Tara was enthralled with the Nicaraguan sunsets, which would have been nicer without the city wires, but it still looks nice. This is from outside a church in Rivas, which has a colony of parrots nesting in the church. They are really cool, but so loud that I have no idea if anyone hears the priest speaking.
In Masaya, we went to see some folk dancing. All the local professional dancers perform every week. Tough to take pictures in the dark, but you might be able to see here that most of them have these huge dresses that they have to hold the whole time they dance.
One of the traditional dances is somewhat Halloween like and everyone wears crazy outfits. Really funny since they can't really see out of the masks and frequently collide.
We went to Masaya Volcano, which actually has five different craters, one of which is currently active. This cross was erected by an early Spanish missionary in hopes that it would stop the local people from sacrificing women and children to the volcano. Not surprisingly, it didn't work.
Here we are by the active crater. The smell of sulfur is definitely strong there. We didn't see them, but there are parakeets that live right down in the toxic fumes.
One more shot near the active crater. You can see how the crater falls off. We couldn't see any lava--just lots of steam. The last eruption in 2001 was a small one, but threw up lots of rocks that destroyed many of the cars in the parking lot, but no deaths. The signs warn you to hide under your car in the event of an eruption.
This crater is no longer active, but was responsible for one of the largest eruptions in Nicaragua's history. It is right across from the active crater, so it certainly isn't impossible that it could blow again someday. Fortunately, it didn't the day we were there.
Two cities in Nicaragua were historically the most powerful: Granada and Leon. Managua was the compromise capital between the two. Both are nice colonial cities. Then you find out that they have both been destroyed and rebuilt about a half dozen times, with both being in really bad shape after the civil war that ended in 1979. Here is a shot of Granada.
Here is a closer shot of the church. About as colonial looking as it gets.
From Granada, we took a kayaking trip around the 365 small Granada Islands in Lake Nicaragua. Well, we didn't see them all, but a lot of them. The current trend if you own one of these islands is to sell it to a dumb American willing to pay a minimum of $100,000, so if you have some spare money and want to buy one, they are available. Here is Tara in her kayak.
This is a tiny fort built on one of the islands to defend against lake pirates! That's right, Lake Nicaragua is so big that it historically had a ton of pirates who would show up, burn Granada to the ground, and loot everything in sight. So, they built this fort that apparently saw a lot of action and had to be rebuilt several times. I wonder if lake pirates were laughed at by ocean pirates. Are you a real pirate if you sail around a lake?
And there we have the first half of Nicaragua. More to come.