Nicaragua

Thanks to Santa Semana we got four days in Nicaragua. The flight to Managua isn’t even an hour from San Jose, but with our flight being delayed 4 hours we didn’t arrive until late on Wednesday night.

We based ourselves in the Spanish colonial town of Granada at a ridiculously quaint hotel on the main square.

We booked 3 full days of touring so we were pretty busy. Despite all the sightseeing we were still able to enjoy a little down time at the pool and some yummy meals at the neighboring restaurants.

Our first day we took a trip around the city in one of the horse drawn carriages to some of the points of interests…mainly churches with a fort or two thrown in for good measure...





Afterwards we went down to Lake Nicaragua to take a small boat tour through the lake’s isletas. They have 360ish (some say exactly 365- one for each day of the year) of these tiny islands formed by the volcano and on them you can find very rustic living, vacation homes, and on some of the larger ones even hotels and resorts…



Our next day of touring took us to the neighboring city of Masaya. We stopped off in an area known as the white town- both for the color of the homes and the magic practiced there by the residents. Apparently there used to be a great number of witches there, but the only thing I saw was a bunch of beautiful pottery stores, one where we bought two awesome bowls from a sweet lady who showed us her kiln out back with her chickens.

We then drove up for a view of Lake Apoyo...




Afterwards we found out the markets were closed for Good Friday so we headed to an old fort that had been used during the rebellion to hold political prisoners from both sides. I didn’t and still don’t know much about said rebellion, but it seemed both sides were pretty brutal and some bad stuff went down at this place. I was more than happy when it was time to head to Masaya Volcano for our bat cave tour. Yeah, we actually paid extra to add this to our trip. Who are we??

We drove up to Masaya’s opening and then climbed up to the top of one of the craters to get a great view of the smoking Masaya at sunset...




We then headed down to some of the caves formed by the old lava tubes...




We missed out on seeing any lava due to the amount of smoke, but we did get to hang our head over the edge of Masaya and listen to her grumble and groan. Lava or no lava- that was awesome.

We had an early start on Saturday to get to Omtempe Island. The island has two volcanoes on it, one dormant and one that had been a little too active lately for a trip up. We visited a couple of beaches, an old ranch where we got to see some Congo monkeys and got some great views of the beautiful Volcano Conception…







Sunday we walked around Granada before we headng to the airport. We got back to to San Jose late afternoon and enjoyed the lack of volcano ash/dust in the air and the 30 degrees cooler temperatures. Wowser- Nicaragua is hot. Like, hotter than India, Bangkok or Manuel Antonio, hot. I also enjoyed the french fries I had with dinner…40 days!

This weekend we’re driving out to Cahuita on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to enjoy some reggae and hopefully much better snorkeling.