Volcan Masaya is one of the best day trips from Managua, Nicaragua.
- To skip the explanation and just book a Volcan Masaya tour, head here.
The volcanoes of Nicaragua
There’s something about volcanoes that’s infinitely more fascinating than any other potential source of horrific natural disaster. The sheer visual impressiveness of eruptions and flowing lava seems to have a more compelling narrative than an earthquake, or flood, or hurricane.
Similarly, going up a volcano always sounds infinitely more exciting than going up a mountain. And for anyone who has the same magnetic attraction to the things, you’re never all that far away from them in Central America.
Part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a spine of volcanoes runs up Central America, with Nicaragua alone having 19. Most of them are active, and all of them prove irresistible targets of varying difficulty for trekkers.
Driving to Volcan Masaya from Managua
The easiest one to reach from Managua is Volcan Masaya, where day tours drive right up to the edge of the crater. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate – it’s two volcanoes that are lumped together as one, with five separate craters shared between them. The one that you can drive to the edge of is Crater Santiago, which is technically part of Volcan Nindiri. But suffice to say, if you fall into it, you’ll not be grumbling about such technicalities.
Parakeets in Crater Santiago
Crater Santiago is active. Very, very active. Stand on the rim, and you can taste how toxic the fog rising out of it is. More than a few gulps of that, and you’re going to feel very ill. That doesn’t stop the insane parakeets that live in holes inside the crater however – they’re seemingly unaffected by it.
Walking the saddle of Volcan Masaya
From the rim itself, it’s very difficult to get a decent idea of what’s going on, so it’s worth walking up the saddle that divides Masaya and Nindiri. There’s quite a difference looking down into the long extinct Crater San Fernando – it’s a bowl of greenery that could conceivably be a Hunger Games set or a lost world containing hitherto undiscovered dinosaurs.
From the top, you can see over the plains to Lake Managua and the Momotombo volcano. It’s a scene of the utmost clarity, yet turn towards Crater Santiago and it’s like a cloud factory, white-grey murk steadily rising and being joined by yet more noxiousness pumped from below.
Spanish colonists and the Mouth of Hell
What’s arguably more fascinating, however, is the cultural impact of living next to a volcano. On a hill further round the ridge is a large cross, and a small museum in the Masaya visitor centre tells the story its erection. The Spanish, not long after they arrived in the country, dubbed the volcano “La boca de infierno” – the mouth of hell. They believed the devil lived down there, and friar Francisco de Bobadilla ordered the cross be put up in 1529 as a way of keeping it there.
Sacrifices at the museum in the Volcan Masaya visitor centre
In the museum, there’s also a painting of the newly converted indigenous people putting an effigy on the cross in a bid to pacify the volcano as it erupted.
This is nothing particularly new either – before the Spanish arrived, the indigenous people would make regular sacrifices to the volcano as a plea for mercy from its wrathful temper.
Heaven knows what those parakeets have seen go flying past them in the name of pacification…
More things to do in Managua, Nicaragua
Aside from the Volcan Masaya tours, other things to do in Managua include guided hikes amongst the howler monkeys of the El Chocoyero El Bruyo Nature Reserve.
