Today I went to another volcano. This time it was Volcan Masaya, which essentially is a nice friendly drive up volcano, except that one of the craters is very much active. Looking into the crater you can see smoke and suffocate on the fumes. Apparently at night you can see the glow from the lava bubbling away in the crater and apparently we had good visibility today and could see almost the bottom of the crater, just not enough for lava.
Oh whats this hell nonsense in the title…. The spaniards erected a cross on top of the volcano because they believed it was the gateway to hell. Thus putting a cross on the rim should keep all the evil stuff from escaping and taking good christians to hell. Sorry for my sarcasm but well I found it amusing. So did my guide Tony (yes its a good Nicaraguan name). My tour today consisted of people on package tours and me. The package tourists literally got in last night, came to see the volcano and are off again tomorrow. Maybe now my parents may understand why I opted for my more leisurely pace.
Volcan Masaya
Still I just heard some backpackers here talking about whether they can afford dinner tonight or just skip it again like last night……
Anyway after the volcano, we went to the markets in Masaya. Much of the same usual market stuff, although to the keen arts and craft shopper the style is different from Guatemala. I however bought myself a bottle of Flor de Caña. The rum of Nicaragua, kind of like how bundy rum is to Australians, only better. I bought a bottle of the 7yr grand reserve to try. If I like it i’ll bring my 2.25 litres of duty free available to me back to Australia.
After that we went to a lookout over a crater lake…. yeah been there seen those before, we have them in Australia and as nice as they are, they are all the same.
Our final tour stop was at a ceramics workshop, where I watched an american lady knock over some rather expensive and exquisite ceramic vases to the floor. Yes they broke, somehow they didn’t make her pay for them. Apparently the one she broke took 2 weeks to make.
Anyway I had to change hotel rooms. The one I was in was like sleeping on a stone like the one they use at stone grill restaurants. It was hot and hard and not in that kind of way you dirty minded people. My new room has a softer bed and a better fan I hope.
Although the wet season has not ended yet, we just had a torrential downpour this afternoon, so what do you do when that happens? Find the nearest bar and get a cold beer.
Apparently it will rain the next few days here. For an Australian it was the most prettiest thing I’ve seen in a while. A beautiful city getting a heavy dumping of rain while I drink a nice cold beer.
So what am I up to the rest of the week. I’m not sure, I want to go visit the island of monkeys but need to hope another person wants to go to make the minimum of 2 people. Otherwise I’m going to climb a bell tower and check out the old railway station and take photos for my old man who seems unable to wait for the last 3 days of my trip where I’m in San Francisco riding cablecars.
My ferry from Ometepe island to Costa Rica leaves on Monday night next week, so I’ll head to the island later this week to spend a weekend on the island.
Volcan Masaya