Day 5: Mombacho and the Canopy Tour

By Luis, Tilly, Kaden, and Nicky

Today us travelers were able to sleep in; eight was our wake up time. We ate breakfast at our hotel once again and awaited the Magnificent Don Pablo. We rode the bus to pick up our tour guide Eduardo and were on our way to Volcan Mombacho.

Once we arrived, we had a little bit of time to use the restroom and prepare ourselves to hike up the volcano. It turned out that we met our truck driver and he took us up the mountain. We sampled some coffee and took some pictures of the beautiful view. When we were finish we got back on the truck and we took another ride up the mountain and arrived at a mini briefing center. We got ready for our walk up and down the hill. It was really fun but we got really tired from walking so much. We stopped at a few places on the trail and took a lot of pictures and sat down and drink some good water.

Eduardo was telling us about the plants and we got to try one called the Begoña. Some found it tasty while others spit it out and had the most priceless faces. We also learned about a few other plants, the Pacaya, for example. It is a famous volcano, but the Pacaya plants are used to make items such as baskets. We also learned about Epiphytes, which are basically any plants that grow on top of other plants, to get sunlight. They create neat looking gardens in the sky. We were really walking fast and some of the group was behind so we waited then keep walking. There were some dirt holes in the ground and we put our hand in it and it was really hot in the hole. We got to see the city of Granada and Volcan Masaya in the distance, so cool. We walked up the hills and down. It was really tiring to make it up the hill, and it was so hard because the hill was so steep so we had to sit down on the trail to drink some water. When we got back to the briefing center, while we were waiting for our truck, some of us raced up and down the hill. It was really fun but it really tired us. Finally the truck came and we went to go get lunch. Lunch was really good we all had chicken,rice,salad, plantain and grapefruit juice it was really good.

After lunch we had a half hour to kill so we passed the time by playing games like snaps and shopping at the coffee shop. Then we got harnessed in and learned how to not hurt someone when zipping down at great speeds. When I first left I was reluctant but when I saw the untouched beauty of nature I couldn't stop thinking about the next line. After everyone took the leap of faith on their first zipline we made our way to the next line. Then we came to our first obstacle the tight rope. In a nutshell, the tightrope is a line where we climb up a ladder and walk across or if you were scared like me you could slide across.

Our next destination was the Tarzan Swing (uh oh).The Tarzan Swing involved using a huge rope to cross about 20 feet of land to reach our next stopping point which including sliding down a rope about 50 feet in the air. As one of the staff members was attaching my harness to the rope I promised myself that I wouldn’t scream (which really didn’t work out the way I anticipated). After we said our farewells to the staff members we enjoyed dinner at  El Triangulo (The Triangle). At the restaurant we had a choice between Gallo pinto (rice and beans), chicken ,fried plantains , beef kabobs, cabbage salad and many more options. By the time we were done with dinner we went back to the hotel for a debrief meeting. Then at about 10:00 (12:00 in American time) we went to bed.                

Click here to see the picture slide show for Day 5!