Masaya, days 3 and 4

Masaya has been a less interesting than I´d expected. I guess since the guidebooks came out touting it as the place where hammocks are made and can be bought, it has become the place where tourists go to get ripped off for souvenirs. I´ve had a sort of identity crisis, because in Nicaragua I am a tourist, but I try to be a different kind, one who gets to know the people and care about them. So I thought it would be easy to go visit artisans´workshops to see the handicrafts being made, but I couldn´t really find them my first day. So I went to the very touristy old market, as it´s called, and bought a nice hammock (family size, for that husband and kids I have...it´s the only size that seems worth the money though) and a hanging hammock-weave chair. I´ll post pix of those then I have them hung up in site. Sidenote: I miss my site, knowing people, cooking for myself (this town has very little for a vegetarian to eat, but the fruit´s just fine), Mona, etc. But to ease my pain of being a tourist, I struck up a conversation with the guy who sold to me (I´ve been trying to do this as much as possible, in taxis, etc., as much to prove to them that I´m not the ordinary limited-vocabulary tourist, and also because I feel like becoming a human to people makes them less likely to try to rip me off or worse). He was a nice guy, I ended up paying 50 bucks for both items, which I is a price I´m not embarrassed about. My strategy is always go for the guys who could be my great uncle or something. That age range. And must be pudgy, preferably with glasses, wearing a polo shirt or something with sleeves.

For the second day, I decided to go where I always enjoy, because I´d felt pretty crummy about Masaya in general (except for a decent burrito for dinner). What do I always enjoy? Farmers´markets, and nature. So I´d read in the Lonely Planet that there´s a second market at the bus terminal (which I needed to locate anyways), and since nothing was open for breakfast yet, I headed over there. And breathed a sigh of relief, and then almost vomited over my 50 cent bag of watermelon chunks because I was near the butchers section which invariably smells more than it should, in any meat market in Latin America. But that market is significantly more real. They have the tourist stuff there, but just being among people going about business as usual made me feel better. I´ll be re-stocking my snack fruit supply tomorrow morning before going to pick Theodore up at the airport. Then I went to nature. An entirely DIFFERENT kind of nature than the usual rain forests and rivers, however.

That´s sulfury smelling smoke, not dust, behind me.

Behold, the Parque Nacional Volcán Masaya...or, Masaya Volcano National Park. It´s the country´s only active volcano, not that it´s shooting out lava, but it´s definitely smoking. It´s cool to see, and the visitors center has an exhausting exhibit about what volcanoes are. I took some pictures at the top, it´s now the second volcanic crater I´ve seen up close (first being Haleakala on Maui, which was better, actually). I met a Spanish guy when he was trying to take a self portrait, and offered to take his picture FOR him, and then he took mine for me. So you must thank Roberto for that picture. Then we walked all the way down the crater together. I wanted to go alone, but the park rangers stalk you and sort of matched us up and kept calling us ¨la pareja¨ (the couple) as they were radioing our whereabouts. But he was nice enough, and I was surprised we understood each others´Spanish. Though he corrected my vocab a few times, which is funny because it´s like a British person correcting my American vocabulary. Neither is wrong. Anyways, I suppose I was glad to use my vocal cords for something other than a monetary transaction.Some priest put up a Cross there because the thought was that the Devil lives down there. But since there´s a cross, it´s ok, it´s now a Catholic volcano and the Devil won´t want to come up (i.e. erupt). Though it did in 2001, a little bit.

Good precautions.