This week, we are hanging out in Nicaragua.  Nicaragua is a Central American country sandwiched between Guatemala and Costa Rica.  It’s slightly smaller than the state of Nevada.  Technically, that means there’s not much distance to get around, but given that many of the roads are still mostly dirt, it can still take a while.

Nicaragua is also that country known as the Land of the Lakes and Volcanoes thanks to its 50 Volcanoes (7 of which are active) and its giant lakes, the most famous of which is Lake Nicaragua.  Lake Nicaragua is a lake with TWO active volcanoes inside it, one of which also has a lake in it.  So that’s a lake (laguna) within a volcano that’s within a lake!  Lake Nicaragua is the 19^th largest lake in the world, 9^th largest in Central America.  Lake Nicaragua also has sharks.  SHARKS!  Bull sharks.  Maybe I’ll see some, though I haven’t decided if I want to see some.

We start our journey in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.  The international airport is based here, about 20 minutes east of the city.

Interesting thing about Managua is that it’s a fairly flat city.  This is because the city got pretty leveled by a terremoto (earthquake) in 1972 that destroyed a lot of the buildings.  Most of the buildings have since been rebuilt but not as onrate or nice.  As a result, most visitors don’t stay long in Managua and instead use it as a gateway point onto other nearby cities.

Since Nicholas didn’t realize how close we were to other cities, we spent two days here.  So to kill time, we hired a taxi driver to take us around time.

First stop, Catedral de Santiago, which was an old cathedral that designed and shipped from Belgium in 1920.  It survived the earthquake of 1931 but didn’t survive the 1972 earthquake.  Currently it sits in condemned state and is mostly fenced off and guarded.

After the Catedral, we drove by the shores of Lake Xolotan before heading up a nearby hill to look over the city.  Turns out the hill is on army territory.  Our first encounter with the army!  View was cool.  We went back down to the monument where I got to ride a canon.  We tried to walk all the way up the stairs but was stopped by a guard.

There’s the guard walking in the background.  They take their monument protection seriously here!

Next stop – my first active volcano!

As I said earlier, Nicaragua is the land of the active volcanoes.  About 30 minutes out of town is one of these active Volcanos,  Volcan Masaya.  For lazy people, what’s nice about this volcano is that you can drive right up to the crater’s rim.  Because it’s also one of the more active volcanoes, you’re only allowed to spend about 5 minutes at the crater, though no one is paying close attention.  We got up there, joined the hordes of people peering over the volcano and I saw it!  I saw lava!  Though there are trails and paths at the top, all of them were off limits, so after a few moments, we went back down.

Turns out it’s supposed to be even more impressive to see the volcano at night.  I’ll have to keep that in mind for the next time.

Our first two days we stayed in the Art Hotel in Managua.  It’s a pretty low key hotel located in what seems to be a more residential neighbourhood.  Apparently it’s not that safe to walk around Managua at night so we just stayed in, ordered delivery and hung out on the table.  Art Hotel has a bunch of parrots that made it a point to squawk and wake me up really early every morning.  I’m looking at you, parrot, you terrible disturber of peace with wings.  Well I guess in this photo he’s looking at me but I made sure to give him plenty of evil eye when whenever we walked past them.

And that was our stay at Managua.