Masaya, the mouth of hell

You can drive almost to the rim of an active crater with a lava lake in it, which is very close to unique. The Santiago crater at Masaya glows orange after dark and the Spanish who got here first called the place La Boca del Infierno, the mouth of hell, and meant it. The volcano is a nest of calderas and craters 20 km south of Managua, topping out at 635 metres, and it has been in eruption since 2015. Surface lava flows are rarer, 1670 and 1772 being the big ones, but the gas never stops: Santiago pours out sulphur dioxide continuously, and that is why time on the rim is usually capped at fifteen or twenty minutes. Nicaragua made it the country’s first national park in 1979, 54 square kilometres holding two volcanoes and five craters.