Volcán Cerro Negro

The real reason why most backpackers come to Leon are probably the surrounding volcanoes and the fact that you can slide down Volcano Cerro Negro on a wooden board.
I was pretty freaked out about this activity as I thought people were standing on the board and I had no idea how to do that. But as I didn't wanna miss out I signed up anyway and was pretty happy to find out we were actually sitting on the boards.
I booked the tour with Big Foot Hostel which I figured later was probably one of the most expensive operators. But they claim to have the fastest boards and included in the price was a T-shirt, a beer, a mojito and a dry and hard cookie :) Oh, and we had music on the truck ride to the volcano. I guess it was the Party Tour operated by the biggest Party Hostel in town but I actually enjoyed the vibe of the tour a lot - this was an activity to not be taken to serious so the whole party atmosphere just worked pretty well with it.
So after a truck ride with the mentioned music we were dropped of at the foot of the volcano and got out equipment which we had to carry up there. The board is really just a wooden board with a sheet of metal on the back and another special sheet of some material on the backside approximately where you put weight on the board. This is supposed to be the secret that makes you faster. Additionally to the board everybody gets a backpack with the jumpsuit you gonna wear on the way down.
They made it sound to be a pretty steep walk up the volcano and try to convince you to pay a guide to carry up your board. But after Acatenango the climb up was a fairly easy walk and it took us less than an hour.
Once up on the volcano you catch a look into the main crater before getting ready to rush down again. The crater was pretty impressive and the earth up here was so hot - not from the sun but from the inside.
No it was time to go down. We put on our jumpsuits which are one size so I felt like I was wearing one of these "blow-up-sumo-suits".
We got a short introduction on how to use the boards. The main advice was to not try to brake once you are really fast. It's just gonna throw you over. You could try to just not become to fast by leaving your feet on the ground on both sides next to the board but once you have made the decision to lift your feet you kind have to keep going till the end. You gonna stop there anyway.
We were over 30 people and even though I didn't wanna be first I knew I wanted to get down there without waiting to long. So I took my space as third in my row and that proofed to be the right decision.
I hadn't seen anybody crash when I got on my board so I was pretty confident and just went without to much fear. It was probably one of the craziest things I've done so far. As soon as I was on the straight part I just tried to lift my feed and from there it didn't feel like I had a lot of control over what was happening. I rushed down the volcano kind of jumping and sliding and even though I couldn't keep my feet in the air it didn't slow me down that my feet were bouncing to the ground all the time. I even managed to let go with one hand to wave at the camera half way down :)
I loved it and according to the guy with the speed gun I had 55km/h at the foot of the volcano. Knowing that the record is 95km/h and the record of our group was 71km/h it sounds pretty lame but it definitely didn't feel slow and thinking about a car with 55km/h and then seeing the wooden board and the volcano it was probably fast enough.
Once I was down there it was great fun to watch the others coming down. Actually a lot of people crashed (but noone got really hurt) or went really slow because something wasn't working for them. So I was pretty happy I went down as one of the firsts because after seeing all this I would have probably thought about it a lot more. And of course it's a far better view from down there to watch people :)Read more