Virtually the first thing I laid eyes on in Nicaragua was Isla de Ometepe.
Besieged by taxi drivers at the dusty, hectic border, I caught a ride with a college-aged American backpacker and her Australian surfer paramour. They would take me to the surfing colony of San Juan del Sur and their party hostel _ called the Naked Tiger, of course. But I was staying somewhere a little quieter.
We set out on the well-groomed highway, lined by white wind turbines and a dry green landscape, when I looked to my right and saw Ometepe. Ten miles across Lake Nicaragua, a lush, green mountain _ no, a volcano _ rose from the waves. And just to the left of that, an even more dramatic, scarred peak was capped by white clouds, as if it was erupting. These were the volcanoes Maderas and Concepcion, together forming an island.
"Yeah, that's Ometepe," said the surfer in his Aussie hippie drawl. "Whenever I need to get away from the party, I just go to Ometepe, and it's so relaxing."
A double-volcano island in the middle of the world's 19th largest lake? As an enthusiast of strange islands, I was so there _ but first, I would spend a week on the Pacific coast.
When I first received the Facebook invite to join my old friend Gretchen, now a yoga instructor in New York, on her seven-day yoga and surfing retreat near San Juan del Sur, I was skeptical. I knew little about the Central American country, except that when I was in grade school, the U.S. funded a covert war against the ruling Sandinistas there (remember Oliver North?). I had seen social-media photos of people doing yoga poses on tropical beaches, but I never thought I would be one of them. Plus, I'm a restless traveler, so I didn't love paying a package price to be confined to one place for a week with a group of mostly strangers.
Yoga on the beach in a developing country with a bunch of Brooklynites? It sounded like the recent surfing episode of HBO's "Girls."
Then I looked at the map and realized that San Juan del Sur is central to the Pacific coast, Lake Nicaragua and the historic city of Granada, and that I could get there by flying to Costa Rica. Maybe I could make some friends and retreat from the retreat to go on a few adventures.
From the Naked Tiger, I took a taxi a little way up the coast to Casa Maderas Ecolodge, on a rocky road strewn with farm animals and speed bumps. The budget ecolodge _ in a Spanish-style villa built into a hillside with a pool and an outdoor restaurant _ was topped by an open-air yoga pavilion overlooking a valley.
I reconnected with my friend Gretchen and was shown to my room _ clean and inviting, with a hammock on its high porch and a mosquito net hung over the bed like a canopy.
I met some of the other yogis arriving on Saturday _ mostly New York women in their 20s to 40s and one couple, and that evening I was moving through the week's first class, warming my aching joints and thinking, "I will not be able to do this for a week."
It turns out we formed an unpretentious, fun-loving group, and by midweek we all felt like tight friends. Sharing 11 intimate yoga classes and two meals a day _ traditional "Nica" breakfasts of eggs and gallo pinto (beans and rice), plus modern healthy dinners prepared by the Casa's kitchen, and plenty of cheap Nicaraguan Tona lager _ will bring people together. Soon I was gliding into the yoga routine, feeling better than I had in ages, and sinking into my environs.
On Sunday, I signed up for my first surfing class at nearby Playa Maderas, a beauty of a beach that attracts surfers from around the world. Fellow yogi Kelly and I were paired with Reynaldo, a winsome young local guy who led us through the footwork. It turns out that mixing yoga and surfing is not preposterous. The two skills require similar discipline and balance, with the surfer's quick mount resembling yoga "flow": tabletop, upward dog, high lunge and the final standing position, which is a bit like the classic Warrior 2. On the waves, Kelly stood up almost right away.
"Think positive, brother, it's all in your head," Reynaldo told me. After much crashing trial and error, and a second lesson on Wednesday, I could almost get up on my feet _ with one hand on the board _ but it was still invigorating.
