that is what a lot of Americans would refer to Nicaragua as. So it was just such a learning experience. I learned so much from them every single day, and there are people that I just know I will have a relationship with and stay in contact with for the rest of my life. I hope, honestly, I'm gonna go back to Umatepa, as much as I can whenever I'm back in Nicaragua, and I just know that every time I'm there, I will be talking to them and seeing how everything they're doing is growing and building as they put more time and work into it. So I'm just, it was the most rewarding experience to get to stay there for over a week with Sierra as well, who just made such a connection with them, and she was like, how sitting for them for a month, actually, after I left, like she went back, and they hadn't exchanged as well, where she was able to stay there for a month, and even build a deeper connection with them. So I'm just so happy for her and happy for them too. But when I went back to Umatepa, it was kind of a similar thing, except I was ready for it this time. I was ready for the type of energy that it was gonna bring back, and what I mean by that is it's like, it was like, I would say something, or I would think something, or there'd be a problem in my mind that I wouldn't know how I was gonna solve, and within hours, sometimes even minutes, it would feel like it just got solved for me. It would feel like the island was just answering every single thing, every delay, every roadblock that I thought I had in my mind, it would just solve it for me. It was like, everything once we got there, just started falling into place. And for context, as I was telling you about from the first time I went to Umatepa versus the second time, I was in a very different place. I was like, having this massive shift at the end of my time in Bigfoot, where a lot of things in my life changed really quickly, and I was feeling really good. I was just doing a lot of new things. I was experiencing a lot of new things. I was traveling in a way that I'd never traveled before, as in with people that I'd met there for the first time. I was really just in like a phase of radical acceptance, like thinking whatever is going to happen is going to happen, and there's nothing I can do to control it. And going back to that island with that mindset, I think was just, it just propelled me into accepting everything that the island could have given me, because it was like, I don't know, we were walking on the set of the street, and we needed to figure out a way to get back to the port. And, you know, we'd come across this car, they said they'd take us for $20, which is really expensive for what it is, and we're like, oh, fine, well, I guess I'll just do that. We were about to settle. And then it was like, right as we were gonna just do it, this van comes up, and they immediately stopped, got us in their like $5, perfect. It just answered immediately, where we were like, I don't know how we're gonna get XYZ, and then we just, something would magically happen, and we'd get there. I don't know what I'm gonna do next after this, and then the perfect opportunity would arise. I'm feeling confused about this area of my life, and one way or another, something would happen, and it would be answered for me, or we didn't know how we were gonna explore around the island, because the main way to do it is by motorbike, and she's never driven one. I had driven one, but I wasn't like, necessarily great at it. I was definitely really nervous. And then the motorbike was like such a great example of this because I had had such a mental block in my mind, since the last time I had driven a motorbike, and I just had to kind of go for it. It was kind of like, we can either not see so many things that we wanna see, or I can just really trust that I've got this, and that's the thing about driving a motorbike, too, is you have to basically just not think. The harder you think about it, the more you like try to put that intentional like thought into it, the more you're just gonna mess up and overthink it and like overcorrect. So I just really had to like, shut up, shut down, like close my eyes and do it. Not actually close my eyes, but like just, there were times where I just had to like, put my head down and just let my instincts take over so that I could drive this motorbike, and I did it perfectly. Like everything that I thought I couldn't do when we were on the motorbike or on the island, I would just let go and like trust that I could do it, and I did it. Like all of the things that I knew for, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to drive off that road. There's no way I'm gonna be able to get past that like dirt area where there's no road, even like, I would just do it and it would work out, 'cause I could just lean into it so much, and I just trusted because of how I felt being there. And that was another great thing that we did is like, we rented that motorbike for a whole day, and that was also like the perfect end on my topic because we took it all around the island. We went to this town on the opposite side, and we got fresh watermelon from this beautiful little blue van, and we just sat on the side of the road eating watermelon. And then we took it to a holdagwa, which is like a natural spring, like in the middle of the island. The water's so blue, it's like really cool and refreshing. And I didn't like love how touristy it was because it had recently been built up as kind of like, a tourist spot. As much of a tourist spot as you could imagine on that island, it's still like not that bad. But it had like, you know, little gimmicky places to take pictures or rope swing and stuff. It wasn't that crowded, it wasn't that bad, but it was just a bit more touristy than anything else I'd experienced on