- Among Nicaragua's many attractions, tourists are most interested in volcano-related attractions
Nicaragua in Central America is friendly to foreign tourists, and tourism has long been one of the important local incomes. Prices are cheap, inflation is low, local gasoline is not expensive, road driving habits are the same as in China, it is all right,and using mobile phone maps to navigate, you can take you to various places of interest that you want to go.
Nicaragua has many well-known tourist attractions, including the Volcanic Geopark, the coastline tourist city, the ancient city left over from the Spanish colonial period, the ancient ruins of the Mayan culture and so on. Until now, new ancient Mayan civilization remains can be found in the remote areas here, but in Nicaragua, the remains of mayan civilizations have not been found in large pyramids and spectacular Mayan cities, mostly ancient volcanic worship stone altars and tribal life remains, and the remains of Mayan civilizations found are relatively ancient and distant.
Among the many attractions, the volcanic geological landscape is the most characteristic of Nicaraguan tourism, and it does spend a lot of money on volcanic attractions, and the roads and supporting facilities are well built. Within 30 kilometers of managua airport, there are many lava lakes and crater lakes that can be visited.
For example, on the "Ometepe Island" in The Nicaragua Lake, there is also a special tourist airport to facilitate tourists to visit the local lake volcano. Drive to the volcanic attractions here, don't worry about getting lost, the volcano is there, you can clearly see it more than ten kilometers away, and you can drive in the direction of the volcano. In modern times, the volcanoes here have always had thick smoke and fiery red magma coming out, and spectacular active volcanoes can be seen every day, and the lava flowing under many volcanoes is still hot, and it will not disappoint to come to Nicaragua to see the volcano.
- Public transport in Nicaragua is not well developed, and self-driving is the most free way to travel
Renting a car in Nicaragua, you can use a chinese driver's license translation, the whole procedure is very convenient. The entire national road network is well connected, the road infrastructure is very good, and there are highways between major cities (highway level in Central America).
There are asphalt roads in the city and tourist attractions, and other small roads are mainly gravel roads, where you can sometimes see ox carts, horse-drawn carriages, and cowboys riding horses, which resemble the western United States.
Local vehicles are not fast, drivers are very obedient to traffic rules, and the cars will give in to each other. There are some local buses or shuttles that are still used by American used school buses.
In Nicaragua, except for the capital and large cities, there is basically no electronic monitoring of roads in other areas, and even almost no traffic police are seen, and traffic rules are mainly conscious by drivers.
Due to the local volcanic landform, so some of the small stones on the road will be very sharp, the road surface on the sand and volcanic soil is also more, for the tire has a lot of damage, especially some dirt road sections, easy to puncture tires. Our car had a puncture throughout the trip, but the locals passing by were very helpful and helped us change our spare tires.
Less than 10 kilometres from the city centre of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, there is a volcano of Apoyeque, which is now 518 meters above sea level. The volcano's last major eruption, around 50 BC, was one of the largest known explosions in human history, and the volcanic lake here is famous for its perfectly shaped volcanic lake.
As it was so close to the capital city that it could be reached in less than an hour, we drove to the volcano by car. Aerial photography of the two volcanic lakes on the top of the mountain is indeed spectacular, can be called one of the wonders of Central America, the Network generally only has a photo of the volcanic lake at the bottom, and aerial photography found that the above volcanic lake is more beautiful, inadvertently took a shocking double volcanic lake photo, it feels indeed a blockbuster. There are a large number of active volcanoes towering around here, and the ribbon clouds floating in the sky are actually formed by the smoke from the nearby active volcanic craters.
I later looked for judgment and found a band of volcanic clouds, which were columns of smoke emanating from the active crater of Momotombo on the northwest side of Lake Managua. The volcano of Momotunbo, which erupted violently in 1609, destroyed the old city of León (a 16th-century colonial city) near the volcano, leaving the ruins of león Viejo (or "Leonvière"), buried by the volcanic eruption, becoming a reconstructed monument of the Americas that has not been subjected to urban planning, and the remains of a Spanish colonist settlement were officially listed as a World Heritage Site in 2000. Since 2015, The Momotunbo Volcano has once again been active and began to erupt, and it still spews smoke to this day.
