It was pouring down with rain & thundering hard when I woke up at 5.30am to prep for the trek. I was hoping we wouldn't have to hike for 10 hours in that weather and fortunately it cleared up by 7am.
Lindy, a Canadian girl we met called Gabby and I met at 6am to try and find an open place for breakfast although seemed to be locked into the hostel! We at there for an hour until the hostel host arrived & told us the lock was actually fake & we had to pull on it! Ridiculous! Since we were meant to leave at 7am we raced down to this place, inhaled some scrambled eggs, grabbed what we needed managing to be trekking by 7.35am.
The hike was hot. I've never sweated so much in my life. About 3 hours in we are pretty much at the shoulder of Volcan Concepcion. Almost in the clouds & a strong sulphur smell permeating the air. I looked up at the steep 2 hour rock scramble that awaited us to the crater and was already scared. The guide then tells us that the crater may move & not to panic if that happens. I was already panicking at the thought of that so wasn't on great footing (no pun intended) for the next legs of the climb.
It was steep and bloody dangerous trying to keep your grip on loose rocks while you basically climbed horizontally on all fours. May the second rest I saw the cloning rope loops in the rocks & saw that it got even steeper. I was terrified of having to go back down or go any further and decided I was staying put there & would wait for the group to come back down. The French guys with us agreed it was very dangerous & we were pretty ill prepared safety wise. At that exact moment our guide decided it was actually too dangerous to continue to the crater because of the clouds and smoke so we all had to start heading back down anyway!
The way back was jolting and we were moving so fast I was literally running to try keep up on the descent. We made it back, finishing in around 7.5hrs.
After a hard earned shower we headed to the jetty to watch sunset.
The French guys from our trek joined us and the view was nothing less than spectacular.
On the way back home we collected our America friends, found Yusuf & a German girl from our hostel and all ended up at dinner together. It was a great night that extended on to another bar and then until 4am at the hostel! A quiet night al in all - not so much rowdy as filled with intense conversations.
