This past Saturday, I decided it was time for me to check out a bit of the natural beauty that Nicaragua has to offer so I tagged along with my housemates – Pablo, Nacho, Fernando, James, and Chris (I’ll let you guess who is from Spain and who’s not) – as they went off to Volcano Masaya.
Being the crazy party animal that I’ve become, I didn’t go to bed until 12:30 the night before because of an intense game of Settlers of Catan. I woke up with my head hurting at 6, but I dragged myself out of bed anyway and fried up a couple eggs before our one functional stove burner got claimed by someone else. The plan was to leave at 7. We left at 8.
We made the 45 minute trek into town and caught a bus from the central park. I felt a bunch of sharp stings in my shins as we were waiting and I looked down to find a mini-swarm of red ants chowing down on my ankle. The bus pulled up as I was battling the little shits, but we were hurried on and the fight continued on board in my seat. The little ones bite harder.
We cruised west on the highway, weaving in and out of the two lanes, the top of the bus always feeling a bit behind the bottom. After a good forty minutes of head bobbing sleep, I got stirred awake as my compadres for the day were hustled off the bus on the side of the road. We played Frogger as we scurried across the four lanes to the entrance of the park.
Inside, we paid our c$80 entrance fee and decided that the 5km walk up to the craters would not be so bad. Wrong. Though the entrance gate was shaded, the trek up was nothing but black, unshaded asphalt winding through barren land covered in dry wild grass and old volcanic rocks. Luckily, we hitched a ride from a couple in a nice pickup and we spent the next four minutes hanging onto the sides of the bed as the wind cooled us down. Looking out over the land below as we climbed the hill, I realized Nicaragua is flat – very flat – with a volcano sprouting up here and there.
In the parking lot, we were dropped off literally at the edge of the crater. The smoke that seeped from the crater choked me when the winds weren’t going the right way. It was beautiful, but I wished we had the satisfaction of walking up a trail beforehand. Oh well. I’m not going to complain.
After walking up and around to the couple lookout points that were opened up and taking a few pictures for the German tourists sharing the view, we decided to pay the extra c$50 and take the cave tour. We were loaded into the back of a pickup and were dragged around to the backside of the crater. At a little wooden stand plagued with black hornets, they equipped us with funny plastic helmets and dollar-store flashlights.
In the cave, daylight only reached a few meters deep (oh no I’m starting to use the metric system!). My I kept my flashlight focused on the floor, which was fickle and enwrapped with sprawling tree roots. And then, THUD! I walked into a low hanging chunk of rock, but my cheap, plastic helmet did its job and protected me. I’ll never doubt it again. On the way out, bats fluttered back and forth, in and out of the few penetrating rays of daylight.
We were dropped off by the side of the third and largest (though dormant) crater. We hiked up, and my head was pounding. I had eaten my second… or third… packet of cookies, which definitely did not help my aching skull. The view was impressive, but my companions wanted to hike around the ridge. There was a “Danger: Do not pass sign” with a park guide a hundred meters behind it, uphill, whistling his head off and doing the robot, his signal that we should come up. From the top, we could see back to Granada. The Spaniards wanted to hike around the ridge to a vulture colony. My head said no, but I followed along anyway, not wanting to ruin anyone’s afternoon. I’m glad I did. After following a half-foot wide path through weeds and brush up and down mini hills, we came to the colony. At first we could only see a few hiding in the trees. We got closer and we saw several more on the path in front of us. Their black, fleshy heads blended in with the black feathers of their bodies and made them look more like hawks than your class vulture. One took flight. Then another. Then three more. Before we knew it, the sky was populated with several dozen vultures while many more debated in the trees whether we were threats meriting an unexpected mid-afternoon flight. My head felt better watching them.
Afterwards, we followed the path back down to the parking lot and arranged a pickup to bring us back down. There was no way we were going to walk down in the Nicaraguan sun. In the back of the truck, as I sat on the edge, I thought back to my first pickup truck ride – how uncomfortable I was as I slid around in the bed. Now I sat confidently – foolhardily perhaps – on the edge, solely relying on my feet to keep me balanced as I left my hands free to take pictures, or even just to dangle and enjoy the breeze. There are some things I know I will miss terribly in a month.
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