After escaping the creepy crawlies of Isla De Ometepe, we headed straight to Granada, a beautiful colonial city a few hours north. The highlight of our time here was walking the streets and chatting to the locals as they sat in their rocking chairs in the late afternoon. Granada was hot hot hot, so doing too much in the daytime was utterly exhausting.
Like most of Nicaragua, you are never too far from a volcano, in fact there is one every 25kms or so. We'd been hoping to check out a volcano for some time but we were looking for the right one. It had to be active and not too high in altitude.....as we'd had enough of high altitude dizzines and nausea. The Masaya Volcano National Park was 45 mins away from Granada, containing 2 volcanoes and 5 craters. To save money, and have a more authentic experience, we took the local buses there and back, travelled in the back of a ute through the park and had a guide for the 2 of us. Bizarrely paying 1/3rd less than the tour with 20 tourists! Fortunately for us we had a stunningly clear evening. At sunset the sky was alive with vultures, eagles and parakeets who nest in the crater walls.
There was something truly magical about peering into the active Santiago crater as it puffed plumes of noxious sulphur dioxide into the sky, glowing red once the sky became dark. The Spaniards labelled this group of volcanoes the 'gates of hell', building a giant cross at the summit to exorcise the devil. Human skeletons found in lava tunnels support the legend that the Indigenous used to sacrifice beautiful young virgins here, by throwing them alive into the hot and furious lava to appease the goddess of fire.
Still wanting more volcano action, we headed to Laguna de Apoyo for a few days - a volcano crater lake only 30 mins away. We stayed in a locals house and due to there being very few other guests, we used the infinity pool and decking area normally dedicated exclusively for the 5 star guests. The water in the lake was deliciously warm and fresh, so many hours were spent drifting in the inner tubes and diving off the platforms that floated on the lake.
Our last week in Nicaragua was spent in Leon, another scorchingly hot city. We studied a little more Espanol and had our first homestay experience, if you can call it that, certainly not the Spanish immersion that we had hoped for. We stayed in a Doctor's home of 10 rooms, which he rented out to students. The home, was more like a chair museum - we counted over 75 chairs in the common areas! The food unfortunately was of the salty oily variety and full of carbs. Most meals were rice and spaghetti with beans or rice and potato. We could feel the kg's buildng just looking at the food.
