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Before I left, whenever I told people I would be going through Nicaragua, a look somewhere between pity and horror would cross their face. People seemed to have the idea that it was a war-torn smoking wreck of a country.  What everyone remembered was the infamous Contra war which raged throughout the 1980s. Nicaragua had been run autocratically by various members of the Somoza family for more than 40 years, from 1937 to 1979. In that year, after many years of struggle, the people finally succeeded in toppling the regime. A junta was formed to run the country while new institutions were formed, and at first it had both hardline and moderate members. Soon, though, the hardliners, the famous Sandinistas, moved to take total control. As the Sandinistas promoted communist ideals, and were receiving aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union, the US president, Ronald Reagan, decided to intervene in the region. He began funding counter-revolutionary insurgents, known as the Contras, who attacked Nicaraguan territory from bases in Honduras.

In 1984 the US Congress passed a law banning further funding of the Contras, but the Reagan administration carried on covertly. They began selling arms at vastly inflated prices to Iran, using the proceeds to keep the Contra war going. The affair was discovered, and much controversy ensued, but the war in Nicaragua continued.

The Sandinistas had resoundingly won the general elections held in 1984, and under the new constitution elections were required every 6 years. So in 1990 the country went to the polls again, and the Sandinistas were confident of victory. But the people were sick of war, and knew that peace was only likely if the Sandinistas weren’t in power. Violeta Chamorro, one of the moderates on the post-revolution Junta, was elected president.

When we arrived, there had been ten years of democracy and, more or less, peace. In remote mountain areas, factions who wouldn’t put down their weapons still fought sporadically, but where we were going was well away from trouble spots. The Sandinistas were still a major political force, but had not recaptured the presidency. However, a Sandinista had just been elected Mayor of Managua, the capital, and expectations were high for the elections due in 2001.

We spent our first morning on Ometepe exploring around Altagracia. The contrast between the peaceful, stable and relatively prosperous Costa Rica and Nicaragua was sharp. Nicaragua was visibly poorer than Costa Rica – most of the houses were tumbledown shacks, and while every third house seemed to be a shop of some sort, they usually had pretty limited stock, and were dark inside. The shopkeeper would turn the light on when a customer came in, to save electricity.

I could have passed through Costa Rica entirely ignorant of the politics of that country, but it would be impossible to do the same in Nicaragua. Walls everywhere were covered in political graffiti, supporting one or other of the Sandinistas, the PLC (Partido Liberal Constitucional) or the PC (Partido Conservador), and people wore t-shirts and caps proclaiming their allegiances. According to my guidebook, Ometepe was relatively untouched by the revolution, so I wondered what the mainland would be like.