I'm going to start out by saying WOW. Today is the reason I travel. The world is so unbelievably beautiful, belleza y hermosura (sometimes english just isn't enough). In only 12 hours, we've biked, kayaked, hiked and explored.
We started our day out at 7:30, Javoni (our guide) met us at our hotel to take us to the bike rental place, which was conveniently located a couple blocks from our hotel. We spent the next three hours biking all around Granada, literally, all around. We went though a cemetery, multiple churches, through the main plaza, and then down to the Lake Nicaragua and around the peninsula. Thankfully we had mountain bikes because the roads are full of pot holes and are super bumpy. Everywhere we went was full of history and Javoni explained everything he possibly could to us. We learned about the civil war between Leon and Granada and their battle for the capitol of Nicaragua, we learned about Captain Morgan and all the churches and areas he attacked and burnt to the ground, we saw abandoned an abandoned hospital, a train station that was turned into a trade school and we climbed a bell tower to get a full 360 view of the city. Then we biked down this campo road and ended up down on the lake to the place where we were going to be kayaking. We kayaked all around a bunch of isletas. There are 365 mini islands in Lake Nicaragua. We spent two hours looking at howler monkeys, spider monkeys, herons, vultures, ospreys, and all kinds of wild life. We passed one island that had a school on it with tons of little boats out front. Achool got out at noon, and we saw all the kids get in their boats and paddle back home to their isletas. On the way back from kayaking, we stopped along the ride and bought fresh coconuts. They were unbelievable.
At 4pm we headed to the Masaya National Park and wow, we were blown away. There was one active crater that was smoking, and (I think) 4 other dormant craters. We learned about the sacrifices that used to occur in this active crater and that when the Spaniards came into Nicaragua, they believed the magma was liquid gold so they sent the indigenous people down into the crater to retrieve it. We hiked around to get different view points of the crater and the landscape since we were at one of the highest points. Every single view point we hiked to was more breath taking than the last. The sun was setting by the time we made it to our last view point and I have never, in my entire life, seen anything but more incredible. The crater was fuming, the sky was glowing orange/red in the background, volcanoes loomed in the distance and everything was surrounded by forest and Lake Nicaragua. It was surreal to see, and unfortunately the pictures do not do it justice (but I took a million anyway).
Now that it was dark, we put on our helmets and grabbed flash lights to climb down into and explore the lava caves. These caves are the only caves made by lava in all of Central America (apparently Costa Rica has caves that are made from water). Anyway, the wind was blowing on to the side where the caves where and the sulfur fumes from the volcano made it difficult to breathe. We were all coughing within the first couple minutes on the walk to the caves. The first cave we went in to we were allowed to explore 200m into. Bars fluttered around and we could see all the lava bubbles that hollowed out the rock. Once we got into the biggest room in the cave, the deepest we were allowed to go (which also is the place where they used to select the sacrifices) a local tour guide dressed in the native dress warned us not to talk too loud or shout in the caves because they could collapse at any second. We were ready to head out pretty quickly after that. Then we headed to the mouth of a smaller cave where we sat in complete darkness to listen/watch bars fly out of the cave. It was oddly calming and relaxing to feel them flutter right above you.
Today exceeded our expectations and was non stop full of amazing sights.