Nicaraguan volcanos

Day 8  Friday  February 9, 2018   Corinto, Nicaragua

Momotombo Volcano is behind me, spewing steam. We saw many active volcanoes on this day of visiting León Viejo, the "Pompeii of Central America," and León Nuevo. 

We landed in Corinto, in the northwestern part of the country, and immediately got on our excursion bus. Our tour guide, Guillermo, was a hoot all day long. Loved his jokes, such as the women sacrificing their husbands into the steaming volcano cauldrons. I also wrote down something he said regarding his own country, but which now applies to the United States: "Judge a country not by its leaders, but by its people."

On the drive to León Viejo, we passed two nearby volcanoes and their names were familiar California city names: Santa Clara and San Jacinto.

Momotombo erupted in 1610 and partially buried the town of León. Later eruptions completely buried it. It was not discovered until 1967. To this day, they are still excavating the original buildings, with only 25% so far excavated. It is very much like Pompeii except for one major difference - the citizens of León had packed up and completely moved to a new town 20 miles away prior to the 1610 eruption due to continuous minor eruptions. The entire area is a World Heritage Site.

Guillermo is explaining cashew trees.

The picture above this one shows the old city lay-out. The city was about half-mile long and a quarter-mile wide. This photo is one of many excavated dwellings.

There's poor old Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, the Spanish Conquistador who founded León in 1524. Two years later, he was decapitated here in the town square by his lieutenant. 

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I forget now what Guillermo was showing us, but he was interesting and funny.

More ruins of a marketplace. The walls are very low, because when they moved the city in 1610, they took as many bricks as they could with them to use in their new León city.

We walked to the eastern edge of the site to the shores of Lake Managua, with Momotombo in the background.

Using my maximum telephoto lens, I got this volcanic crater hole, at Vulcan del Hoyo.

There's a cashew!

Here's where we ate lunch, and they have a model volcano there.

More volcano models and native statues inside the little restaurant. These models (and others not in this picture) were based on actual volcanoes they have in this part of Nicaragua.

A representation of what León looked like in its heyday.

Now we are in new León. That's the cathedral, the main city feature in their town square, which we toured. It's the largest cathedral in all of Central America. Its full name: Real and Renowned Cathedral-Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Whew! They call it Our Lady of Grace for short.

I got a good shot of all the pigeons flying in circles after being scared up from the plaza.

That the rectory, just to the side of the cathedral.

I'm a Leo, so we had to get this photo. Besides, "León" means "lion."

Two interior cathedral photos above. In the first, you can tell who it is if you can read the sign: It's Pope John Paul II, who visited here in 1983. There are seven cellars which provide stability from earthquakes, but they also lead to the seven underground tunnels that extend to seven other city churches.

This lion (león) is weeping for the great Nicaraguan poet/writer Ruben Dario. It is likened to the weeping lion in Lucern, Switzerland. Dario initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as Modernism that flourished at the end of the 19th century.

The statue of the Crucifixion is a highlight of the cathedral. The picture directly above was a painted wall of a building directly across from the cathedral. When I took it, I just thought it looked nice, with the children running and a steaming volcano in the background. However, Guillermo later pointed it out to all of us and said that by coincidence, he met the artist one day there on the street as he was admiring it.

We left the cathedral but re-entered at a side door to climb stairs to the 2nd floor for a roof-top tour. I thought all these bells were interesting.

A 2nd-floor view to the north, with one of the nearby churches in the foreground (which may be reached by tunnel from the cathedral), and a couple volcanoes in the distance. Just about every mountain we saw there was a volcano.

The top of these two photos is another church to the east, with two more volcanoes in the distance. The next photo above is Janet walking on the cathedral roof top.

What a display of magazines along an alley next to the main plaza!

On the bus ride back to the ship, Guillermo explained the country's Sandinista history. It's a socialist democratic party named after Augusto Sandino, who led the Nicaraguan resistance against the U.S. occupation of the country in the 1930s  (but who was assassinated in 1936 by Somoza, whose family ruled until 1979). The Sandinista party began in 1961 because the two sons of Somoza who led the country in the 60s and 70s were extremely corrupt, murdering anyone and everyone to remain in power. When a 6.2 earthquake leveled the town of Managua in 1972, it killed 10,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 50,000 homeless. The corrupt government embezzled most of the international aid that flowed into the country. By 1979, the Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, were able to overthrow the Somoza government in the Nicaraguan Revolution. The war left 30-50,000 dead and 150,000 Nicaraguans in exile.

The pretty costumed women posed for us when we returned to our ship. 

That night onboard, I attended the magic show in the theater, but Janet elected not to (the magician's wife was a "contortionist" from Mongolia, and she would bend herself into some pretty amazing positions) . We dined in the Versailles main dining hall, and sat with a rich couple from Michigan who owned a 45-foot yacht kept in Marco Island, FL (I told them how I ran aground there, and they knew where it was!). When I left the theater, I decided to grab one of our new favorite dessert drinks, a Mudslide. But each bar I went to didn't make them, and wherever they told me to go find it, they didn't make it there either. I went front, back, up, down all over the ship until they finally made it for me in the very center of the ship at the O'Sheehan's bar.