It’s been a principle of mine that sharing an adventure with the world is secondary to having it in the first place and sharing it with those present.  Partially as a result of this principle (and mostly from trying to graduate) I’ve fallen way behind on sharing Nicaragua with you.  So now in retrospect I’ll post small snapshots of our trip.

Our second adventure in Nicaragua was hiking up Volcan Masaya (the first was driving in Managua).  We entered the park and drove to the visitor center.  Full of energy and ready to conquer Nicaragua, we hiked the stretch of road to the top (where one must take a taxi or shuttle to go or pay extra or something … we were still fresh at this developing nation travel thing).  The hike was beautiful, if sometimes discouraging due to being passed by cars and trucks.  But we got an experience that most who drive up pass right by.

We then got to hide from rain in an interesting stone structure along with a random couple on a motorcycle.  We had lunch, failed at staying dry, and marveled at the beauty of clouds racing over volcanic slopes.

We did eventually make it up and saw the incredible crater — which spews a prodigious amount of poisonous gas and steam into the air!  It was spectacular to see, feel, and smell it — pictures do it no justice.

But we did also get video of bees up there — at the risk of James being stung of course.

Tired as we were, we did not like the thought of walking down.  Since Cody injured a paw on the way up, the thought of carrying him down was even less appealing, so we took a taxi down and survived our first volcano in Nicaragua.