In this fun, guitar-fueledd, round-the-world video montage at BraveNewTraveler.com, “Nicaragua Volcano Boarding” takes center stage alongside such activities as Safari in Botswana, Dogsledding in Greenland, and Paragliding in Turkey. Not bad for a little country whose tourism industry is younger than my hiking boots. It looks like they’re pushing people sitting on glorified sleds down the volcanic slope of Cerro Negro these days. Hell, when I rode Cerro Negro, I did it standing up, doggonnit!
Reckon that’s what I’ll tell my grandchildren in a few years. Seriously, I “snow”-boarded into the crater of this active volcano during my research for Moon Handbooks Nicaragua in 2003. You had to fall down on purpose before reaching the sulfur vents, then trudge through black sand up to the rim; from there, my Dutch friends, Jan, Joost, and I rode the outside of the volcán to the bottom. I was helping Jan and Joost test a new product of Va Pues Tours, one of León’s better tour companies, whose new fleet of steel-plated snowboards were not nearly as fast as their snow-sliding counterparts back north.
Oh yeah, the video above is some sort of trailer for a reality show pitching travel writers on deadline against each other. I didn’t catch all the details, as I was so stunned to see Nicaragua in the mix.
