Tranquila Adelita: León and volcanos, Nicaragua

It s been already almost a week i arrived in León! Time flies here! It's so easy to relax, trek, connect with people in such a beautiful, safe and welcoming city. The down side would be the heat...

León is colorful, animated and surrounded by volcanos and lakes and is close to the sea. Not less than 16 old churchs make this city unique!

The markets are amazing! Lots of excellent fruits and veggies! The prepared dishes are less tempting to me but I tried anyway the arroz con Leche y canela , to eat directly from the plastic pocket, for breakfast. Was pretty good!
I tried also the local cheese cuajada, sort of feta... the smoked version is really good in a salad with avocado!
I tried the flan today but it smelled so strong like cheese or cow, I don't know... I gave it away to the cleaning lady who was delighted!

The first 2 days in León I did an excursion with a couple of fun parisians Raphaëlle and Rémi (living in my neighborhood!), and a young Dutch guide from Sonati agency.

We left with food and water for 2 days, a tent, a mattress and a sleeping bag. We first climbed the Cerro Negro in the morning to experiment the boarding on the black rocky sand. I personally enjoyed very much the running down which was very sporty and fun! Then after a jumpy lunch break among our friendly bees (I got stung of course!), we started the real trek to El Hoyo, carrying 12kg on the back! That was a hell of a trek! Quite stiff and rocky. The heat was killing us! We got to the camp site at 4.30 pm. We set up the tents and went on walking up to the top of the volcano to enjoy an incredible view on San Cristóbal, the Nicaragua lake, the Cerro Negro... The sunset on this landscape was a real reward to the walk.

We ate our picnic dinner near a camp fire and ended it with the traditional marshmallows (of course)!
Lots of fun!
Tough night for me! Scary noises, lots of wind, hard and rocky floor, small tent (even for a small person like me)... I might have slept nor more than 2 hours in total!
Got up at 5.30am. Breakfast. At 6.30am we started to walk down... It was perhaps harder than the walk up!!! Very stiff and slippery... I felt 4 or 5 times!! My knees were already suffering a lot!
At 10.30am we arrived exhausted at a beautiful laguna where we enjoyed a fantastic bath and a snack break, with the beautiful big ear cows!

We then had to walk one hour to get back to the road where we hitch hiked to get to the bus stop!
Be careful! It s not because you re at a bus stop... that the bus will stop! We had to run like locos after the bus!

The next day, we - the 3 parisians and my Austrian roommate Roman - found the best way (cheapest and easiest) to get to the top of Telica, a volcano in activity! We paid a chauffeur with a 4×4 to take us to the bottom of the volcano and pick us up after night fall...45min to walk up to this amazing crater blowing out sulfur smoke! Of course I was too scared to got too close to the edge but I did see the red lava spots inside the crater after twilight, when it got dark. Very impressive. Going down the volcano in the dark, with frontal lamps was also quite adventurous...