Mombacho Volcano

My 4th day in Nicaragua began similar to my third day, escorted by my guide Jessica, catching the same local bus we took the previous day to La Granadilla, except this time we got off a few stops earlier. We hiked up the road about a kilometer. It was clear this road had been improved by tourist money compared to the rural roads I saw before. We shortly reached the departure point for the day tour up to the top of the Mombacho Volcano. The Mombacho Volcano is the dominant land feature in this area, rising to an altitude of near 1300 meters from the base.

We arrived at the base and learned we had an hour until the bus departed for the top. This left plenty of time to kill checking out a botanical and butterfly research enclosure. The screened enclosure had an outer section where there were many examples of plants that grow in the forest canopy, at least those that could survive at this lower altitude.

The inner room housed quite a few butterflies and plants to support the insects. Several people who I would later realize double as tour guides were in the hut performing morning feeding, watering, and maintenance tasks as I walked around taking a few pictures. The light level was low, and even with a high ISO it was difficult to capture the insects without a tripod. The researchers explained that someone had left the doors open a few weeks before, allowing most of the butterflies to escape. They were just now re-stocking the room. I watched as they placed some newly acquired caterpillars on leaves of the plants.




A little while later more tourists showed up in the waiting area, and finally the trucks arrived that would take us up to the top. The road to the top is very steep, and required trucks with extra power and traction for the transportation. These looked like they could have been military transport trucks at one time, but they were now big and powerful with high clearance and used to transport tourists to the visitor center at the top of the volcano. We all climbed up the ladder into the truck and took a seat on the benches and waited for the journey to begin.

At about 1000M up the volcano, we stopped for 10 minutes at a coffee farm. We got a sample taste of coffee sold there. There was a viewpoint overlooking the concrete field where the coffee beans were dried. Workers were spreading beans to be dried and bagging beans ready to go.




Another truck ride up the steep section, past some coffee farm fields and then into the cloud forest, took us to the visitor center for the National Park. Here we had the choice of 1km, 2km or a 4km trail. It was required that everyone hiking be accompanied by a guide from the park. Of the 20or so tourists, I was the only one interested in the longest 4km trail. Funny how 4km seems so far to others but not to me after all the trail running I have done the last year. This meant I ended up with a private guide from the Park for the day while Jessica, having done this before opted to hand out in the visitor center. This trail I took did a complete circle of the top passing by all 4 craters of the volcano.

At the start of the hike, it was very foggy. The park guide recommended we do the hike in the reverse direction, saving the best view points for last in case the weather cleared later in the day. He spoke English well. He was studding botany at a local college and explained quite a bit about the plants growing in the canopy of the cloud forest that covers the volcano. He explained for example how some of these plants, growing on trees collect fresh water in their folds and how salamanders use it for drinking. So many things inter-related. Coincidently, I was in the middle of reading the book The Wild Treesby Richard Preston. That book had gone into detail about the plants growing the canopies of California Redwoods. While the plants were different here, many were similar and so it related well to the book.


Above, is a volcanic fissure that the trail passes through.
Below is an example of the plants growing in the canopy.

During the first portion the trail, we were behind a larger group hiking a shorter distance. That group had their own commercial tour guide who kept telling various stories and dropping “facts” about the local history and environment. As soon as they were out of hearing range, my guide, a little irritated, turned to me and told me he was making most of it up. It was no wonder Jessica kept being skeptical throughout the trip of stories some locals were telling.



The trail was composed of wooden boardwalks and tree stumps cut like stair steps or walking stones. It was raining on and off, and this made walking on the wood and wet leaves slippery. It was a little steep in some sections. I slipped and fell once, but didn’t break anything. We walked through the rainforest for some time, stopping frequently as the guide pointed out and explained many of the plants. I found the explanations very interesting, perhaps due to the tie-in with the book. After an hour we came to the first view point. Because of the fog there was nothing to see. My guide said he had a feeling it might clear in a moment and suggested we wait a few minutes. The wind was blowing up from the base, and in less than a minute the clouds lifted above our position and in a flash there was a suddenly view available of the little islands near Grenada. The transition from white out conditions to having such a view considering I was disoriented over which direction I was looking was a bit of a shock.



Above is a view of the city of Granada


Above is a view of the city of Masaya, Masaya lake, and the Masaya volcano is in the distance on the left.

Above is a view of the city of Granada

Above, the clouds begin to clear off of the Mombacho Volcano

We continued walking around the trail that passed by each of the craters of the volcanic complex. In a couple of places the far side of the crater had long ago collapsed, opening up viewpoints to the surrounding countryside. One of the collapses had occurred during recorded history, burying villages below in mudslides. We came to several viewpoints from which we could see the Masaya volcano, Cities of Masaya and Granada, and the Los Istles islands. At the last viewpoint I was able to see my first glimpse of the Conception volcano on Isla Ometepe, site of the ultramarathon I would run in a few days.


Since we were traveling a little faster than usual, the guide offered to take me to an extra viewpoint. So we did a quick 10-minute out and back down a less traveled path and arrived at a point on the edge of the crater where I got a better view of Conception and Isla Ometepe.


The rest of the hike back to the visitor center was along an access road used to reach some of the radio towers on the volcano. At the visitor center I had a nice typical lunch with Gallo Pinto, chicken, and fried Plantains. Although this food is simple, I never got tired of it. We then caught the last shuttle down the volcano and hiked back to the highway to catch the bus back to Grenada.

Taxi-rickshaw drivers at the highway told us the busses stopped early due to the local holiday. Jessica at first did not believe them assuming they were saying that so we would take their taxi instead. As we waited taxi drivers kept coming up and insisting they could get us to Grenada faster than the bus. We were afraid we would look like idiots if we jumped in a taxi, and watched as the bus passed us. As we waited, we watched several busses to Managua turn off towards that city at the highway intersection 100M before us. No busses came by for Grenada.

After holding out awhile but finding no busses to Grenada come our way, we accepted the offer from the taxi rickshaw driver who had been waiting for us nearby. The young taxi driver had promised it would be a quick trip, and so Jessica kept giving him a hard time, in a friendly joking way, to hold him to that. He drove that taxi as fast as those little things can go, which wasn’t all that fast. We never got passed by the bus, and later verified he was correct, the busses stopped early that day.

I had to make a difficult decision later that evening after reviewing the day’s photos. I lost the lens cap for my best lens a few days before, and it is not something that can be easily replaced in Nicaragua. I had been trying to keep the lens shielded in the bag, but it was still collecting too much dirt that show up in the pictures. Also, I had been traveling for four weeks and switching lens on my camera frequently. That had allowed quite a bit of dust to collect on the camera sensor. I tried, but could not clean it properly with the cleaning equipment I had with me without risking damage. Although I could edit out some of the worst dirt spots in Photoshop, that is a bit time consuming. So I decided to retire that camera for the rest of the trip. Fortunately I had a backup older DSLR. It has smaller resolution, but without the dust spots it would still get better pictures.

Links:
- More pictures from this day trip: LINK
- This tour was arranged by my guide throughout Nicaragua, ¡Un Buen Viaje!
- Google Map of the places visited in this Nicaragua Trip

Previous posts from the Nicaragua Trip:
- La Granadilla
- Managua and Coyotepe