Sergei Mutovkin's Rumbling Mumbling

Our first excursion during Costa Rica vacation was to go abroad. We went to Nicaragua. Nicaragua is a poor country that has to buy its energy from Costa Rica, a big friend of Venezuela and has two old colonial towns: Granada and León. León unfortunately is way far north, so we did not go there, but we did go to Granada. However, before exploring human history we went to see natural one – Masaya Volcano.

Masaya Volcano is active, where by active I mean it still breathes. Sulfur dioxide fumes are coming out non-stop right from the depth of the crater. To see it in all its beauty you have to climb 107 steps that will lead you to the cross.

There at the top fumes are quite noticeable and some people feel they need to urgently run down, but I felt quite fine..

The second stop was a small town of Masaya. Otherwise boring place is famous by having a big souvenirs market, where people in blue attack you by offering their service to lead you to lowest price shop… we have escaped them and bought all the stuff we wanted at bargain prices.

Granada city was the last stop of the trip. A home style lunch at one of the hotels was followed by a forty minute carriage ride with frequent stops to see most interesting sights.

Right from the start of our trip we have asked to stay in Granada City longer than required by the schedule (thanks for the tip Irina and Dan) and after the carriage ride we walked quiet streets surrounding the main square.

Soon thereafter we were back on the bus heading into unknown – drive back to Costa Rica with lazy Costa Rican customs officers on our way. But just before we left we had a chance to see real WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

You can see the rest of the pictures from the trip on my Nicaragua Flickr Set. More photos from our Costa Rica vacations are coming shortly. It took a me whole week to process these photos and a bit of hacking of Gpisync that I use to geotag my photos to allow saving Unicode names.