I wanted to comment on the volcano pix you'll see in the album.
The indigenous Nicaraguans thought that because of the smoke and red lava visible at night, there was an angry god living inside the volcano that needed to be appeased. How to appease him? Well, with virgins and children, of course.
Then came along the Spanish Conquistadors. In their infinite wisdom, they declared to the indigenous population that they were wrong and there was no angry god inside the volcano. Clearly, it was the mouth of hell and the Devil needed to be exorcised from the volcano. Those Spaniards were great at exorcisms, weren't they? They built the large cross on the crater rim to assist in the exorcism.
When the volcano erupted in the 1800s the lava flowed all the way to the laguna but stopped there...just short of major cities like Masaya and Nindiri. Why did it stop there? Because the residents had hauled a religious statue to the shore and stopped the lava with their prayers. The laguna has since been seen as a holy site because of this. I must not fail to mention that the laguna itself is an upside down volcano that filled with water who knows how long ago. Are we seeing a pattern here with Nicaraguans and superstition?
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