After breakfast at the hotel, we met up with Manuel - the guide that had taken us around the city yesterday. He had offered his uncle's panga to take us on a tour of the Las Isletas for $60 USD. They are a series of small islands on Lake Nicaragua that were formed by the Mombacho volcano 2000 years ago when it exploded - raining down huge chunks of rock and forming the island chain.
The islands are lovely with a few hotels, but mostly vacation homes of rich Nicaraguan's. Some Americans and Canadian's too - though many of them abandoned the country when Ortega was re-elected in 2006 because of fears of what might happen politically.
There was a boat yard on the peninsula where they manufacture the ferries used on the lake. We had wondered about how the ferries ended up on the lake as the car ferries would be much to large to ship.
There is a small fort you can visit for $0.80 USD each. The fort was part of the defense against pirates coming up the river and attacking Granada.
We came upon two kayakers looking a bit shell shocked. Note the single paddle.
On one of the islands, a local vet has started depositing rescued monkeys. Its called monkey island, and since the tourists feed the monkeys they aren't afraid of humans. Apparently this little guy had hopped on their kayak, grabbed their water bottle and one of their paddles and took off. It must have been pretty intimidating as both kayakers were pretty shook up. The monkey threw the paddle in the water where it promptly sank, but he wasn't letting go of his water bottle prize.
When we got back to Granada, we headed over to El Camello restaurant. Cynthia (from Mombacho Lodge) had friends on a finca nearby her lodge - Rob and his wife, and their son who owns the restaurant. So we had agreed to meet there for lunch. Turned out to be a great Mediterranean restaurant with great falafel and hummus and the like.
We headed off to the market in Masaya. In Nicaragua they have some of the largest papayas we’ve ever seen. They can reach almost two foot long.
Then it was off to the Masaya Volcano park. They give night tours and we were hoping that we might be able to see the red glow of the lava in the center in the dark. When we reached the park entrance they radioed up to the top to see if there was a ranger available who spoke English. After a few minutes they apparently located someone. Then they charged us for 4 people - $14 USD each, but only gave us receipts for three people, assuring us that this wasn’t a problem. We had our doubts about where the fourth person’s payment was going until we later discovered that the ranger who gave us the tour was a volunteer and somehow the folks at the park entrance decided to give him the fees for the fourth person.
We then drove up to the visitor center and walked around before our night tour began. The visitor center is looking a bit ragged, but was still interesting. There is a clear line of volcanos that runs straight through Nicaragua most of which are dormant, but could still erupt anytime as there is hot magma running under all of them.
We drove the rest of the way to the peak of the volcano where we met our guide, Luis. He took us up to see some of the other volcano peaks the most interesting of which was the Masaya Volcano because it is actively puffing out steam, sulfur, and toxic gasses. As a result we were not allowed to peer over the rim for more than 5 minutes. Amazingly enough this didn’t affect Melissa’s asthma. Green Parakeets have somehow adapted to the living on the rim of the volcano despite the fumes.
Then we were given hard hats and flashlights for the tour of the underground lava tubes. They are inhabited by millions of bats. The guide said that if we were lucky we would see some snakes too. Not exactly our definition of lucky. So we were just fine with seeing the bats but no snakes. As we approached the entrance to the first lava tube it was twilight and the bats were coming out like crazy – whizzing past us all around. It was best to stand still and let them avoid you with their radar rather than trying to dodge thereby increasing your risk of collision. However, there were some French tourists along on the tour who were pretty well freaked out by the bats and kept dodging till one indeed get whacked by one of the bats. Mike caught these amazing shots of the bats in flight.
Then it was onto the second lava tube where we hiked in 180 meters. Lots of bats everywhere. The guide had us all turn off our flashlights till our eyes adjusted to the dark. He explained that the lava tubes were used by the locals to hide from the various clashing armies and Sandinistas so that they wouldn’t get drafted. The tunnel was also used as a place of worship as people believed that on the ceiling was the face of the devil. Luis turned on his flashlight and showed us the face, though it wasn’t exactly a compelling likeness.
We hiked back out of the cave and by then it was pitch black. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the hot lava though because the winds had shifted blowing the toxic fumes from the volcano directly onto the viewing platform.
We then drove back to Granada. We had been somewhat concerned about whether night driving in Nicaragua would be dangerous. But given that the roads are in good condition and the drivers are generally well behaved we decided to go ahead and try out the nighttime volcano tour despite that meaning we would have to drive in the dark. Much to Dave’s delight, the drive was uneventful.
We then headed to Cynthia’s house for wine and pizza and stayed up much too late yacking. Cynthia had invited a friend to hang out with us. Jasper was visiting from Bluefield, a city on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua. We were very surprised to find his accent was very strongly Caribbean, despite it not being very many miles across the country from here.