My appetite for climbing volcanos still had not been satiated so a few other guys staying at Hacienda Merida and I chipped in to make the $10 we needed for a guide and a rope to make the ascent. For fear of the heat Sonja didn’t join us. As it turned out she would have had nothing to worry about.

As mentioned, Volcan Maderas is extinct and is hence completely vegetated – the higher parts being cloud forest. Its crater is about 1km across and inside it is a big lake. Our trek was to start from Hacienda Merida at 8 in the morning, ascend to the highest point on the crater, then descend into the crater (for which we needed the rope), have a break by the lakeside, descend down the other side of the volcano and then take a bus back to Merida in the evening. Apart from seeing the volcano and it’s lake we were hoping to have some nice views of the other Volcano and also of Lago de Nicaragua.

As it turned the clouds were so low that day that after the first hour ascending we right inside the clouds with barely a view even 10m ahead of us, let alone of anything else. As you can see in the pictures on the left the forest really became pretty dark and eerie and as we got higher into the cloud forest everything was completely saturated (though it never rained). We passed the peak of the crater without even realising it.

The track is not maintained at all and is hence really overgrown in parts apart from being little more that a mud-slick. That can work to your advantage thought as you can climb on the branches to try and keep yourself out of the mud to some extent. But we couldn’t believe it when we got down to the crater and half an hour later a guy rocked up with a fully-laden backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and a guitar!! He was planning to spend the night up there alone. Go Czech Republic!! That’s him top-right.

Anyway, the entire crater was completely full of cloud too and of the reputedly beautiful lake we saw no more than 10m of it before it disappeared behind a veil of white.

Along the bottom there’s a photo of Nathan, Cisco, Me and Shawn at the lake shore. And next to it a photo I managed to take of Volcan Concepcion just as we descended out of the clouds. You can see the bridge of land that has joined to the two Volcanos together too.

The other little photo is Nathan, Cisco and Me waiting for the bus back to Merida. The guy right of me is our rather unenthusiastic guide. Can you blame him? He was only 15 and climbed this Volcano 85 times last year!