Matepe, but it was really beautiful. So like that was such a key part of having like, the best day ever on Matepe. And then we went to play a mangoes for the sunset because that's always how you have to end the day on on Matepe. But yeah, just taking that motorbike around was almost as fun as every single activity that we did with it. Like I felt so empowered and proud of myself driving it, 'cause as a solo female traveler, like once you unlock being able to drive a motorbike wherever you are, it gives you so much freedom and power in the world. And like now I just want to keep doing it because it felt, it made me feel so in control in a way that like obviously you have to release control when you're solo traveling. Like it just made me feel like I had control over what I got to do. My circumstances, everything about it. Like knowing that I had the confidence to do that now by myself makes me feel so much better. My other favorite thing that we did there was, we went to a cacao ceremony at TotoCo EcoLodge. There are lots of cacao ceremonies on the island. This is a place where one cacao is grown very frequently and two, there's a lot of practitioners, people who facilitate cacao ceremonies. But the one that we did in particular was really incredible to me and especially in comparison with the one that I did in Columbia, which I'll talk about when I get to the Tehran the Park episode. But it was my first time doing like a proper cacao ceremony. I had taken ceremonial grade cacao before, but never in ceremony like that. And so we walked all the way up to TotoCo, which don't do that, get a motorbike. I don't know why we did that. It didn't look like that far of a walk, but it was. But TotoCo is like a really nice hotel within my opinion one of the best views on the entire island because their yoga shala has like the most incredible view of conception, the volcano. So that's kind of why I wanted to do it in the first place. But then what we actually got from the cacao ceremony was not at all what I was expecting. It was very lighthearted, whereas the other cacao ceremony that I did was very emotional and deep. But this one was so much more, I think, playful and joyful in a way, like it was a small group and the group really connected well with each other. Half the people had done a lot of things like this. The other half were brand new and had no idea what to do. And they were definitely a little confused. And it was like we all just kind of met each other where we were at. And it was a sunset ceremony with like this beautiful altar. And the cacao was so nice, especially mixed with raw local honey and sea salt from the Pacific Ocean. And the woman who was facilitating it was just such a safe person. She made everybody feel so welcomed. And I talked to her for so long afterwards. She was just such a light. And we met some of like incredible friends that I actually met up with later on in the time that I was traveling. I met up with one of my friends that I met at the cacao ceremony in Teirona for the second cacao ceremony. So we did both of them together. He was fantastic. He was great. But basically with this ceremony, we started with-- everyone ingesting it, seeing their intentions, everything. And then it was a lot of like exercises and connecting with other people in a way that were usually making me feel so uncomfortable. Like we had to sit and look at people in the eyes. And I'm terrible at that. We had to say things that we liked about ourselves. And I'm also terrible about that. It was like just an exercising kind of pushing us to do things that should be relatively normal or easy, but actually feel so uncomfortable in the moment and kind of getting over that discomfort and seeing what happens once we get past it. And then we did all kinds of like dancing and ecstatic dance and just intuitively moving in. I hadn't danced in so long like that without any kind of alcohol. It was also really interesting because both Sierra and I used to do dance. That was such a big part of our lives when we were younger. And now we were getting to explore it as adults as well. And it just felt so freeing. And I think that was one thing that we were talking about a lot. So that was like one of my favorite things that I did, all on a tepe. And the other thing that we did, that was similar to that was a Kundalini yoga class. With a local healer, she was much older. And I mean, that was a different experience in and of itself to be practicing with an older, more experienced healer versus someone who was younger and had only been practicing for a few years. That was also really cool to compare and contrast. And I had also never done proper Kundalini yoga like that, which was a lot more meditative than it was physical in the way that I think of a yoga class to be. But we did that at El Azupalote. They have them pretty frequently actually. And it was an early morning class. We got up, we saw the sunrise. It was beautiful. And then the thing about Kundalini yoga that really forced me to confront things that I wasn't used to confronting was the way that we were moving. Like it was definitely very uncomfortable for me in my body to move in the way that it was requiring. And it wasn't uncomfortable in like a physical pain type of way. It was more so I could feel different things unlocking specifically within my chest and my hips that were kind of really uncomfortable for me. Things that I hadn't unlocked, I think at a very long time. And the teacher could really sense that. And it was just like an amazing form of pushing myself out a form of meditation in a way. Again, I think I've talked about it on here before. I am not the best at meditation. But that sounds like crazy to say because there's no such thing as being good at meditation. But it takes a lot for me to get really