Day 4 - Masaya

Granada’s best tour guide, David, again picked us up for a visit to Masaya. We first made a stop at a fort that was used to defend Granada and as a prison during the Civil War. We continued on to Masaya Volcano and had a peak inside. This active volcano provides views of lava during an evening visit but we were there in the middle of the day. One can basically walk to the edge of the volcano and look right into it. Because one can get so close, there are warnings to limit your visit to 20 minutes due to the toxic smoke constantly being spewed out. After lunch in Masaya’s old market, we took a stroll through Masaya’s local market. It was a new experience, even for me, as official market workers infiltrated every last inch of personal space we had trying to take each person to a different booth to get a cut of a sale. I’ve never experienced that kind of parasitic action in the market, at least not by adults. It was quite annoying but effective as we eventually all got split up and David and I spent some time roaming the maze-like market in search of our group. There some purchases even as we ignored the market workers and people in the group started learning the process of bartering.