Peaks and Troughs

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The Volcano:

If there´s anything to guarantee childish whoop whooping and uncontrollable laughter, it´s sliding down the side of a snow laden volcano on a bit of plastic, with nothing but your feet and an ice pick to slow you down....amazing!

In fact picking up exhilarating speeds was a given!!! Loved it! One of our volcano expeditionist pals, Mark from Wigan, got so good at picking up speed, or just not as good at applying his ice pick break, choose your perspective; that he flew right out of said flume. Luckily he managed to fly down and land in the same said flume, not before overtaking four other flume flyers that were in front of him. 😊)

The climb itself was hard work at times, just having to concentrate on nothing else but putting one foot in front of the other in case you slipped was all consuming, but doing it for four and a half hours was a test, especially for my concentration span. Lee had to tell me off a few times for letting my concentration wander and start gazing at the amazing scenery, then a foot would slip, the words, "for fk sake peanut concentrate...would follow" And then my adrenaline would kick in as the thought of plummeting down the side of the volcano wasn´t my preferred choice of how I should end the day... and plus I didn´t want to miss the the chance of sliding down the snow on my ass! 😊

Of course the ascent was well rewarded when we got to the crater! The photos don´t do the scenic Jurassic Park views of rolling green mountains and several other dormant volcanoes dotted about the horizon justice. We even got to see some magna bubbling into view and was told we were lucky to see it as it´s not usually visible from the mouth of the crater.

We got back tired and rewarded ourselves further by grabbing a nice bottle of Chilean red, a couple of glasses curtesy of our hostal GH owner Lilian and headed to the thermal springs to soak our tired muscles. We soaked oursleves til midnight gazing at the starriest sky we´ve ever seen. Bliss!

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Photos

Preparation for the climb
Metcalf ready for action!!

Ready for our descent.
Equipped to the max!!

Whoop Whoop!
Flying down the volcano...