It’s a long bus ride from the port city of San Juan Del Sur to Masaya Volcano. A couple of weeks ago, I shared photos of our visit to the volcano noting that there was about a 30-minute delay as we sat in stopped traffic. The tour guide wasn’t sure, but he guessed correctly that the delay was due to the passing of the pilgrimage, an annual holy week tradition some 150 years old. We couldn’t quite figure out how the traffic delay worked but we were sitting on the northbound lane in stopped traffic not moving at all, yet traffic appeared to be moving just fine in the southbound lane. At first I thought the single lane traffic would stop in the southbound lane and then we would proceed. It didn’t exactly happen that way.

Eventually the cause of our delay passed in the southbound lane. A long line of ox and pony carts traveled single-file past our bus window. Much as I would have liked to have the freedom of movement to capture the event from different angles, I was stuck on the bus. Fortunately my seat happened to be on the correct side of the bus so that I had a clear view out the window of the procession as it moved along the highway.

When we returned home, I was able to find out more about the pilgrimage. The Internet can be a wonderful thing. In the days before Holy Week, the faithful who will be participating in the centuries-old event gather in Nandaime to prepare for the journey to Popoyuapa. Their goal is to honor Jesus the Rescuer, their devotion in thankfulness for the miracles given them in their lifetime. To these faithful Christians, the pilgrimage is one of the most important religious experiences in the country of Nicaragua.

Carts contain the traveling gear, food, and other necessities for the week-long pilgrimage. Covered with palm and other plants to help keep the interior cool, they are decorated in colors important to the season; purple in recognition of Holy Week, yellow, representing the Catholic Church, and blue representing Nicaragua. As they passed by, I couldn’t help but think about the sacrifices the pilgrims make having to acquire oxen, care for them, build or buy a cart, outfit the family for the trip and take off work to make the pilgrimage.

Hanging from many of the carts were lawn chairs, food baskets, and many other necessities for a trip such as this. From my research, I found that the journey takes some pilgrims as many as four days, and the journey may be as long as 75 miles (120 km) each way. Some apparently walk at night and rest during the hot days. Others walk day and night. In 2013, according to one article I read, over 400 carts arrived in Popoyuapa at the feet of the statue of Jesus del Rescate.

Upon our return from the volcano park, we found that many of the pilgrims had made camp and were either calling it a day or maybe just waiting for the heat of the day to pass so that they could continue in the cooler night air. The tradition, I’m told, went back over 400 years, however the oxcart procession began in the mid-1800’s. I submit for your review images I captured of the pilgrimage from our admittedly limited viewpoint out of a bus window. You may click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner

On the road to Catarina, Nicaragua.

It’s a rule of the tour guide. Introduce the bus driver as we begin the tour. Invariably, he just got his license and it’s his first day or week on the job. Everyone laughs. As we left Masaya National Park, we had a 40-minute or so drive to the small town of Catarina. These drivers earn their wages when it comes to navigating the narrow streets of older towns and villages. Such was the case at Catarina when this giant tour bus had to navigate a tight corner with a poorly parked vehicle at precisely the wrong place taking up part of the roadway. After some deft maneuvering, we continued on and the driver got a busload of applause.

A few days earlier, at Acapulco, our driver encountered more poorly parked vehicles and low hanging trees in the center island of a particularly narrow street. We brushed a tree close enough to break a branch as the driver worked to maneuver around the vehicle that shouldn’t have been parked where it was. Fortunately, the driver showed up and drove his car up on the sidewalk far enough so that the bus could get by.

Bus windows aren’t the best places to take photographs with the danger of motion blur in the foreground objects, strange perspectives, and the ever present dirty bus window. But you take what you get when you sit down. Along the way, you might find some interesting subjects like the artwork we passed as we went through a small town on our drive. As I imply with my blog title, sometimes it’s truly the journey, not the destination.

I don’t know if the guy beside the truck is an officer writing a ticket or if he’s just someone who is working a job with the trucker. I saw no police vehicles around, but I thought the scene to be a colorful snapshot of life in Nicaragua. Next week, I will share with you some bus window photos of the event that kept us waiting in stopped traffic for over 30 minutes.

Narrow bridges and other obstacles seem to be commonplace. Sometimes the tour guide points out something of importance and I take a photo confident in the fact that i will remember why I took the photo. Well, with this image, not so much. I do think it’s related to the nearby volcano, but it doesn’t look like lava flow, just a dry river bed. I share the photo here because I like it… not because I can tell you what it is about.

