Mombacho

Zoë’s version of the story

So, climbing up and down a volcano is all in a days work, right?

Maybe not.

We arrived at the volcano to discover that if you went for the whole thing, (admission, $3, ride up, $12, lunch, $7, and ride down $12) then you would be paying $34 per person. Not going to work so well for a family of four, right? We decided to go for the cheap way, and had lots of snacks that we had brought for lunch, and to walk up and down.

When we had barely even started, I began to get out of breath. That part is what, on the way back, we thought a good description would be flat. When we were almost at the halfway stop, I decided to use my inhaler, just in case.

We all walked the first half, which was reasonably steep, but for the second half my mum, Jeremy, Maro and Ceel took the truck, since Jeremy had been carried most of the way, and refused to go without a parent, and Ceel was getting pretty tired.

I think that they were the smart ones.

When we were halfway up the second part, we saw two male howler monkeys. It was really cool. Sadly, my mum had the camera. We might try to get a picture from someone else. Finally, when we got to the top, I was exhausted, and the people who had gone up in the truck had disappeared. We went inside the rest stop to have lunch, and when we came back outside, they were there again. Apparently they had gone on a very short walk while they were waiting for us to come back, and we had been faster then expected.

The next part was amazing. We walked through the cloud forest.

It was really beautiful, and we saw all sorts of cool plants. Lots, in order to get more light, live on the trees, and you can barely see the tree because of all of them. We went to some of the lookout points, and we managed to see the crater once, but the rest of the time we could only see cloud.

On the walk back down, Ceel decided to catch the truck again, but it was a long wait, so everyone else walked. There was a great moment when we all sat down in the road, and everyone wanted to take a picture. They had just set up their cameras on the timer, when we heard the sound of a truck. We got the cameras safe just in time. The second time around, there were no trucks, and it was really funny seeing everyone press their buttons and leap over the cameras to get into the picture. We took a picture of the cameras getting set up, too.

Soon, a pickup truck came by, and gave my mum, Jeremy, and a few other people a ride. By that time, even the experienced climber, Chris, was doing my mum’s knee-saving technique of walking forward for 20 steps, and backwards for 10.

The rest of the time was fairly uneventful, except that at the middle rest stop, my dad found a book full of engineering news from 1899. He was very excited.

We made it down to the bottom. I climbed up and down a volcano in one day at age twelve. I’m proud, but I have a feeling that I’ll be VERY sore tomorrow.