Granada is a beautiful city featuring quaint streets filled with brightly coloured walls, great restaurants, market stalls in the central park, excellent cafes and coffee.
Several of us loaded up on a huge day of sightseeing with local guide Ramón, starting with the Masaya Volcano. We stopped by the museum to get filled in on some history, read instructions on what to do in case of a volcanic event and grab a cheap hard hat, which as a hard hat makes a good upturned punch bowl. We didn’t have any rumbles so maybe the abundance of yellow hard hats scared the volcano quiet.
The remnants of previous eruptions litter the landscape with jagged black rock forming rivers down into the surrounding countryside. Of course we climbed over a patch and made strong man pics holding rocks aloft. It’s actually heavier than I thought…I thought it would be like paper mâché or pumice and we’d be able to throw it around a la snowball fight. Instead, that may have taken someone’s head off.
Onwards up to the summit for a peek over the side. The vastness catches your breath before the poisonous gases do when the wind blows strongly in your direction. The legend goes that a friar of some persuasion demanded a cross be erected at the top of the volcano to stop it erupting its guts all over the nearby settlement. I gather it kind of worked and the conversion to Catholicism of the locals was easier.
For a gate to hell it’s actually quite pretty with multiple seams of colourful rock sides layered on top of each other forming a mineral rainbow down into the fog of gas. Part of a giant caldera, the view from further up top showed the outer rim of the original super volcano that erupted and collapsed, forming huge lakes. The last rumble was in 2010, just before opening time. We didn’t stay too long to see if we needed to sacrifice a child or virgin to the gods to keep it happy.
Next up we visited a marketplace to try our hand at bargaining. I’m still crap at it.
Lunch at a local joint for traditional rice and beans, plantain and not so traditional meatballs…made local with a very generous helping of chili. You cannot escape the chili.
We spent some time at a pottery school that still uses the traditional techniques to knead the clay before spinning, rubbing with palm nuts to polish over and over again and natural tint ingredients. The process is very labour intensive and we all bought something to take home…difficult as it is to keep fragile items safe in a backpack.
A short swim in a volcano lake, Apoyo, with its rock and dark sand shore and deep blue-green water went well with a rum and soda. Flor de Caña is the local tipple and it’s some tasty!
We finished off the day with a boat ride through the Isletas, little islands on the lake big enough for a house, a fortress or colony of monkeys and not much else. Putting along, Ramón served up cups of rum and orange juice while we watched the sunset around the volcano. It was a great way to finish off a big day.
Rounding out our time in Granada, we savoured a sleep in before a sensational coffee and breakfast at Euro Cafe near the main square. If nothing else, they really know how to serve fabulous rum and coffee in this magnificent part of the world.