After packing up the tent and having another bag of nuts we started our climb to the top of the volcano. As we got further from the camp the soil began to change from a nice grassy meadow to loose, light pummas (sp?) stones and gradually got steeper. We left our bags at the turn off point to the next camp wich lightened our loads, luckily, because i found myself sliding backwards with secod or third step. So we climbed, and climbed, and slipped on my ass, and climbed until..... SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! herbert (bieng from austria who see´s snow all the time) laughed at us as we began frolicing and eating the snow like children. After a brief moment of joy we continued our ever-steepening climb. so we climbed and climbed some more until we got to what we thjought was the top.. but it wasnt!!!! it just got steeper, but atleast we could see the top of the crater now. we climbed for another hour.... macca got to the top first, and proclaimed his love for me ´from the top of a mountain´(anchorman). The view was absolutely freaking amazing. we had a whole 360 degree view around us and you could see the many rivers and lakes that lay in the valley of the other major mountains adjacent to us. The crater was about 3km across and was filled with snow. I collected a volcanic rock as a souvinier and we headed back down. We decided to slide down the extremely steep snow on our asses to speed up our trip but i fell over and got wet and ice-burnt hands so decided to walk the remainder of the way down.
We returned to our bags and had luch and then walked for another 5 hours (thats 8 in total) through FREAKIN DESERT WITH SNOW IN IT! (IT WAS 30DEGREES!!! THATS WAY TO HOT FOR SNOW!) to the second camp...
in posts to come...
hot springs!
slippery snow!
geysers!
fumagores!
isrealis!
pooing in the desert!
wading through water that was ice half an hour ago!
more snow!
more desert!
the descent!
waiting for the bus!
back to civilisation!
disco tek time!
we walked 55 ks in total and are heading to santiago tonight just incase your wondering..
much love
-brad
