Sunday 21 February 2010

Volcano boarding, Cerro Negro - Nicuragua






















This was totally awesome! We did a quick hour climb up the back of Cerro Negro - armed with our volcano boards, an orange jump suit & goggles - ready to fly like the wind down the steep sandy slopes. The most active cyndra cone (a type of volcano) in the world, Cerro Negro is 160 years old and they usually go dormant at about 40 years, so you can see why she holds the world record!

Inspired by the world mountain bike speed record being won on Cerro's slopes, volcano boarding was born. Believe it or not, operating one of these homemade volcano boards - sans breaks - is quite complex. Jiggle both feet up in the sand constantly to maintain a 'safe speed', lift your left leg higher to go right, your right one to go left and if you put both feet up on the board, which must be at exactly the same time or you'll crash, you'll go up to 80km p/hr! Oh and don't whatever you do let go of the handle.

Phillipa and I made it down at quite an impressive speed, without any major incidents and laughing all the way - both Pete and Ben went for 'feet-up' pure speed, and pretty much instantly stacked their boards and cruised to the end, which definitely made the girls the winners!

All in all a brilliant day, check out the jumpsuits in these pics. If you don't mind a mouth full of rocks and sand, we'd recommend it!

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