7th and 8th August were spent in Granada. The morning of 7th was a travel morning as is becoming the norm on this trip, which is good as it means you arrive at a place to be able to spend at least a day and a half there. Our journey involved the ferry back across Lake Nicaragua and then a mini bus to Granada. We arrived by midday and after getting our rooms went for a walk in the city. Granada is on the western shore of the lake and is a beautiful colonial city. There are many brightly painted houses and there has been restoration work to the old colonial buildings. It was a nice place to wander around, although with the heat it was too hot to spend too long wandering. Some streets were really busy and bustling but others very quiet and almost deserted. I was pretty tired after not sleeping so well (been too hot) so i decided to have an early dinner (chinese - chow mein!) then got an early night, think I was asleep by 10 at the latest and slept really well, it was so nice to have air conditioning (for the first time) and feel a bit cool for a change!

Sunday 8th was a really nice day, perhaps one of my favourite since starting the GAP tour part of my trip. In the morning a group of us went to la laguna de Apoyo, a lagoon in the crater of a volcano. It was much bigger than I´d expected and it was beautiiful! It was very clear water and even though I thought i wouldn´t like it, I really did enjoy going in the water, and not just because of the heat! It was actually a tiny bit cooler being out of the city, but not much. Had an interesting chat with one of the tour company staff who said today was a "cool" day as it was only 32 or 34 degrees! Usually could be 38 and never goes below 30. Have to say I´m still finding it too hot all the time! Anyway we spent a relaxing few hours at the lagoon then had to get back to Granada as we were going on a trip to a volcano. However before that we hoped to see a local festival tradition in Granada where bulls run in the streets after silly people who want to run in front of them! A little like the one that takes place in a spanish city, I forget the name of it. There I think the bulls run freely but here they were tied and kind of controlled by guys on horses, I say kind of as one almost came at us! Bit scary! The best thing about being able to witness this was to experience the exitement in the town building, you could feel the tension building and there were lots of people in the streets. We saw 3 bulls pass and of corse lots of people running from them. Then we had to go on our trip, though apparently later one got lose and some people were injured. Sadly the bulls are provoked and I guess that´s when injuries occur.

So our trip to Masaya volcano was an interesting one. We drove to the volcano then up to the car park, which is at the top, at the crater. Funny signs in the car park tell you to park facing the exit, this is because it is an active volcano and whilst it mostly lets off smoke and gases it sometimes throws out rocks, etc and therefore could be dangerous! Apparently some kind of activity had taken place 2 days earlier. The crater was deep and we saw increased smoke coming out, even while we were there. My guide book from 1994 says it was (is?) one of the most active volcanoes in the world....
We walked up to a view point, which gave us great views, but I almost gave up. It wasn´t far, but it was sooooo hot! After that we went to some bat caves in the lava tubes/tunnels! In the first there were loads of little bats flying around. The second was more to see inside the lava flows, and you could see roots etc where trees have grown on the outside. Coming out was very misty, and that combined with sulphorous gases of the volcano made breating difficult, especially for asthmatics. Due tto the fog we unfortunately had no chance of seeing any lava in the dark, but it was great to have seen it and looked into the volcano crater.

(PS. The photo has nothing to do with Granada, the STA website unfortunately has no pics for Nicaragua and I´ve not put any on yet)