a good ol' virgin sacrifice

Back on the mainland and immediately into a more realistic Central American culture (as opposed to the Corn Islands), my newly aquired travel partner (Swiss) Chris and I got out of the airport and into a taxi to our next destination of Masaya. Masaya is a working class town only 15 miles south of Managua but immensely different. The people were happy, smiling and quick to say a buenos dias to a tall gringo such as myself. The central park was more like a town square in the center of the city that served as social gathering, church, school and commerce center. Masaya is know for its' handicraft market which was totally geared towards tourists and slightly soulless. The sellers were nice but everything was so.... clean. Just not what i've come to expect down here. Soon we found the local market and the smell of rotting fruit and vegetables in the gutter made me feel that all was right in the world once again. The following morning we made our way to Laguna de Apoyo. Geographically speaking this was a super cool place. Imagine a mountain that had been chopped off and carved into a big bath tub in the center. The water was slightly salty and supposedly very deep at the center. There were a few hotel type places that had sea kayaks and sailboats but we just threw our stuff on the beach and had a swim and sat in the sun.

Aftera few hours we hiked the 1000 feet up to the rim and caught a bus back to Masaya. Later in the afternoon we went to Volcan Masaya for an afternoon/early evening tour. The park rangers drove us up to the top in the back of a rickety pickup. Luckily the accelerator was working like new and we got to the top in 7 minutes flat. The volcano had tons of steam and sulfurous gasses continually flowing out from the crater which made for a really cool dramatic effect.

Apparently the indigenous tribes sacrificed virgins by throwing them into the lava, hoping to appease the gods and sparing their towns from destruction in return. When the Christians came to the area a priest constructed a cross to exorcise the demons of virgin sacrificing and clean up the indeginous peoples acts. The original cross still stands today, but the virgin sacrificing continues. Of course i'm kidding.... the cross is clearly a replica.


After climbing up to the cross we went to the top of another volcano a mile away. Actually the two volcanoes were once the same one. Back in the day, this one huge volcano erupted and the debris that was left created two seperate cones.

The small hill see way in the middle of the picture here is where the original base of the super volcano once stood. Hard to imagine with this pic, sorry. Now one lies dormant and one is active. It was a super volcano that had a base of seemingly 10 miles in diameter. This sucker was huge. More than huge! Now these two smaller volcanoes were barely enormous. Next we went to a lava tunnel where there were tons of bats. apparently the Masaya bats are some of the laziest bats ever because in an old lava tunnel roughly 20 feet in diameter there were tons of mosquitos. Now, if I have not told you, mosquitos love me and there was no relief in the tunnel. I was constantly slapping and swatting while these lazy bats just sat on the ceiling. Don't bats eat insects like mosquitos? I just couldn't understand it and have yet to forgive the bats. The end of the tour was an overlook deep into the active volcano hoping to see some glowing lava. It only occurs once every two weeks or so an we were shut out. What are you gonna do? They kicked us out of the park at 8pm and literally, said 'good luck getting a bus back to Masaya'. The highway entrance to the volcano is on the highway to Managua and is purportedly adangerous place after dark. I'm pretty sure I told the guard at the gate, 'thanks', but i'm still not sure why I said it. I'm not convinced that the highway was quite as dangerous as it was made out to be. Either way we caught a cab after 10 minutes and got home without issue.