Volcano Time!

Yesterday we successfully climbed Nicaragua´s highest volcano, San Cristobal and sweat a few pounds in the process! The first day we camped out on a coffee finca in proximity to the bottom of the volcano run by a friendly old man who does frequent measurements on the volcano. We used his fire for s´mores and pasta making as it started dumping on us about as soon as we arrived. He chatted with us all joking about how we have good small bodies for climbing the volcano and he continued pointing to his friend remarking how he would be praying to god the whole time. The rest of the night the rain failed to cease and there was booming lightning over head which even took down a substantial tree more or less next to us.

At 3:30 we rolled out and trekked through grass and these eerie trees coming up out of the start of the black sand. When it erupted in the past the trees died but were still left standing and with all the sulfur they are left preserved like drift wood. Soon all you could see was a mountain of black sand and rock covered by ominous clouds and it looked like we were walking up into hell. We continued though and climbed in the black sand which made it quite easy to start land slides for hours before reaching the summit. We were unfortunately covered in clouds at the top, so we missed out on most views. But, it did feel like you were on top of the world or dangling off an air plane as all the clouds whizzed by. Also, gusts of wind bring up a funny assortment of bugs which then become intoxicated from the sulfur and die leaving tons of exotic insects scattered everywhere. After a session of munching trail mix and examining the bugs we headed down which took a pathetically short amount of time in comparison to the climb up. With all the loose sand and rock we just ran straight down. At the bottom after the frolicking down we dumped out our shoes, lunched, and then headed for the bus.

On one of the chicken buses home it became packed and we had a few poor people around us who felt the need to cover their noses since we smelled so bad. But, we had just climbed the highest volcano so I had a hard time feeling guilty about the stench.There was also a man behind me who constantly sneezed and spit on me making the dirty factor even worse. Eventually back in Leon we took care of our hygiene problem and let ourselves get big ice creams for dessert as a prize of accomplishment.