Monday 21 January 2013
Highlights: Laguna de Apoyo, Masaya local market, Masaya Volcano National Park.
With around 4 hours sleep after the marathon 22 hour drive yesterday I crawled out of bed to visit the surrounding area of Granada. Some of the smarter members of our group decided to sleep in and see the city or meet up for the second part of our planned activity.
At least the first stop was at Laguna de Apoyo which is the name of this enormous lake. This meant we had the chance to go swimming and lying in the sun which helped greatly with the recovery. Stephen and Daniel went out on the kayaks and found the water surprisingly rough. Even when I swam to a small floating platform I found the water tougher than a lot of beaches I have visited. We had our lunch at this point.
From here it was a short ride to a viewpoint of the entire lake area which highlighted how large this area is. I later learned it was over 8,000 acres. The lake was created by a volcano eruption and is surrounded by volcanoes.
Next up we visited the town of Masaya and the local market which is enclosed by stone walls, I’m not sure what the original use of this site was, maybe a rich persons estate. As I’m getting closer to the end of my trip I bought a couple of shirts. At this point we meant up with James, Robin and Rita and headed off to the Volcano National Park.
The National Park was spectacular with an active volcano in the centre throwing up sulphur into the air. With all the stream it was difficult to see to the bottom of the crater. We undertook a short hike to get a better view of the area and watched the awesome sunset.
A visit to the bat caves in the dark was next up. Which meant we had lots of bats flying at us and a few girlish screams and hiding by some people :). The second cave we visited we could actually walk into and could see the roots breaking into the cave for water.
The last stop was at the edge of the volcano and for this one we needed gas masks. The idea was to hopefully see some orange or red colours in the crater. We were told we only had 45 seconds in this toxic air but in the end I spend a few minutes instead. My eyes hurt a little but others had much more troubles with their lungs.
Nathan's Insights 