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Monday, August 13, 2007

Volcanic activities

I went to León this weekend for the umpteenth time and along with my mate Gonzalo we had plans to hike a nearby volcano, Cerro Negro.




Cerro Negro is the youngist volcano in the Americas. Erupting from a field outside Leon in 1850 it first appeared as a small 20m hill but over the past 157 years and coutless eruptions it has grown to 650m.
Anyway, it proved not as easy to get to Cerro Negro as I had thought and we had to go with a tour. The tour we went with however was slightly different than most in that whist we hiked to the top over a gas filled volcanic wasteland, we "snowboarded" down.


Yes you did read that right.

The eastern edge is covered in fine (ish) volcanic sand and gravel and whist it took an hour to ascend it took only a matter of minutes to descend a 650m, 60 degree slope.





What a rush. Whist I dont know my speed, the fastest recorded had been more than 50 kph!




Okay they might look more like sledges than snowboards but the adreneline rush was quite the same I assure you (up until last year they did descend upright on snowboards but due to significant head traumas and near loss of limbs they had to adopt a slighly safer approach. Vocanic rock isn´t that forgiving!)



Anyway just another day in the life of Nacho........

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