A Whirlwind Week

It’s been a while since our last update, due to a busy schedule, hangovers, and lack of internet.  But now that I have time, I’ll fill you guys in.

I believe that last you’ve heard of us was just after we left the Laguna de Apoyo.  From there, we arrived in Leon.  Leon is like a bigger, dirtier, and busier Granada.  It was and remains the seat of Sandinista political power.  FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or the Sandinista National Liberation Front) propaganda adorns every corner of the city, and the population is as fervent as it was thirty years ago. 

The city itself boasts the largest cathedral in Central America, and has a funny history.  When the city proposed the construction of the cathedral to the Pope, they submitted plans for a smaller less impressive cathedral.  Then, once they got the approval from the Church, they ditched the plans and built the monstrosity that dominates the skyline of the city.  It looks more like a temple than a church, and has a quartet of Egyptian-esque slaves holding up the façade.  The bell towers are sturdy square towers almost as thick as they are tall.  It is completely white, but to my understanding was pretty badly burnt, and is still in the process of restoration.  One little known fact, is that there is a tunnel that leads from the church 30 miles to the coast.  A secret escape route! There are also lots of lion statues around —all different!  Behold:

Leon is also very hot!  It feels oppressive because of the lack of water nearby, unlike Granada.  We’ve figure out that there are two sides of the street: the Right side, and the Wrong side.  They change constantly, but the Wrong side of the street is the side without any shade. 

We stayed in Leon for a couple of days waiting for Casey to show up, and also until we could book a hiking trip up the another volcano (more of that later).  While we were waiting we checked out the museums that were open, and probably the coolest was the revolutionary museum.  Upon first inspection, it looked pretty bad, and just a compilation of pictures of revolutionary heroes.  After a while though, we figured out that our guide was a survivor of the revolution.  Certifiable Bad Ass.  He showed us his scars, and graphically eviscerated me like he knew what he was doing.  He also made Sama pose with a grenade launcher:

That is not what he was using, that was what was being used against him.  He was using Molotov cocktails.  So after hearing his story, and some of the revolutionaries that were his personal friends, he took us to the roof of the old post office/Government bastion and gave us great views of the city:

The next day we woke up at the crack of dawn, and went to Quetzaltrekkers, a tour company that sets up hikes where all the profits go to charity for local children, and embarked on a trek to the top of Volcano Telica.  In all it was a  27 km hike with overnight camping at the top of the crater (17k the first day 10k the second).  It was a very flat hike for most of it, and wouldn’t have been bad except for all of the shit we were carrying.  Sama and I got to the office late, so both of us ended up carrying tents.  We also had to take a ludicrous amount of water.  I drank maybe half of what they made me carry.  We started pretty far away, and hiked up to the volcano through man/cow made canyons that were pretty and (thankfully) shady.  But it wasn’t until we got near to the top that the views started getting good.  The landscape really does look like the seal on the Nicaraguan flag, a series of volcanoes rising out of flat plains. 

But the crater was the coolest!  The biggest surprise was the noise.  Sulfur steaming from vents made a noise akin to a jet engine.  Even from the edge of the enormous crater, we could still hear it.  The crater walls were also surprisingly steep.  after the lip, the crater dropped down at pretty much a 90 degree angle, and then hit a floor several hundred feet below.  In the middle of the crater was another concentric circle, this one about 10m across that had the actual lava bubbling (I imagine, couldn’t see the bubbles) in it.  The Lava was hard to see during the day because it was covered in cooling rock, but at night, red light emanated from beneath the rock crust on top.  It stormed just after sunset, so we ate dinner in our tents, then climbed the crater again to look at the lava when the rain subsided.  we got some cool pictures of the lightning illuminating the volcano though.  When we climbed up, we imagined the volcano was out very own giant faceless Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween.  We camped the night in the Caldera just below the crater, and woke up for sunrise.  Then we hiked down.  On the way down we hiked through rolling countryside and walked through our Halloween corn maze.  At the end of the hike there were some boiling mud-pits, too.  The safety precautions taken with them were substandard. I think the pictures speak for themselves:

Lightning!

Lava!

And the bus ride home. 

Sama is writing more about our adventures in the highlands as we speak (yeah, right).