Novka Cosovic: Ometepe Island. A place of gods, alligators, sacrifice and latent destruction

You can feel and hear the buzzing if you concentrate, like the humming of an old fluorescent light in a blank room. Restless for 11,000 years, the Conception volcano outputs a busy waveform all over Ometepe Island. Volcanic power courses through the land like a wave of voltage. Energy is all around you in the middle of Lake Nicaragua.

4000 years ago, the Nahua people travelled from north to south to find their holy land. Their prophets had told them that somewhere there would be an island formed by two (ome) volcanoes (tepelt) – their new place for sanctuary and peace. Yet, the island was circled by piranhas, large-tooth sawfish, alligators, crocodiles and bull sharks, making the Nahuas vulnerable in the food chain.

The taxi driver takes you down a long narrow dirt road. The vertical view is framed with mango trees and billboards, some written in Mandarin, some in Spanish: Hotel! Coming Soon!

At the end of the dirt road, there is a sand pathway. The Punta Jesús Maria is an extension of the land; a narrow one kilometre strip of black sand that stretches into the dark water. The pathway is so narrow that you are nearly walking on water as you get to the middle of the lake. Half way along you hear the taxi driver and some local construction workers screaming. You quickly turn around; they are screaming at you and at a moving object near the beginning of the trail. It is an alligator. This is how the alligators trap their prey. You are its lunch. Luckily, the taxi driver, once a FSLN soldier, pulls out his gun and points it at the predator. Aware, the alligator slowly crawls back into the lake. But you still see its one-metre-long head lurking in the water as you continue to walk down the path.

You kick the sand and see a pink object in mid-air, catching the sunlight. It is a two-inch spearhead made of jade – an ancient weapon – probably used against the ancestors of that exact same alligator. You kick some more sand because you hope luck is on your side. Instead, you find pieces of black clay with red streaks on them. It reminds you of the same pottery made by the Nahua currently displayed in the Ometepe Museum, once a tobacco factory during the Spanish colonial era.

The trail is full of hidden treasures. When you reach the end of the pathway, you take one last good look because you know this will no longer exist. The trail will disappear after they build the canal, the canal that will cut through the lake, split Nicaragua in half and join the two oceans. The alligator may not survive the construction because it only lives in fresh water.

You make your way back to the island, towards the volcano. As you run, you repeatedly turn your head around and frantically hop for fear of the alligator charging at your ankles.

The taxi driver is anxious.  He greets you, but you wonder where he keeps his gun. As he juggles with three cell phones all simultaneously ringing, you notice that his hands are swollen and powerful. His knuckles are permanently disarticulated and do not align. He drives a Toyota 4 X 4. A decal on his rear window says The Punisher.

On the road, going at 100 miles per hour, the taxi driver shouts against the wind: “See that huge brown stain on the volcano? That was the mark of a mudslide a few months back.” On the other side of the road, there is a clear field – no trees, no shrubs, no homes, no life.

The mudflow was man-made.

Ometepe supplies coffee beans and plantains to Nicaragua and Central America from its rich volcanic soil. Demand for food products is always high, so bigger farmlands and plantations climbed further up the slopes, making it almost impossible for the volcano to support such sizeable platforms. Eventually the land collapsed due to a heavy rainfall; the mudflow killed over 50 people in their sleep. Apart from the ravages of Spanish colonialism, Nicaragua has never seen such destruction of the land as this response to capitalism by the natural forces of Ometepe.

You arrive in Charco Verde. It is a nature reserve for howler monkeys, armadillos and a spectrum of tropical birds and butterflies. It is also regarded as one of the most sacred spots of the whole of Central America. The Nahuas thought they could destroy or at least tame the energy of the volcanoes. They would practice rituals, such as human sacrifice, for the volcano gods. As you walk through the forest, you realise that you walk on the exact same path where victims were once dragged towards Concepción Volcano. The path that you walk was once a death row.

You remember, years ago sitting in front of the television watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon on a Saturday morning. Goofy is stranded on a volcanic island. He thinks that he is in paradise; he sways and sleeps on a hammock all day, with an angry volcano spewing ash in the background. Eventually, the natives capture Goofy, thinking that he is a White God whose purpose is to be sacrificed. To appease their gods, the natives swing Goofy and toss him into the volcano. As he falls in, he still has his goofy smile. You laugh so hard that cereal and milk squirts out of your nose. But you are not laughing now. It is plus 35 degrees Celsius and you have goosebumps. And you wonder why Disney sanctioned Goofy being tossed in the volcano as a human sacrifice.

This, at one time, was Ometepe.  Despite the man-eating alligators and erupting volcanoes, the natives never wanted to leave the island – it was a paradise (and still is). They felt they could only survive by gratifying the volcano’s hunger for their people; the role of the most beautiful women and the strongest men of Ometepe was to produce children for sacrifice.

After walking through the jungle, you arrive at Charco Verde’s lagoon. The water is algae-infested and remarkably green. Legends say that this is the place where gods and sacrificers would pee (Xistletoet in Nahuatl) before making their way to Concepción Volcano.

On the shore, you see tourists practising their yoga poses; Ometepe is also known for yoga retreats. While having dinner or taking a stroll, you will always be bothered by expat yogis and their pamphlets: Partake in daily Naam Yoga in beautiful Ometepe, one of Central America’s finest and majestic landscapes!

You take a step back and look at it all. Nodding, you will say: this is perhaps one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been in all of my life. But how could anyone find serenity with the volcano’s humming noise in the background or the subtle creepiness that crawls behind your neck, or a man-made mudslide that will eat you in seconds or an angry Alligator God who is about to latch onto your ankles and drag you into the depths of Lake Nicaragua?  

Novka Cosovic is an architect with Pulp & Fiber, a Toronto-based brand marketing and advertising agency.