We headed to Volcan Masaya. The only active Volcano in the Western Hemisphere you can drive to the rim of.



Look for the 4Runner on the left to compare to the crater

The volcano is surrounded by legend and lore.

The indigenous people would sacrifice young girls to appease the volcano gods to prevent eruptions. The indians considered the mouth of the volcano “the gateway to hell”

A spanish priest back in the 1600’s placed this cross at the top of the Volcano.

The volcano is spewing tons of Sulfuric gas into the air. It is the largest natural polluter IN THE WORLD. You can barely breathe up there and cough the entire time. Definitely not a safe place to hang out very long.

The volcano went off in 2005 shooting huge rocks and gasses all over the place, lots of people were injured and cars were damaged. Now they have warnings to park your car facing outwards just in case you gotta get the hell outta there!

OBEY THE SIGNS

Prepared for a speedy escape

We took a hike up to the top of the ridge, Lauren is standing in front of an older volcano that is now dormant and filling in with plantlife.

Volcan Masaya

The volcan houses an odd species of parrots who nest down in the walls of the volcano. somehow they have adapted to the sulfuric gasses.

We signed up for a night tour of the lava tubes. You don a sweet helmet and get a flashlight. The tour takes you down into an amazing dormant lava tube cave. This cave used to be full of molten hot magma.

Suited up.

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Hiking to the tubes

Cave entrance.

Suprise supirse its hard as hell to take pics in a dark cave so all our cave pics suck




The cave was also full of BATS

Look in the background of this pic to see how many bats we are working with

Very creepy

After the lava bat cave we hiked to the top of the volcano and looked down into a big cloud of gas, once every 30 seconds or so you could see the red glow from the lava bubbling up below. I tried taking pics but nothing came out.

We got check “SEE LAVA” off the bucketlist.