Volcán Masaya — volcano
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Volcán Masaya

  • Elevation635 m
  • 2 min read
  • 11.982° N 86.162° W

Interesting facts

  • In 1538 the friar Blas del Castillo was lowered into the main crater on pulleys with a cross and a hammer, convinced the glowing lava was molten gold.
  • The Spanish-born landowner and industrialist Dionisio Martínez Sanz built an 800-step steel ladder to descend into Santiago crater and raised Nicaragua's flag inside it.
  • According to tradition, when the 1772 lava flow threatened Masaya, townspeople carried a statue of the Virgin of the Assumption to the lagoon and the lava turned aside.
  • A similar tradition in nearby Nindirí holds that the lava stopped where a nail fell from the arm of a Christ statue carried in procession.
  • The eruption that created the Masaya caldera about 2,500 years ago expelled roughly 8 cubic kilometres of basaltic ignimbrite.
  • The whole complex sits inside an even larger ring, the Las Sierras shield volcano and caldera, making Masaya a volcano nested within volcanoes.
  • Masaya is one of 18 distinct volcanic centres in Nicaragua's part of the Central American Volcanic Belt, created as the Cocos Plate slides beneath the Caribbean Plate.
  • Acid rain from the volcano's sulphur dioxide plume has damaged coffee plantations in the Sierras de Managua downwind.
  • In October 2003 an eruption cloud from Masaya was reported rising about 4.6 kilometres into the sky.
  • Masaya is watched by a multi-component gas analyser that detects the degassing of rising magma, helping to forecast eruptions.

Why it is worth it

Few active volcanoes let you look so directly into their workings. At Masaya, a road climbs through the old caldera to the rim of Santiago crater, a sheer-walled pit that breathes out a constant plume of sulphur dioxide and, in periods of activity, glows red from a lava lake at its bottom. Around it lies a dark landscape of rough lava flows, cinder cones and nested craters that make up Masaya Volcano National Park, created in 1979 as the first national park in Nicaragua.

The volcano is a complex of calderas and cones inside one another. A large basaltic eruption about 2,500 years ago formed the main Masaya caldera; within it, a semicircle of vents built the Masaya and Nindirí cones, which hold the pit craters of Masaya, Santiago, Nindirí and San Pedro. Much of the caldera floor is covered by young, barely vegetated lava. Historic flows are few: in 1670 lava overflowed from Nindirí crater, then home to a lava lake about a kilometre wide, and in 1772 a fissure on the flank of the Masaya cone sent a flow that ran well beyond the caldera rim. Since then fresh lava has appeared mainly in Santiago crater. Explosions have punctuated the degassing – in April 2001 one hurled blocks up to 60 cm across as far as 500 metres from the crater. In March 2020 the American wire-walker Nik Wallenda crossed over the crater on a steel cable. The park covers 54 square kilometres with two volcanoes and five craters, and includes a lava tube inhabited by bats.

Masaya also has a long written history. The Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo described it around 1529 and recorded that local people consulted a sorceress inside the crater, whom he took to be the devil himself. The Spaniards called it the Mouth of Hell, and according to tradition the Mercedarian friar Francisco de Bobadilla raised a cross on the rim to exorcise it; a cross on a viewpoint above the craters still bears his name. In Nawat, the language of the Nicarao people, the mountain was called Popogatepe. The town of Masaya, just east of the park beside its crater lake, is Nicaragua's fourth-largest city, known as the City of Flowers, and its indigenous quarter of Monimbó has kept a distinct identity since colonial times.

Getting there

The national park lies between Managua and Masaya, about 20 km south of the capital. The town of Masaya is about 7 km away. Managua's Augusto C. Sandino International Airport (MGA) is about 18 km away.

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From the encyclopaedia

Masaya, also known historically by its aboriginal name Popogatepe in Nawat, is a caldera located in Masaya, Nicaragua, 20 km (12 mi) south of the capital Managua. It is Nicaragua's first and largest national park, and one of 78 protected areas of Nicaragua. The complex volcano is composed of a nested set of calderas and craters, the largest of which is Las Sierras shield volcano and caldera. Within this caldera lies a sub-vent, which is Masaya Volcano sensu stricto. The vent is a shield type composed of basaltic lavas and tephras and includes a summit crater. This hosts Masaya caldera, formed 2,500 years ago by an 8 km3 (1.9 cu mi) basaltic ignimbrite eruption. Inside this caldera a new basaltic complex has grown from eruptions mainly on a semi-circular set of vents that include the Masaya and Nindiri cones. The latter host the pit craters of Masaya, Santiago, Nindiri and San Pedro. Observations in the walls of the pit craters indicate that there have been several episodes of cone and pit crater formation.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

11.98216, -86.16212per Wikidata