Masaya Volcano

Joe and I decided it was time for another day trip, so we headed out to see the Masaya volcano - about 30 minutes away.  We got there at 8:30 am which was 30 minutes before they opened, so we spent a while swatting mosquitoes, killing ants, and eating bread.  Whenever we go sightseeing we always pack bananas and bread.  They're the only foods we've found around here that can be packed around and don't require utensils.  And, pretty amazingly, the bananas don't seem to bruise as easily as they do in the states, so it works out pretty well.

When they opened, we paid our entrance fee (one of Joe's biggest frustrations here is that they charge foreigners a different price than the Nicaraguans.  We paid $5 each, but if we were Nicaraguan, the price would have been 50 cents each) and started walking. The volcano was 4 miles away.  They had a shuttle to take people to the crater for a price, but we were happy to save the money, get the exercise, and enjoy the landscape.  

Here's a volcanic rock field.  And yes, we walked with an umbrella. Never thought I would do it, but now I think I just might do it again sometime. It made me feel very Asian, but it sure did a good job of keeping the heat levels down! 

Oh, we had Joe's phone camera on night vision mode?? That's why it looked like we were looking through blue-tinted sun glasses! Sorry- still trying to figure out Joe's phone...

They were handing out hard hats to everyone to wear on the ride up to the volcano and while walking around at the top, but since we were walking up instead of driving the guy said we didn't have to wear them because it would get too hot.  Seemed a little backwards to me - I would have thought they would have been more concerned since we were walking up.  Good thing we had our umbrella for protection :)
 

It was a gorgeous walk - dense jungle around us, beautiful, exotic birds, monkey swinging ropes...

 Eventually the trees ended and we walked a ways through volcanic rock and dead shrubs to get to the volcano crater.  This was the first volcano I've looked into and it was pretty awesome.  We couldn't see any molten lava - apparently you have to go at night to be able to see that - but looking down into the huge, gaping hole with smoke pouring out was pretty cool.  It's one of the most active volcanoes in Nicaragua, most recently erupting last April when it threw up some rocks and ash.  But it's always spewing out noxious gases and we were warned not to be up there for longer than 20 minutes so we wouldn't breathe in too much. The gases were so bad we didn't want to stay for even 20 minutes.





 

The view walking down was amazing.

Aaahhh...back to the shade of the trees.

 Back at the entrance we spent some time at the visitor center and were quite impressed with how nice it was.  There was a lot of interesting information and some of it was even in English!

One of my favorite things was a 3D map of the volcanoes in Nicaragua.  We've heard of quite a few of them, but it was fun to look from an aerial view and see how they all line up in a row along the fault line.

When we were done at the visitor center we headed back out to the highway and walked the 3 miles to our next destination - Fort Coyote.

There were some beautiful houses along the way. 

We also took a picture when we passed this chair factory because EVERYONE here uses rocking chairs.  When we look into a house we see about 5 or 6 rocking chairs in front of a t.v. and that's it for their main room.  And people all the time sit out along the street in front of their houses in rocking chairs - wicker, wooden, plastic - these people cannot live without their rocking chairs.  We have two at our apartment and we're almost addicted.

And on our walk we saw a Papa Johns!!  This is the only American restaurant/fast food place we've seen down here.  It was pretty exciting :)

Fort Coyote is owned by the Boy Scouts of Nicaragua.  We never really figured out what it was built for originally, but it's been a fort, a dungeon, and, some say, a torture chamber.

It was cool to see the scout symbol on the front gates.

Had to get a picture of this resilient little tree growing up the back of the entrance :) 

After a very steep, hot climb we saw the fort.

Again, the scout symbol -  "Siempre Listo"

Pretty neat fort...

And an awesome view!

We could see the smoke from the Masaya volcano where we had just been.

They had guided tours, but since we wouldn't have been able to understand them anyways we just walked around by ourselves.  This is a picture in the upper part of the fort, but we also went down a steep ramp to some rooms and hallways way under the ground where we could barely see in front of us after our eyes adjusted.  That was pretty creepy.  Not sure I would've wanted a guide telling us what had happened down there...

They also had some displays that explained the history of the place.  It was fun to see the picture of Baden Powell - the founder of Scouting. Apparently the scouts used to use this fort for their jamborees back in the day.  Now they just give tours as a fund raiser.

We walked back down to the highway again and caught a bus back to Granada.  By the end of the day we figured we had walked about 13 miles.  And it sure felt good :)