The hike up a volcano starts from the bottom.

Few more interesting facts about this island on Lake Nicaragua (Lake Cocibolca). It’s 276 square kilometers big, it’s got 35 000 people living on it and the 2 volcanos are 1610 meters (Conception) and 1394 meters (Maderas) high. The island hasn’t yet blossomed in the touristic sense. So here is the controversial phrase you’ve heard thousands of times: I recommend you to come here before it becomes really touristic and the prices and atmosphere changes significantly.

We woke up at 5:30 a.m to start climbing up, two Austrian girls, a swede and me. 2 liters of water, some moldy sandwiches and my camera equipment were backed ready the previous night.

The hike started of easy by walking through cafe plantations and passing through huge trees where you could see howler monkeys sleep. Of course our hikers made so much noise with their feet and mouths that many of the animals on the way heard us miles away and ran or climbed away.

Soon the clouds of the mountain surrounded us and it started raining. The wet micro climate of the volcano made it possible that the volcano had a beautiful cloud forrest with many different trees and plants. As the rain picked up the path got muddier and muddier. Little did we know how bad it would get on our way down.

Three and half hours later we had climbed over the highest point of the volcano and had reached the bottom of the crater. There was a gorgeous small lake and we decided to take swim. Nicely fresh water was perfect. The only problem was getting to deep water since the bottom of the lake was so muddy that I was almost up to waste in mud when there was only 10 inches of water. Still it was worth it and after the swim and light lunch other people started pouring into the crater. Luckily we had left early and were the first ones there and had the place for ourselves for the first hour. Noisy people aren’t really my cup of the tea.

On the way down the 20+ elephants on the trail had pretty much turned the whole trail in to a gigantic mudslide. It was slower to go down than to go up. Our swedish member of the crew had only flip-flops for hiking and those things were pretty much useless on mud and rocks. He ended up walking almost the whole mountain up and down barefoot. :)

Howler monkey

Half way down my left knee started hurting. The old battle injury had returned and I was limping down the volcano and only the crazy Swede was slower than me. Eventually we got down, ordered big plates of food for 4 dollars and congratulated ourselves for a great hike by saluting our beer glasses. Everyone was happy but quite tired. Little did we know that police, fire department and volunteers were searching for the barefooted crazy Swede who people thought was missing on the other volcano on the island. More about that on my previous post.

Volcano Concepcion

Some hikers got a bit muddy on the way down

Island dog