Hiking up Telica Volcano!

Up whenever and had breakfast.

I hit an ATM, then we went to Tierra Tours and I booked a volcano boarding trip for Monday. Dad will come along, but won't do the boarding down the volcano. The two girls I mentioned yesterday that did it loved it.

Then we headed to the supermarket to get snacks and water for our Telica Twilight Tour, which includes hiking down the volcano in the dark, with only flashlights.

When we got back to the hostal, Alexandra, one of the Dutch girls, invited us to join them for lunch, she was making Dutch pancakes today, so we dined with them for lunch.

At 2:00pm, we left on our tour. Two guides and a driver. It was a 15 minute drive down the highway, then we turned off into a dry river bed for an off-roading adventure for an hour up the dry river bed to the point where we'd start hiking. The price was worth it just for the drive alone! We saw the national bird of Nicaragua, the turquoise browed motmot (or the guardabarranca, as the Nicaraguans call it). We had a coffee before heading out, and as we were drinking the coffee, it started raining, so we sat in the SUV for 20 minutes or so until the rain passed, when they decided to keep driving up the foot of the volcano, and we'd start hiking there instead.

It was maybe 1 hour hike up over large and small volcanic rocks. It would be easy to twist an ankle or knee here, but dad did awesome! The views from the volcano were amazing, lots and lots of sulfer gas coming out of the volcano and clouds cleared for some amazing views all around. We hung out at the volcano rim until after dark to see if we could spot some red magma through the thick, sulfuric gas, and sure enough we did see some, albeit 120 metres down the cauldron edge. Still pretty cool!

It was now pitch black, the stars were very bright, and it was time to hike down by flashlight. On the way down, we saw a tiger skinned gecko that was missing a front leg.

Parts were a bit hairy on the loose rock, we but all made it down safe and sound.

On the drive out of the dry river bed, we got a flat tire, so had to stop and put on the spare.

Back to the hostal about 9:30.

I'm pretty proud of dad. He's been doing things that he probably didn't think he'd ever do (ziplining, peering into an active volcano) or ever do again (two days riding around a ranch on a horse) and he's loving it and getting along fine!