You may recall in the opening paragraph, we were on our way to the small town of Catarina. Therein lives about 9000 residents, many of whom are quite happy when the cruise buses come to town as their livelihood depends upon the tourist money injected into their economy each week. As the bus parked, we were given instructions. Viewpoint that way, shopping there, the bus will be waiting at…, etc. We were given a little time to eat and take in the view of the nearby Apoyo Lagoon. Of course, we were dropped off in a shopping area where we could knock ourselves out buying souvenirs. For a closer view of the lake, we could rent a horse and check out the countryside. Well, we couldn’t, our tour stop there didn’t last long enough for that horseback ride.

We opted to skip lunch noting the size of the crowd and the little time assigned to the stop considering the lateness of our arrival here. Besides, we knew there would be plenty to eat on the ship when we returned. We didn’t know then that it would be just in time for dinner. Lynn and I headed immediately toward the viewpoint to check out the lagoon. A viewing area with bleachers is a permanent fixture there and as you can see by the opening photo, it’s a prime spot to check out the lake that has filled the volcanic crater.

In the distance, directly across the lake, I could see what appeared to be a fairly large city. Not knowing what city it might be, I used my 300 mm zoom lens to get as close as possible to capture the image. Google Maps would tell me later that this city is Granada, the largest city in Nicaragua and one of the most important historically and economically. On our one day tour, we would not make a visit to this city, but if I ever get back to Nicaragua, it sounds like an interesting place to visit. The Wikipedia post about Granada notes the population is over 120,000 as of their 2012 census.

San Juan del Sur is a shallow harbor and the ship has to anchor some distance off shore. Like Cabo San Lucas, we had to use tenders to transport to the dock. The photo above was captured through the open window of the tender we boarded on our way to the dock. The harbor town is on the far left and tucked behind that large hill on the nearest point of land in the photo. On our return, we arrived at the dock over an hour late and after the ship should have already been sailing toward our next stop in Costa Rica. No matter. We were on an NCL excursion. They guaranteed not to leave us behind. There were two tenders waiting, one for our busload of guests, the other for ship’s crew who were waiting at the dock to escort us from the bus to the dock and to pack up their gear. It wasn’t long after we boarded the ship that we were underway and on our way to Puntarenas, Costa Rica.

John Steiner

Our excursion to Nicaragua’s most active volcano began with a 76-mile (122 km) bus ride to the Volcano Masaya National Park only about 15 miles (25 km) from the capital city of Managua. We were late getting there due to a 30-minute stop for traffic, a pilgrimage of the faithful Catholics that I will share with you in a couple of weeks. That delay and subsequent smaller delays would ultimately get us back to the ship late. Fortunately since the tour is an NCL excursion, the ship waited for us.

But I digress… Masaya National Park features a road that leads to a viewing area where just feet from the parking area, you can step off the bus and moments later find yourself looking into one of the main calderas. The opening photo features a view of the volcano captured from along the roadway on our way back to the ship. The lateness of our return precluded the promised side trip to a more photogenic viewing area.

As we approached the caldera viewing area, we could see a lava flow that spewed from the volcano’s earlier eruptions. The last eruptions spewed ash in April, June, August, and December 2008. That December, the ash cloud rose to over 3 miles (5 km) above the volcano. The last explosion was on April 23, 2001. Visitors to the crater rim on that day were surprised by the sudden volcanic explosion and two people were injured. Though we were given rudimentary safety instructions on what to do if the volcano were to erupt while we were there, I don’t think our tour bus would be very much of a safe zone from a really angry volcano.

I was actually quite surprised to be dropped off so closely to the edge of an active volcano. The atmosphere is thick with sulfur gases emitting from the opening. As you can see in the photo above, the winds were pushing the sulfur cloud toward the viewing area. Where I was standing, I could smell it, but I was getting mostly fresh air. Looking into the photo on the extreme right is a higher vantage viewpoint that I tried to use. Unfortunately the sulfur cloud precluded me from standing there as each breath brought a fresh load of sulfur into my lungs. I didn’t stay long enough to get that treasured viewpoint photo.

The view from the crater’s edge were up close and apart from the rising cloud of sulfur, quite photogenic. Over the years lava lakes and red glows have been visible but according to a history of the volcano’s recent activities, that lake slowly cooled and crusted over in the mid-1990’s. For those more interested in the volcano’s geologic history, check out the article here.

On the day we visited, workmen were either repairing or installing a giant cross on the nearby peak. From this shot, you can see the viewing area that I had to move away from earlier. The sulfur cloud didn’t drive everyone away from the vantage point, but I’m sure it didn’t do anyone’s lungs any good while they were standing there.

The National Park had a small line of visitors in cars that were also visiting the park that day. The drive from the park entrance doesn’t take long and the entire visit to the volcano rim was less than 30 minutes. From this stop, we would travel to the small town of Catarina where there is a viewpoint of Apoyo Lagoon, a volcanic crater lake about 30 minutes from the national park. More on that part of the excursion next week.

John Steiner