Volcano Sledding

We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and the hotel owners made a special surprise for Guy: they found him some oranges for orange juice. The attentiveness of the owners is really noteworthy. In the morning we mostly tried to fix the SIM card and ended up charging it a little more, and we shopped around for volcano tours.

For lunch we sought out a place called Del Norte - Google Maps and TripAdvisor don’t know the correct new location, so it was a bit of a treasure hunt to find it. It’s located in a hostel and seemed pretty deserted, but had nice staff and pretty good food for very cheap. We had some meat on the plancha served on a hot plate, which was really perfect for us.

We came back to the hotel just in time to be picked up for our volcano boarding tour by our guide Roger. Roger and Henry the driver do volcano hiking and boarding tours in Cerro Negro, which is an active volcano about an hour away from Leon. On the way to the mountain we stopped by the market and picked up some bananas and mandarins for after, and we bought some more water at the ranger station at the base of the volcano.

Volcano boarding is just what it sounds like. You hike up a volcano with a wooden board that looks like someone just ripped off a small door, and then slide down it sitting on the board - it’s basically volcano toboggan. It is the main attraction near Leon. At the bottom of the mountain one can hire a sherpa to carry the board to the top of the mountain for them for about $4. We really regretted not doing that. The hike up would not have been hard but having to carry a large heavy plank in the wind did make it uncomfortable. We walked along the edge of the crater and listened to Roger’s knowledgeable explanations about the formation of the craters, stopping every few minutes to rest under the pretense of taking photos of the view.

We hiked along the crater to the point of the “launch”. It was more windy and difficult to carry the boards up there - Guy’s hat flew away for a moment, so we took them off. The crater emits gases and heat. The ground was very warm, and if you dig deep enough it’s hot enough to cook in. Did I mention that this is technically an active volcano? The most recent eruption was in 1999, but on at least one occasion people have had to try to outrun the lava. We weren’t worried: the hike up takes nearly an hour but you can slide down on a plank in a minute. The gravel and rocks on the mountain were black and the mountain was dusty were we slid down. We suited up and covered our faces with goggles and bandanas. The ride down was not as fast as one would think. The friction of the board with the ground is pretty strong (unlike snow) and so you have to really try to go fast, tilting your body backwards in order for it to work.

We slid down the mountain one at a time. Leia was terrified until she realized that she could barely move. Stupid Guy once again forgot to turn the GoPro on, and his board got loaded with pebbles and stopped far short of the bottom of the hill. We were driven back to the city in a very bumpy van, trying to eat the fruit on the way. We kept the bandanas as souvenirs and returned to our hotel for possibly the most welcome shower of our lives.

For dinner we went out to Cusco Callao, which is a Peruvian ceviche place not far from our hotel that serves various kinds of seafood ceviche and a Peruvian egg-based sour cocktail. The food was really delicious. We’d tried to go there late last night but it’s a small place and had no chairs for us, so we went a little earlier today and were the first ones there.