Cerro Negro Nicaragua - June 23rd

We are missing our friends Drew and Tanya today, who were planning to be here with us, but needed to return to their home in Victoria BC right after Hawaii

This is Day 2 of what Joani calls our Central American “Climb Every Mountain” tour. She has been humming the song all day. Nicaragua has a number of active volcanoes and we're doing the youngest one, Cerro Negro. It's so new it still has no vegetation

We’re starting to get the hang of hiking through lava fields and up volcano slopes

And pretty soon we’re on the crater rim

 

From the 728 meter summit we could see other active volcanoes in the Cordillera

And down into the caldera where steam is still venting, though this volcano hasn’t erupted since 1999.

 

One way back to the bottom is to simply walk straight down the black-sand and volcanic ash slope, as we did yesterday

But here there is another way

After a hard day of mountain climbing and sand boarding, the beer of choice in Nicaragua is Toña

Tomorrow: zip-lining in Costa Rica