deep into a meditative state. And when I was traveling this past time, like the Kakao ceremony I did there, the Kundalini yoga on Omatepe, and then the Kakao ceremony I did in Teirona, those are three of the deepest forms of meditation I've ever experienced in that order. Like the one in Teirona was definitely the deepest I've ever gotten into meditation. And then kind of like going back from there this one then the other Kakao ceremony. So that was really transformative as well. And then to top it all off. My last thing that I'm just gonna say to like, I don't need to convince you how powerful Omatepe is. I don't need to convince you of that. But I am just gonna say this. And just another way that it kind of connected with me overall where I just knew for a 110% fact that this was not even just in my head that this was something that truly was meant for me, that I was meant to be there. For the last two years, yeah, two years. I've had like one word coming from a poem actually. And I would love to post the poem somewhere if you guys are interested. But one word that has always stuck out to me that I've used is kind of like a mantra for my life for the last two years, going through everything I've gone through in the last two years. This one word, duality, the idea of multiple things being true at once, balance between opposing ideas, just this idea of duality. And the woman that I was staying with in Omatepe and the woman who facilitated the Kakao ceremony, both of them explained this symbol of Omatepe. It's a double spiral, which the double spiral has many meanings throughout different cultures and different spiritual practices. But that idea of like the double spiral had always stuck out to me like I've been obsessed with spirals for four years now. But specifically the double spiral has been used as a symbol of Omatepe for centuries. Like years and years and years by the indigenous people by the local community, and as the topographical symbol of Omatepe because of the way that the islands connected by two volcanoes, it's a smaller one and a bigger one creating a double spiral essentially. And the spiral itself symbolizes like obviously the elevation of the volcanoes, which is why it's also the topographical symbol of it. But it's a symbol that's been used like to represent Omatepe for generations. And I was thinking about that double spiral 'cause one of my friends was gonna get something like that tattooed and I looked up the exact meaning of the double spiral as opposed to even the single spiral and the first word that came up was duality. And that just fully sent shivers down my entire body. I just had to stop everything. First of all, in that moment I decided I was getting that tattooed and I did. I got a tattooed on my arm so I see it every single day. But in that moment, it was like every little thing connected, connected, connected, just synced up in my brain at one moment exactly. And I just knew immediately, like, I knew I was meant to be here already. This is just confirmed every single bit of that. So it was like every single time I needed some kind of reassurance, it felt like this place was giving me a pot on the back. Every time I had a question I needed answered, it answered it for me. I have never felt as in sync as I did in this one place. And that's all you're like really meant to feel, you know? That's what you want to feel when you're traveling somewhere. And I've had other places where I felt like that too, but never even to this extent. I don't know. It's a special place for sure, but particularly special to me. And again, some people might love it, some people might hate it, some people might literally feel like nothing when they go there and that's okay. But for the people who are really sensitive to this stuff and in tune to it and like, meeting it almost, it will change your life and it will change your perspective on what is possible to feel while traveling. And that's how I feel about Amatepe. That pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about Amatepe. So again, I'm going to post like a comprehensive guide of like the actual places you should go to all of my recommendations, everything. I'm going to post that on my TikTok and you can have all of that written down there. But yeah, that's about all I have to say for this episode for this incredible place. And next week, I'm going to talk about Columbia. I'm really excited to talk about Columbia. I've been talking about Columbia and non-stop in my everyday life to anyone who will listen and I can't wait to talk about it on here too. So stay tuned for that. And I'm sorry, these episodes are kind of sporadic and taking a long time. It's just chaotic in my life as always. I'm preparing to go to Europe in a few weeks, still have not bought that flight. But we're getting there, we're getting there. So I'm just really trying to figure it out, get everything lined up before I go back out on another trip. So thank you guys so much for listening and always let me know if you have any questions, comments, anything. I'm going to leave all the normal information in the show notes with. I'm also going to put some of the links to my places that I talked about on here too in the show notes too. Just so you can go support them if you're ever in Nicaragua or if you just want to support them in general, follow them on Instagram, anything. The place of my friend, the couple, the couple that I was friends with. If you want to go support them and the amazing work that they do on the island, I'll put that in the show notes as well with also my World Packers discount code. If you want to start doing work exchanges, which I 100% recommend and all my other information as well. But thank you so, so, so much for listening and I will be back with another episode soon. (upbeat music)