Jess and Stacey’s Travels

Volcano Pictures-click on photo for more pictures

We elected to act as tourists one day this week . We took a guided tour of the Masaya Volcano.  The tour left from Granada around 4 p.m.   We traveled by minibus through Masaya and arrived at the volcano about 4:30 p.m.   Our official park guide was a bit late so we just wondered about for a bit.   We saw a lot of gases emanating from the bottom of the crater.   We could also hear a lot of birds coming from somewhere inside the crater.   The birds actually nest in the interior walls which is interesting as the guide will later tell us that the gases erode everything in sight.  These birds appear to be black while in flight until you get a closer look when they angle off and we find they are green parakeets.

Our guide ‘Oscar’ arrived and gave us some history. Seems the locals used to believe that the volcano was a god and sacrificed virgins and small children.   Oscar took us to several vantage points that overlook the crater, two other craters, [read on]

This week took us away from our normal routine of sleeping, eating, and learning Spanish.  On Tuesday afternoon, we took a little tour of a nearby town with a volunteer organization called Esperanza.  The organization was founded about 8 or 9 years ago to help in the schools.  They provide both monetary and volunteer assistance.  For example, they pay a local nurse to do weekly rounds at the schools in the poorer communities, they sponsor some kids to go to high school, they work in the schools themselves tutoring children, teaching hygiene, providing physical therapy, setting up libraries etc.  Esperanza requires volunteers be here at least two months.  They have a few volunteer houses where the volunteers live.  I think there are about 35-40 people volunteering right now.  We’re thinking about volunteering here or somewhere at some point.  We walked back to Granada from the little village and were sweaty, dirty and tired, but it was a great change of pace.

On Saturday, we joined up with Femke (Dutch student) and rented a car and head out of Granada to some neighboring towns, known as los Pueblos Blancos.  They used to be strikingly white from the materials they were made of, but now [read on]