Granada touring and Masaya Volcano
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2009
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Trip End
Jul 27, 2009
Masaya, Masaya, Nicaragua
Saturday, July 25, 2009
We walked around the streets, getting lost sometimes. We visited some places of interest like churches, colonial museums and more churches.... there are two churches where is possible to walk up to the bell tower and take a look at the entire city. Very nice specially with the lake view.
Since we knew we couldn't see all the city by foot, we took one of the carriage tours around the city. It takes around 2 hours. They took us to the more important places of the city, but in order to spend some time in other places we advised the driver to avoid the places we already knew. It seems that the carriage is the first thing to do when arriving to Granada.... i guess i just do things backwards.. We visited an old fort that has been military fort, military warehouse and jail during the civil war in the 80s. It's very interesting.
When the tour was done, we went to the many tour agencies in the main avenue to see about the volcano tours. We scheduled an afternoon tour for later on today.
Our volcano tour left at 4pm. It was only us and an American couple. They were doing a central american trip and told us how they crossed the Nicaraguan border in some questionable ways in order to avoid the delays we experienced. The tour included the Masaya market, so that was our first stop. Masaya is about one hour north from Granada. The city looks very clean and tourist oriented. The market looks like a mayan ruin, it is very original. On the inside, looks more like a Spaniard hacienda. There are hundreds of souvenir stores. They sell the best hammocks I've ever seen at the best prices. Very cheap compared to Costa Rica actually. Nicaraguans specialize in hammocks and furniture, so their wooden products are amazing too.
Our driver told us that we had the chance to go to a town nearby to look at a religious activity that happened only that day in the year. So we hurried up in the market and got into the van. I'll get the name of the town later on, but it's about 10 mins from the market. The activity is a parade that last all day long and goes around the town. Men with their faces painted in black and wearing blazers, drink all day long and hit each other with sticks all over their bodies. The suffering of receiving so much hitting is to prove their faith and for their saint and the Virgin to bless them. Behind the men hitting each other, comes a huge float decorated with yellow flowers and pulled by at least 20 guys. After the float, comes a band making a bunch of noise. So when the band starts playing (or beating the drums) the men at front start hitting each other. The experience is quite intense, specially because of the chaos that happen when the music starts. It seems to be a mixture of a ancient mayan tradition and catholic beliefs.
The next stop was the Masaya Volcano National Park. It is a very well maintained park. It is located at one side of the highway to Managua. After paying the entrance, we headed to the volcano. It is about 5 miles away, going on a paved road. The parking lot is right next to the crater. The crater is huge and since it's an active volcano, there is a lot of smoke and gases coming out of it. There is a mound with a big cross on top. The story goes that when the Spaniard invasion, a catholic priest thought that the volcano was the entrance to hell, so placed to cross to exorcise the volcano....
The last dangerous activity of the volcano happened around 2004 when it erupted during a regular tourist day. All the rocks that came out of the volcano destroyed the cars in the parking lot, but luckily there were no victims. It seems that some people wanted to sue to park for the damages.... but well that's the risk of visiting a living mountain of fire...
There are a couple of other inactive volcanoes and from there we could see the city of Masaya and several lakes, including the Nicaraguan lake.
The next tour stop was caves. It was sunset, so they gave us helmets and flashlights. We went into a cave where thousands of bats were coming out. The feeling of those bats passing right next to my ears was incredible. Amazingly none actually hit me. Once inside the cave we walked for about a mile. These caves are prehistoric lava rivers and were used by indians for ceremonies. After one hour we came back from the cave.
By 9pm we were back in Granada. Very tired of all the touring. However when got back, the city was full of noise. Turns out that today the Granada baseball team just won the national championship, and the celebration was big. They had a stage in the central park where there were all kind of performances and even break-dancing. We stayed hanging around until midnight.
