26 years and 12 months old.

- My Birthday Candle -

I turned 26 and 12 months yesterday. To celebrate the fact that I managed to stay alive this long, I tried to blow out the biggest birthday candle ever (see picture above) and ended up having one of the best celebrations I have ever had.

Rather than spending my birthday with a post-celebration hangover, I ended up renting a set of skis, strapped them to my backpack and hiked up a 2800-meter volcano. Thankfully, I was accompanied by my Scottish, Norwegian and Spanish Single Serving Friends, because the 6-hour hike was rather strenous and a VERY good sense of humour was needed to make it all the way up the volcano-edge.


The nearer the top, the steeper the cone became, at times exceeding the 45 degree inclination. I was rather grateful for having brought an iceaxe as I am not the most elegant of individuals and tend to have enough trouble coordinating my left and right foot without having to take into account height differentiations.

The views from the volcano-flank were absolutely spectacular: while climbing one volcano, we could take in the view of three others: Osorno, Lanin and Puyehue.

When we finally made it to the crater edge, some 6 hours and a lot of sweat later, I was too out of breath and too stunned to speak. The crater was absolutely humongous. The now familiar sulphur smells were suffocating as ever and the boiling lava in the centre of the crater sounded like a thunderstorm hooked up to a thousand amplifiers.

Just to make sure you understand the size of this thing... a little pointer:

While we managed to get close enough to watch the lava, I haven't got any pictures to show for it and this for two (highly valid) reasons: One, I am a scaredity-tufft who suffers from massive vertigo, so instead of cooly standing up near the very edge, I was stretched out on my tum with my head hanging over the ledge to ensure proper balance. And Two, the sulphur fumes were simply too poignant to expose my camera to them.

We had lunch for an hour near the crater before making our way back down on skis. Needless to say I was absolutely knackered. I bruised a few ribs in the whole process, but... at the ripe ole age of 26 and 12 months, I supose that is just normal wear and tear.




Anyway, I had better leave the internet cafe, as one of the computers just caught fire! Seriously.

- "hell, if the volacono's smoking, so can we" -