- The volcano here is "young", so the mountain is tall and intact shape, and the volcanic lake is impressive
The multiple eruptions of the Apoyek volcanic group have formed a peninsula on the edge of Managua Lake and two large volcanic lakes at the top of the mountain, the lake in the middle of the summit is "Apoyegue Lagoon", and the bottom one is called "Xiloa Lagoon", which is really spectacular to see from the air.
The Apoyek volcanic lake above is very complete, without any gaps in the flow of lake water, but it may be that there is an underground hidden river, and there is not much scientific research in this regard. The lower elevation of The Volcanic Lake of Shiloa, the east shore of the lake is shallow, there are beaches, the road is easy to reach, there are villages nearby, often local people will go swimming, where the lake sand, lake rock is black.
The volcanic lake here has nothing to do with the surrounding water system, the altitude is very high, and it belongs to a completely independent body of water, but in the volcanic lake here, there are fish and crabs, which is really wonderful. According to scientific research reports, there are fish and white crabs in the volcanic lake here, geothermal vents at the bottom of the lake, and there are two kinds of beautiful fish in the lake that have similar biological genes but look different, and these fish and crabs have existed in the lake for a long time than the arrival of the Spanish colonists, and may even have nothing to do with human activities, which are natural.
Nicaragua's lakes are magical, and the volcanic lakes of the independent water system here have fish and crabs, and have naturally evolved their own special species, which scientists have not yet figured out. In Nicaragua, there are two other mega lakes: Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. These large lakes have ferocious predatory fish such as sharks and crocodiles, and they are also large sharks (a type of bull shark) of freshwater lakes, so the local people do not dare to swim in the deep waters of these lakes. So in Nicaragua, not only do volcanoes have many unsolved secrets, but the secrets in lakes may be more and more complex, the ecosystem here is indeed unique, natural and primitive, and there is little human interference and destruction, which is very interesting to study carefully.
From the perspective of the high volcanic lake, you can enjoy a panoramic view of the city of Managua in the distance, and the scenery is very unique. There will often be huge winds near the lake, the wind is so strong that it is impressive, the wind is so strong that it is difficult to blow people to walk, and the birds in the air are desperately flapping their wings forward, and the result is still flying backwards.
My drone is high in the air here, encountered a wind of perhaps more than ten levels, and as a result, the sports flight mode could not return, and the power saturation warning appeared, and it was almost about to run out of batteries and fall into the lake. Fortunately, in the end, I lowered my altitude, flew close to the lake, and followed the direction of the wind, rushed to the lake to make a forced landing, and landed in the bushes only a dozen meters away from the lake. To retrieve the drone, I went into the woods and bushes near the volcano.
In the process, I saw a variety of poisonous and exotic plants in the volcanic region. Large trees are rarely seen in the vicinity because of the strong winds, and the vegetation is also quite drought-tolerant coniferous plants and shrubs. There are many thorny plants in the local grass, these plants are very poisonous, stabbed on the body, will soon swell the bag, more severe than the bite of poisonous mosquitoes, after the toxicity, the itch is incomparable, scratching the bleeding or not swelling. I was stabbed dozens of times by poisonous thorns, I didn't know that the local plants were so poisonous, and then I was poisoned, forced to go to the hospital to see a doctor, and finally relied on the volcanic hot spring to detoxify, this story I will write again in the future.
In the wilderness jungle here, I also found abandoned ancient historical buildings and courtyards due to volcanic activity in the early years, but fortunately, the drone was intact in the end, and I also got help from the locals during the period. Jungle walking and adventure here requires professional equipment and challenges with many unknown environments. Volcanic Lake is local, there are professional routes to climb to the summit of volcanic lake, you need to hike outdoors (you need to hire a local professional guide to lead the way, climbing over volcanic peaks is quite dangerous, the volcanic rock here is quite sharp, there are a variety of poisonous plants and wild animals), in the volcanic lake here, you can also do scuba diving, watch the fish in the volcanic lake, and the underwater hydrothermal vents and other wonders.
Nicaragua's numerous volcanoes, which provide fertile volcanic ash and give birth to a lot of fertile land in western Nicaragua, are the more developed areas of Nicaraguan agriculture and cultivation. The people here, who also live in the crisis of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and even earthquake-induced lake tsunamis (similar to tsunamis), survive these crises and make people feel that the people of Nicaragua are quite determined and resilient. There are so many beautiful scenery and unsolved mysteries of nature in this land, and there are many wonderful new discoveries every day when you travel by car.