All those National Geographic articles led me to believe that Nicaragua must be a land of volcanoes.  Back in 2004 I had been in Costa Rica and had had the chance to see the Arenal volcano, but that was an isolate, a singular cone, rather disconnected form all the others in the country.  But Nicaragua was supposed to have them in a string and so I thought it would be fun to see them.

I flew down to San Jose, Costa Rica, in January of 2007 and then headed up to Nicaragua on public buses.  It is not sensible to cover much ground when you only have three weeks, so I limited my travel to the well known southwestern heart of the country.  It would have been good to get up into the mountainous north or over to the Mosquito Coast on the Caribbean, but  I guess that will have to wait for another time.  Photos from the trip are embedded in a Power Point slide show that cycles through at a rate of four seconds per slide (except for a few that are accompanied by text: for them I extended the viewing time long enough to allow the text to be read).  If you want to run through the photos faster there will be a control panel in the lower left.