Volcán Masaya

After a cruisey morning we headed out to organize a few things in town.  Kieran and I got sorted at the local 'Movistar' mobile phone shop with a sim card etc while Porl and Chase headed to the atm to top-up Chase's wallet.  Unfortunately this didn't happen as all three atm's that he tried refused to spit out any money for him.  He came back looking rather perturbed but we'll call the bank tomorrow and hopefully get it sorted out for him.

For lunch we headed to a restaurant that we had walked by a few times and that always drew our eye because of its bright and multi-coloured painted furniture.  The food was fabulous and although it was a little more expensive than other restaurants it still worked out that the meals with drinks (fruit smoothies and beers) only cost us around US$4 per person.

Then we headed back to our hostel to get ready to hike up Volcán Masaya and to join the night tour there.  We arranged a taxi to take us and pick us up again after the tour and the hostel owner advised us not to pay him until he came back for us or we might find ourselves walking home.

We arrived at the park at around 4pm.

The Masaya Volcano National Park was the first National Park in Nicaragua (1979) and comprises an area of 54km2 and includes two volcanoes and five craters.

The visitors centre was very interesting, unfortunately there wasn't time enough to read everything but we especially enjoyed looking at the awesome murals that were on the walls.

Entry to the park and the night tour costs $US10 per person plus another C50 (about $1) for transportation which is well worth it.  The tours are very well organized and our tour guide Joel was very informative and really knew his stuff.

We jumped onto the back of a ute to head up to the volcanos, the guides tried to get me to hop into the ute but not this time!  Who wants to sit in a cab when you're out on a volcano adventure??

We stopped first at the Santiado crater which was giving off a lot of gas but the view was still amazing, especially as it was getting close to sunset.

A number of green parakeets roost in one of the walls of this crater which seems a strange place to want to roost given the gases that are continuously emitted but they seem to have somehow adapted to the sulphur smoke.

Above Kieran's head you can see La Cruz de Bobadilla (named after Father Francisco Bobadilla), said to have been erected by the Spanish  in the 16th century in order to exorcise the Devil, given that they had named the active volcano 'La Boca Del Infierno'.

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Joel told us all about previous explosions one such being on 23 April, 2003 when the crater exploded sending rocks up to 500m from the crater.  One visitor to the park was injured as were a number of vehicles in the park.

From there we walked up to another crater, San Pedro.

As you can see, the scenery was unique and very beautiful.

Then it was time to walk back to the vehicles, ready to head off for the biggest part of the climb.

We arrived at the next stop in the tour, just in time to see the sun set behind the volcano ....

the gases combined with the sunset made the area look like we were at the scene of a bushfire.

Next we headed up a steep slope to look out over Lake Managua.
Our guide Joel advised we not read the sign as we passed it, he said that here in Managua they have rules but no one follows them.

Kieran got in a little rock climbing ....

...   while Chase just hung around.

Then we donned some gorgeous headwear and headed down to the caves.  (pardon the pun ;) )

We didn't enter the first cave as there were too many bats and breathing bat guano is not recommended but our guide let anyone that wanted climb down to the mouth of this cave and take a photo when the light from the torches made the bats start flying out.  I think three of us took the shot and here you can see how there were heaps of bats flying around in there.

Right before I climbed down to take this shot we were standing around listening to the guide's spiel about the bats and while we were listening Kieran put his hand under my hair and flapped it about like a bat, of course I screamed much to everyone's amusement.

Then we headed into some caves where at the end of the civil war a number of resisters had hidden for months rather than go to war.

We also saw some of the little bats up close and personal, aren't they sooo cute!

Finally we learnt about the rock formation in the ceiling of this cave and how the indian people would sacrifice to it because of it's resemblance to a skull.

They would sacrifice a girl of between 16 and 20 years of age to show appreciation for the eruptions of the volcano whose ash enriched the soil allowing them to grow good crops.

And then it was back to the vehicles and after a quick look through the gases at the only just discernable red lava it was back down the mountain and the end of a great tour!  If anyone comes to Nicaragua we would definitely recommend it :)