How often do you find places more interesting than you expect? This was the case when Dale of the Maritime Explorer travelled with us to Managua in Nicaragua. Read on to the highlights he discovered.
This is my fifth post on Nicaragua from Adventures Abroad’s just completed Central American odyssey designed and led by the company’s veteran tour guide Victor Romagnoli. In this post we’ll make our way from the city of Granada which I was frankly disappointed in, but not the surrounding area, through the capital city of Managua and then to the ruins of Leon Viejo. It promises to be a fascinating day and I hope you’ll come along to enjoy it.
Ometepe – Lake Nicaragua’s Must Visit Destination
With two volcanoes dominating this island, Ometepe is a feast for the eyes but also features a great insight to Nicaragua's culture. We follow along with veteran guide Victor as Dale of the Maritime Explorer explains how their group trip to Ometepe went.
This is my fourth post on the country of Nicaragua which Alison and I are visiting as part of Victor Romagnoli’s Central America tour on behalf of Canadian travel company Adventures Abroad. One of the attractions for me in choosing this trip was the opportunity to see volcanoes, lot’s of them and Nicaragua fits that bill perfectly. In my last post we visited the active volcano Masaya and stared into what the Spaniard’s called ‘The Gates of Hell’. Today we are going to take a ferry to Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua where we will see two of the country’s most famous volcanoes, Concepción and Maderas as we do a near circumnavigation of the island. It promises to be a great excursion and I invite you to come along.
Masaya Volcano on a Nicaragua Tour
It is said that looking into this volcano is like looking into the Gates of Hell. We follow along with writer Dale of The Maritime Explorer as he recounts a wonderful day on our Central American tour.
At the end of my last post on Granada and Los Isletas I promised that on the next post we would travel to Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua. I lied; I’ve decided to go to hell instead. This is day two of our sojourn in Nicaragua as part of Adventures Abroad Central America tour designed and led by veteran guide Victor Romagnoli who has spent a great amount of time in many of the seven countries on this tour. Adventures Abroad is returning to Nicaragua for the first time since the uprisings of 2018 that were brutally suppressed by the Sandanista regime and so far everything is copacetic. Let’s hope it stays that way as we head for the nearby city of Masaya and its active volcano of the same name, which the Spanish on first climbing to the rim and looking down, likened to the Gates of Hell.
Granada & Los Isletas – Welcome to Nicaragua
Continuing on with our Central American adventure we venture into Nicaragua with Dale of The Maritime Explorer .
In my last post I gave an overview of my experience in Nicaragua travelling with Adventures Abroad ace guide Victor Romagnoli on his custom designed tour of Central America. Despite being a police state and the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, my overall impression of Nicaragua and its people was very favourable. We split our stay between the Spanish colonial cities of Granada and Leon with a stop in Managua in between. In this post I’ll describe what I did and didn’t like about Granada and then we’ll go on a boat ride through Los Isletas which was a highlight of the stay in Granada.
Nicaragua – Some Random Thoughts by Dale the Maritime Explorer
We have just completed the Nicaragua portion of Adventures Abroad’s Central America trip designed and guided by Victor Romagnoli who is one of the few people who has more than a passing interest and knowledge of this misunderstood country. While I will be writing specific posts about many of the places we visited in Nicaragua much as I just did with Costa Rica, e.g. Monteverde cloud forest I thought a general post about my impressions and random thoughts about the place might be a useful introduction. So here it goes in no particular order.
Manuel Antonio – The Most Popular Park in Costa Rica
Many of you will have heard of Monteverde National Park but have you heard of Costa Rica's most popular park, Manuel Antonio National Park? Join us as we tag along with Dale of the Maritime Explorer for another exciting adventure in Costa Rica.
This is the first true post on the Adventures Abroad’s 2020 tour of Central America led by guide extraordinaire Victor Romagnoli. In my last post I extolled some of the virtues of the Costa Rican capital, San Jose before joining up with the rest of the group who began this tour with Victor in Panama a week earlier. After spending a second night at the excellent Gran Hotel Costa Rica we are now boarding the bus and heading for Manuel Antonio National Park just outside the small town of Quepos on the Pacific Ocean. Although Alison and I have been to Costa Rica before, we’ve never been to the Pacific side of the country which is where most of the seaside resorts and attractions are located. It’s about a five hour drive even taking what is a newly opened portion of highway to shorten the distance to this popular part of the country. However, Victor is a great raconteur and between his history and biology lessens combined with some great stories from past trips the time to our first stop passes quickly.
