WE ARE ALIVE!!!! HURRAY!!!
Cristian did not stumble over his ice crampons (because we did not wear them in the end, otherwise we all know he would have) and i did not kill anybody with the ice pick (a Brazilian girl in our group took charge of that, she nobbled one of the guides over the head, he had blood pouring out, had to have one of the other guides sprint up the mountain. In doing so, the second guide lost his radio, so the third guide had to go looking for that...). I tell you, nothing is ever quite straight forwards, but everyone came back alive, even the radio.
So, we made it right to the top and got close enough to sniff the sulfur fumes and have a picnic on the smoking green and yellow rocks near the crater. The lava down below sounded like my tummy before the food.
After having consumed, and supposedly put more padding on our well-rounded bottoms - amazing what long bus rides do to the behind - we started the descent, not on crampons, or shoes, but in our sledge suits. The idea here was to slide all the way down, using the ice axe to brake (the guide must have looked like a good sturdy place to plant the pick axe). It seemed like madness at first, knowing that we could litterally slide off the side of the mountain, but we all got completely carried away and bombed down. I giggled all the way back to base camp, fantastic, well worth the wrinkles!!
View from the top, the other volcano is on the border with Argentina
On the top of the world
The crater
On the way down