Volcan Mombacho

Nicaragua is known as the land of lakes and volcanoes, and last weekend I had the opportunity to check out one of the volcanoes named Volcan Mombacho. Mombacho is about 1.5 hours from Managua, and very easy to get to. It's a semi-active volcano with a maximum altitude of 1400ish meters.

I headed out Friday morning, and met up with two friends in Granada. From there, we rode a pick-up truck up the volcano to the ecological station. On the way, we passed through the plantation where our coffee is grown! As we gained altitude, the air became cool and crisp - a nice change from the hot and humid air which I'm normally in nowadays. :-) The ecological station is located at 1150 meters, and contains a 10 bed hostel/dorm. My two friends and I were the only overnight guests that night, so we had the whole room to ourselves!

Our guide for the trip, Samir, explained a little bit about the area to us and then explained our hiking options. There were three options: an easy 1 hour walk, a really difficult 4 hour walk, or a 2.5 hour mixture of the two. We went for the mixture, which was a good choice - I'm not sure I could have done the 4 hour one, and even the 2.5 hour "moderate" one had some pretty steep climbs! It was more than worth it, however, for the amazing views. For the first part of the hike, we were walking around one of the four craters of the volcano, and mostly could just see into that crater. As we continued, however, we got to a point where we could see out over a huge portion of Nicaragua. The picture below shows part of the view from my favorite look-out point. On the left, you can see Laguna de Apoyo, a crater lake which is awesome to visit and swim in. The town in the middle-ish of the picture is Granada, and the lake to the right is Lake Nicaragua.

The view was amazing in all directions, and we were lucky to have a clear view! By the time we reached some of the higher points, we were completely in the clouds (which I suppose is an expected feature of being in a cloud forest) and couldn't see anything.

One of the perks to spending the night up at the ecological station is doing a guided night hike to find a particular type of salamander and frog, which are endemic to the area and don't live elsewhere. We were lucky enough to find both pretty quickly. The salamander was pretty darn cute, but hard to photograph. The frog was harder to find, since the green color blended into the leaves we were searching in. His big orange eyes gave him away, however!

Another perk of spending the night was hanging out with the guides who were working that night. Samir and one other guide saw us playing cards and decided to teach us some popular card games here in Nicaragua, which were a lot of fun.

When we woke up in the morning, the clouds were even thicker than the night before - when we opened the door to go outside, clouds came inside...literally. It was pretty damp, but we all enjoyed the nice cool weather for the night! We headed down the volcano and did a canopy tour, which consisted of 11 zip lines and 3 hanging bridges - it was a lot of fun and a good adrenaline rush. :-)

All in all, it was a really enjoyable weekend trip and I'm glad that I was able to see a bit more of Nicaragua in a place off the tourist path! I'm trying to take advantage of all the beautiful places in this country in the next four months before I head home, so hopefully I'll have some more blogs about cool places in the coming months!

Two-month photo update

First of all, I apologize that this blog hasn't been updated in two months. It has been a very busy few months, and there's no way I can adequately tell you about all of it...so I'm going to a photo from each week-ish to give you the highlights of my last two months, and I'll do better in the future about updating every week or two so that I don't have this problem again! Enjoy the photos and descriptions!


We had three weeks off for Christmas and New Years, which was a much appreciated and needed break. To start the trip off, I traveled to Guatemala for a week with two friends - Jesse, who is one of my housemates here, and Taylor, one of my close friends who is working with Manna in Ecuador this year. It was an amazing trip - we went to some really beautiful places, drank way more coffee than anyone should in five days, and just enjoyed relaxing and chatting and being tourists. The picture above is Taylor and I in front of Lake Atitlan, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.


After Guatemala, I spent a week in Michigan with my parents for Christmas. It was great to spend time with family and with friends who I hadn't seen in a while - it's always fun to reconnect. It's especially fun to reconnect when there are new babies to meet - the picture is my friend Stephanie's new baby boy, Lucas, who I am so glad I was able to meet and cuddle with while home!


The next location for my break was Houston, and it was fantastic to catch up with community there. I have realized even more since being away from my community in Houston how much of a blessing it is. Being surrounded by people who challenge you to grow while still being incredibly loving and supportive is something I don't take for granted, and I am excited to be back in the same place as my community of friends this summer! The picture above is some of my friends (and youth ministry teens) after Mass - I love and miss them all!


After getting back to Nicaragua, we had a lot of visitors in the house. My boyfriend, John, was able to visit for a week, and it was really great to show him around my communities here and also to travel a little bit. Here we are at the top of a hike near Matagalpa, a town in the north of Nicaragua.


We're back in full swing on programs now! Here are some of my beginner's English students, who are also in our teen English class, hanging out by our car after class. These boys are amazing - I'm looking forward to visiting in a few years and hearing them speak great English!


This is my kid's English class, which actually just ended. I'm a bit sad to see it end, but these kids are great! Enjoy their silliness!


This last week is probably the most fun - a kid in Christin and my English class gave us this post card a couple weeks ago. We're still unclear on what it means...let me know if you have any ideas!

I hope this was at least a decent update on what I've been up to for the past two months - expect more regular updates in the future for sure!