We’re surrounded by liquid hot MAG-ma

Last night was a nice sleep: we’d extended our stay in the hotel for a couple of days but they didn’t have a basic room available, so they upgraded us to the deluxe suite, which was part of the original building. This was huge, with a giant king bed, shower, walk-in closet we had no use for, and a fan over its own patio overlooking the pool. Today at breakfast we met the hosts’ pet chicken, Coco, in addition to the pet dog Bruno that we’d already met.

After breakfast and booking the day’s volcano hike, we spent the first half of the day chilling at the pool and reading, and that took us so long that we went for lunch at Cusco Callao again because it was closer than Del Norte. It might sound like we only eat at touristy restaurants targeted towards rich gringos, but that is mainly because we are actually gringos who are kind of sick of eating gallo pinto. How much rice and beans can a person eat?

We were picked up by a pick-up truck for our afternoon hike to Telica volcano. The ride to the trailhead in the old truck took about 2 hours. We were joined by another couple from Canada and a guy from Argentina. That was too many people to fit in the truck so two of the guys and the guide rode in the back of the truck. The Canadian guy stuck his head in the window to offer Guy a can of beer.

We all hiked up mount Telica to see the sunset. Telica is one of the 7 active volcanoes in Nicaragua, out of 19 total. On the way up we saw some colorful lava rocks created by the magma eruptions. Our guide insisted that it be called magma while still in the ground; the lava was all around us. The hike was not very hard (we were just happy to not have a board to carry.) All of us were good hikers so the hike up went by fairly quickly despite many stops for the guide to point out rocks and explain what minerals the different colors indicate.

Near the top of the trail we walked on the edge of the crater and peered into it. The air was very smelly and dusty from sulfur fumes and other volcano secretions. It was too smoky at that time to see any of the magma.

We visited a nearby bat cave and harrassed the bats in their home. The bats were cute and small and looked like winged gerbils, or like giant moths when they flew. There were many flying around and we felt bad about intruding, especially when our guide woke them up with a flashlight and bat sounds from his phone.

From there we continued to the sunset watching spot on the other side of the volcano, where we sat and had some snacks. The smoke and dust from the crater was everywhere and we watched the sunset through it. It started getting windy and dark so we walked back to the crater to look inside, and managed to see some orange spots of magma through the smoke and dust. It was interesting but also quite hard to see because of all the wind blowing the smoke everywhere.

The hike down was quick, we used flashlights and with the nearly-full moon it was really a convenient hike. The truck took us back to the city to eat the dinner that was promised as part of the tour. It was at a local grill dive which served some basic central american staple foods: gallo pinto, salad, tortillas and pork. Two of our group were vegeratarians and got plantain instead.