Why Not Ride A Sled Down an Active Volcano?

Looking for a new extreme sport? How about going to Nicaragua and riding a modified piece of plywood down the side of an active volcano at speeds nearing 60mph?

On the New York Times travel page, you can read about Laura Siciliano-Rosen's experience with this (rather unique) new sport.

The hostel she stayed at (which offers beds for $6 a night!) runs tours on Cerro Negro, the youngest volcano in Central America. Here's an excerpt:

I had heard of a tour offered by Bigfoot Hostel, which Darryn Webb, a tour guide from Australia, founded in 2005, when he was developing the sport on Cerro Negro. He’d grown up sandboarding in Queensland, and once he visited the volcano, he realized its boarding potential. Here was a dunelike slope, only bigger and blacker, and with the added thrill of a potential eruption.

After a lot of trial and error with sledding vessels — he tried boogie boards, mattresses and even a minibar fridge — he settled on plywood reinforced with metal and augmented with Formica under the seat. “Once we figured out the sit-down boards, it became a lot more fun for people,” Mr. Webb told me by phone from Perth, where he now lives.
(Photo courtesy of Scott B. Rosen for the New York Times)

A glimpse of Guatemala

Central America is one place I have yet to travel to, yet in good time it too will be crossed off on my list of places to visit. David Rich, an author for GoNOMAD.com recently took a tour there and was a visitor to what he considered the heart of Central America - Guatemala. Read below a bit from his article, What-a Ball-a in Guatemala:

Guatemala is the gem of Central America, offering more to the traveler than any of its half dozen neighbors, even if the equatorial heat had melted them into a tropical glob.

World class sites stretch from the most fabulous Mayan ruin at Tikal in the north to the Rio Dulce and Lago Izabal in the south, sandwiching polychromatic markets and variously active volcanoes from Antigua to Lago Atitlan.

This short list barely scratches the surface of flashy and vibrant Guatemala, a country I found safe and carefree outside the habitual suspects in the nighttime ghettoes of the ugly megalopolis pedantically named Guatemala City.

Guatemala sits high at altitude, a good place to be in the tropics, away from the sweltering lowlands of unfortunate neighboring countries.

The single exception is the Rio Dulce on the Caribbean coast, a don’t-miss waterway lined with lily pads, mangroves, houses on stilts and galères of exotic birdlife winding through chalky narrow cliffs to the Rastafarian town of Livingston, reachable only by boat.

Inexpensive private vans shuttle tourists between Guatemalan destinations, from Antigua to wherever, including Chichicastenango, aka Chichi, for market days on Thursdays and Sundays. Guatemalans love color, reflected in spades at regional markets.

The cascades of flowers, fabric and females dressed in blazing brilliance are reminiscent of similar markets in Mali, the north of Vietnam and western China, with the added element of religious celebrations combining Mayan traditions with splotches of Catholicism. Chichi is truly a photographer’s and fabric shopper’s paradise.

For more of this and other articles visit GoNOMAD