Leon Day 2

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I woke up early & spent the morning attempting to catch up on journals. It is too easy to fall behind & I am currently working on 5 days ago. It also makes it hard to remember all the details. I guess it's just too bad I'm having too much fun to find time to journal....

By the time Geoff got up I had already finished breakfast, had two cups of coffee, & journaled for a couple of hours. The wifi here stinks otherwise I would have played online probably. Today we are going volcano boarding. Several people we've met along the way have raved about it & that is part of why we are at this hostel. For $30 per person we get our room, a t-shirt, 2 mojitos each, & a trek to the volcano that we board down. Pretty good deal. We walked around town a bit this morning & attempted to find some good wifi without luck. But we enjoyed the sights along the way.

At the hostel we got ready for our trek. It was fun. All the girls were cutting their t-shirts to make them cuter & super stylish 😉. So I had to join in the fun. It was super silly. Literally, almost everyone in the group of 20 people wore their free t-shirt to the volcano. Most of us didn't know one another but we were all promptly bonded by the t-shirts. Funny stuff. There was also a camera crew that came along with us to film an episode of a show they produce. It was entertaining. We are supposed to look for the show in September sometime on CBC or on YouTube before that apparently. They're French Canadian & their show is called Le Monde du Gros. They travel all over the world, do fun treks/tours with other tourists & incorporate all of it into skits on their comedy show. Maybe we'll be famous! With Geoff's new sleeve hat, he should make the cut for sure. It's quite the look that I actually love.

So, in the prime heat of the day, at 12:30, we left the hostel to go climb a volcano. I feel like I keep repeating myself but it's kind of extraordinary how hot it is here. It's been this nice, tolerable heat so far everywhere. But apparently something changes at the border between Honduras & Nicaragua & the thermostat gets turned up really really high. So, we're in the back of this big truck heading through the outskirts of Leon toward Volcan Cerro Negro (basically means black hill volcano). It took us about an hour along a very dusty road to arrive at our starting point. The volcano looks just like its name. It's a black hill.

We began our climb. Wow. Out of shape, really hot, & carrying the equivalent of a snowboard (which we were going to use to slide down the side of the volcano, once we get to the top). It was also very windy to keep things interesting. Once we started hiking up the volcano I started wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to sled down a volcano made out of sharp little lava pebbles. I guess I thought it would be this barely steep little cute hill & I would be all smiles & laughing. Nope. Super steep, black volcano. Yikes! By the time we got to the top I was contemplating walking myself back down & waiting for everyone at the truck. At the top of the volcano it was beautiful though. You could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean & the entire valley that we are in. It was really interesting because you could literally see the fault line where two tectonic plates meet and form this line of volcanic mountains. After enjoying the view we put on our safety jumpsuits & goggles & were given the lowdown on how to make it down the volcano without injuring yourself. My first question was "can I go really slow down the hill?", answer: yes. Next question: How slow can I go? Answer: 4km an hour is the slowest measured. Last question: How slow is 4km per hour? Answer: Like walking. Ok. Feeling better now. Fastest recorded so far is 83km/hr. Yikes. Our tour guide asks for volunteers to go first & his 55 year old mom volunteers (now I'm totally feeling like I can't back out, crap). His mom makes it down ok but the other girl who also went (two at a time go) disappeared for a bit. She must have fallen. Great. I go next with another girl mostly because I know that the longer I spend at the top of this mountain the less likely I will go down on a board. I made it in one piece & got clocked at 11km/hr. Faster than I would have thought. It was fun. Scary though because halfway down the steepness increases & you kind of go over an edge. Eekk! I couldn't even scream or smile on my way down because little rocks were being kicked up in my face. It was super fun though. I'm down at the bottom high fiveing the other girls & we see someone flying down the volcano. I immediately assume it must be Geoff so I start videoing. Of course, it was Geoff & he was clocked at 70km/hr. Thank God he didn't fall. He said he was actually scared for his life & couldn't even slow down once he decided he might try, he was just going too fast. EEEKKK!! Yikes scary stuff. Thankfully he made it down in one piece & amazingly (especially for him) without falling. Several people did fall on their way down. It would always start with a couple cartwheels & end with what looked like stop, drop & roll. Fortunately, all those who fell only had scrapes & scratches. Somehow...

After everyone made it down the volcano we got back on the back of the truck, were each given a beer for our efforts & headed back to town. The first 15 seconds of the drive were a mess. There were mounds of lava rock & apparently the driver could only navigate them at one speed, fast, & it threw all of into a heaping pile of people in the middle of the back of the truck. It was a little scary for a second but nobody got too badly hurt. One guy got his leg stepped on & one girl got her fingers bent under someone/something. They each received an extra beer. It seemed to help. The drive back was a bit nuts because it was all downhill & in the usual fashion of drivers from these parts, we were flying. We made it just fine though, as always.

Back at the hostel we were each greeted with a freshly made mojito. Lovely!

We promptly showered since we were covered, head to toe, in lava pebbles & dust. Then we headed out & had some BBQ chicken from a little street vendor. We decided to watch the movie Anchorman on our little computer. After the movie had been on a bit we had a little group of people who had pulled up chairs to watch the movie with us. Everyone loves Will Farrell. It was kind of a funny scene though. Our 8 inch computer screen with 5 or 6 people all huddled closely around it. It was fun to laugh a lot. What a silly movie.

Then off to sleep in the brick oven...

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Photos

Can you see the truck at the bottom???
Follow the trail to the right and you should see a little orange dot.