When our family is traveling, we try to do our best to minimize our negative impacts on the places where we visit. Choosing to bring our own reusable water bottles is helpful in keeping down the plastic waste we create, and we make an effort to save and recycle what we can. The cans and glass bottles from other kinds of drinks we consume need to go somewhere. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that plastic has a way of being recycled here on Ometepe (that we could find – we will keep looking!), but we did find a spot that accepts recycling of aluminum cans and glass. There is a new (since last year 2024 when we were here the first time) supermarket called “Ocean Market” just before the Y intersection that splits from Santa Cruz to either Balgue or El Peru (and other places). Here there are two big blue bins in the parking lot that are clearly marked, one for aluminum cans and one for glass.
Driving through Santa Domingo while spending a morning looking at accommodation to rent for the next part of our time on the island, we saw another set of bins for waste near the covered bus stop, across from the ATM there. One marked for organic waste, and one for inorganic waste. We put our plastic bottles in the inorganic bin, which indicated plastics can be put in there.
Stopping just down the road from this spot, we noticed a group of capuchin monkeys and watched them for a time.
Continuing on, our accommodation hunting led us to explore another area of the island (Urbaite) and we enjoyed the views and the other interesting sights we pass on the roads.
For the afternoon I had a virtual appointment, so Garrett had lined up a local fisherman who had agreed to take him fishing, and brought Z along with him, from the shore near San Ramon. There were various mishaps with wind blowing sandals and sunglasses into the lake, which the kind fisherman jumped in for, and then when the lid for the worm container blew into the lake, Z jumped in to save that. Unfortunately, Garrett’s travel fishing rod broke not too long into the fishing adventure, but he did manage to catch one little fish. It sounded like, while it may have not been the ideal fishing day, it was a fun experience over all.