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Dateline: Sunday, August 15th. We attended 10:30 a.m. worship service in the Filadelfia Baptist Church in Masaya, a town about a thirty minute drive from Managua. I brought greetings from The Presbyterian Church in Canada (I even managed a few sentences in Spanish with coaching from Ken Kim and a couple of hours of rehearsal). After a lively worship service, we decided to visit the Masaya Volcano on the outskirts of town. The Masaya Volcano is still active, so we were looking forward to seeing it belch smoke.

Nicaragua has designated the site a national park and there is a fee of $5 per person to help pay for the upkeep of the park and the small information centre. The informational brochures handed out at the gate instructed visitors to park their vehicles facing the exit (for quick getaways, I assume) and advised visitors to hide under their vehicles if any rocks started blowing from the volcano. Rain was threatening so we decided to head directly to the volcano and then take in the information centre on the way back from the volcano. As we drove in, the landscape turned from earth to volcanic rock accumulated from previous eruptions. Amazingly, green shrubs and trees were finding cracks and holes from which to grow even on such a seemingly barren environment.

The volcano itself was ruggedly beautiful, with a constant plume of smoke drifting up from its depths along with an accompanying smell of sulphur. A steep flight of stairs led up to an outlook with a cross on top (the early Roman Catholic priests had put a cross on the site to Christianize the place where the aboriginal peoples had worshipped the gods of the volcano that sometimes needed to be appeased with human sacrifices of children and maidens). The view from the top was spectacular as a thunder storm complete with a lightening display began to make its way toward us.

It was at the top of the overlook that the hair-raising event happened. As we were peering across the landscape, suddenly Ken said to Barb Summers, “Barb, your hair is standing up!” “So is yours!” Barb laughed. Whether it was the atmospheric conditions from the approaching thunder storm or the conditions from the volcano or a combination of both, we don’t know, but it turned our trip to the volcano into a real hair-raising adventure!