It's hot enough to be a desert town and directly east is a whole line of volcanoes many of which are actively spewing lava and smoke into the air.
León is considered the more liberal of the one time colonial cities, as I mentioned before the Sandinistas are pretty popular here.
But other than the monuments I'm not sure what stands out as particularly progressive or liberal. The city has a few museums we checked out, one was an art museum with a wide mix of styles and pieces in two separate buildings but because it was a private collection we weren't allowed to take pictures.
My friends spent most of their time in the art museum making up imaginative summaries for the more abstract pieces, while I tried to figure out what historical context the various Latin American artists were painting in- many of the pieces were during or before revolutions and civil wars.
The other museum we saw was an entomological exhibit showing bugs from here and abroad. Collections of beetles, moths, spiders and scorpions were all fascinating but the most beautiful were the butterflies of course.
Other than the museums are time was mostly spent going in and out of colonial churches around town and dodging the sun as best we could.
Oh and of course climbing a volcano.
While some of our other friends went to do the "more adventurous/adrenaline rush" of volcano boarding, my friends Sara and Anna and I went on a volcano night hike at Vulcan Telica. The ultimate goal is to see lava at night, but unfortunately our volcano partially caved in a few days ago so we didn't see any (que triste). The views however were awesome!
Seeing the caldera of a volcano is always thrilling but seeing it this close was a little scary and awe inspiring.
Especially when we jumped in- to our certain deaths.
And the thrills just kept coming... Our guide promised us something special so as we walked up to this trench/cave in the side of the volcano, she mentioned "ok now we go into the bat cave" and all of us had a moment of "the what?" Before climbing in...
Honestly I think being surrounded by bats was probably the highlight of the night, it was just non stop adrenaline the whole time we were in there... Which I've been told lasted a lot longer than sledding down a volcano hill (ten seconds).
Anyway we didn't get to see the lava, but we did see a beautiful sunset and could just barely make out the ocean about 50 km or 30 miles away.
Overall the time in León was great. Now I am headed off to the second biggest city in Central America recently described to me as "barking dogs, police sirens and gun shots" don't worry I am staying in a safer neighborhood.
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