Well it's Nicola writing this entry to our Blog as Steven and I have slightly different accounts of the day. Unfortunately Steven was hit on the morning of the climb with an upset tummy and therefore his account of the day was slightly different.
We started the day the 7am. Steven didn’t want to go up to begin with, understandably, fearing being stuck in a hired luminous yellow snow suit at the top of a volcano with not a loo in sight. It was a beautiful morning though, with clear blue skies - we were particularly lucky with the weather as other people had been waiting 4 days for the weather to improve so that they could climb it.
So armed with enough Imodium to block up the Dartford tunnel, good weather and a slight bit of persuasion from me he decided to give it ago.
Our guide ‘German’ led us to the base of the volcano where there was a chair lift for the first couple of hundred meters up. I was the only girl in the group, and when asked whether our group wanted to take the lift up the first part the testosterone kicked in and the decision was made that we were going to walk. All the other groups apart from us and 1 other took the lift.
So after about an hour an a half we had reached the top of the lift with all of the other groups skipping to the top before us! Great decision boys.
It wasn’t long before we reached the snow line and had to attached crampons and get out our ice picks, very exciting. We felt like real explorers’.
The walk wasn’t actually too bad. It took about 4 hours in all to reach the top and the views were well worth it. We were slightly smug knowing we had climb all of the way so I guess the boys could have been right after all. The area the we were in the Chillians refer to as the Lake district. You can see why, similar to our Lake district in the Uk but the a few volcanos chucked in as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLzCIKFCHSI
It’s something I’ve always wanted to do since GCSE geography, to climb an active volcano. The volcano is still very much active and although we didn’t get to see and lava we did get hit at the crater with pluming acidic smelling gas which made you cough and your eyes smart. We were given gas masks which helped. Excitingly enough we did feel a slight rumble (not Steven’s bottom) when we were at the top which was exciting. It was all very National Geographic stuff.
Now for the fun bit. At the top we had to strap on heavy duty nappy type bottom protectors so that we could slide down the volcano. There were about 10 ‘slides’ which had been carved out by the people before us. They were each about 100m long and twisted and turned slip sliding us to the bottom. We had to control our speed by digging in the ice pick but generally we just went as fast as possible until you crashed into the person in front. We both thought it was brilliant fun.
