So I went volcano boarding today.
It’s like toboganning, except it’s on very fine black volcanic sand.

The place to do it in Nicaragua is at the Cerro Negro (Black Mountain), about an hour-or-so drive away from the city of León. All you have to do really is book a place at Big Foot Hostel and they will transport you there and back in an open-back truck. Jailbird jumpsuits to ensure minimal injuries and masks to keep the stones out of your face and boards are also provided. It costs $19 USD per person and an additional entry fee of $3.50 USD into Cerro Negro.

The only catch is you have to carry your board up the cone of Cerro Negro, but it isn’t a difficult climb. An hour and a half perhaps, with rest stops along the way. Heck, if as unfit as I was I survived it, then anyone can.

Big Foot Hostel runs morning and afternoon tours, and while I was there the morning one was filled up so I signed up for the afternoon and it was great because they were only five of us, compared to the usual group of 20. You get more time to explore Cerro Negro with less people. It may be hotter but to be honest I don’t think it makes much of a difference. It gets pretty damn hot in the mornings anyway. Just make sure you you don’t forget your sunscreen and you will be fine. The trek up is absolutely shadeless.

It’s not just about the volcano boarding either. You can walk into the crater and explore it. The views are great, there are at least three different terrains - it’s not all black ash. There are some good pictures on this page.

Best of all, you don’t have to trek down.

About the Cerro Negro
Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in the Western hemisphere, a pitch black cone rising above the green surrounding it. The first eruption was in 1850, and the last in May 1995. The longest was in 1960 and lasted three months. The Cerro Negro is also characterized mostly by Strombolian activity¹, and usually flood cities by up to 15 meters of ash, weighing down rooftops as well. I’m told that’s why the residents around the area - even the women and kids - know how to detach a roof and to put it back, because they’ve often had to clear their roofs from the fury of Cerro Negro.

Trivia
A lot of thought have gone into the boards you will use. Australian Darryn Webb, pioneer of this adrenaline-rushing mode of transport down Cerro Negro’s black slopes, started off himself trying out McDonald trays, so his bubbly Dutch girlfriend (who was our guide - well, and their dog called Bagel) told us. They’ve also tried everything else from picnic tables to refrigerator doors to mattresses and goodness knows what else. In the end they’ve settled on a piece of wood with a strip of laminate to minimize friction, which can only be used twice (not surprising considering how scratched up they get by the end of your run) before being recycled into bookshelves. Apparently, they also used to try it standing up like snowboarding, but it was too dangerous.

We were told about a a guy who tried biking down the slopes too, and he escaped death with plenty of broken bones. Then he went back, when the slopes were covered with snow… and miraculously escaped any injuries. The craziness.

My Own Experience
Yes, you can get seriously hurt. And it is actually scarier than you would think. I thought it wouldn’t be all that scary since you’re actually sitting down like on a slide, but when you’re just about to push off down a 40 degree slope, damn but it does give you butterflies in your stomach. Or at least, for me, but I’ve never been very good with heights.

To get straight to the point, I crashed. Big time. So much so that my fellow volcano-boarders called it ‘the best crash of the day’, for its embarrassing clumsiness or its ingenuousness, I’m not sure.

Basically what went wrong was… not once did I put on the brakes. I basically let it fly, all the way down, and three-quarters of the way it was great, I’d balanced my weight correctly and the board was headed straight down at increasing speed. I felt like a landing plane unable to stop, screeching on tarmac - it sure sounded like it.

Then came the big dip. And my board started to swerve to the right. Uh-oh.

And honestly, I did think about putting on the brakes. But I was already going at such high speed I was afraid that if I tried to slow down now I’d throw myself off too much. So I decided the only way was to keep going, and hang on for dear life.

The next thing I knew I was tumbling sideways down the slopes. Not just rolling down, but actually bumping off the slopes… thump! thump! thump! So it was described to me.

I think I was prepared for the fall however, so I’d let myself roll down the slope with my arms close to my body, and thus I escaped with minimal injuries, just scratches on both my forearms and some to the underside of my face. It could have been worse. I could have tumbled headfirst.

My small backpack had also tore and my phone had fallen out without my knowledge so it got badly scratched. Later when our guide returned it to me (she’d picked it up walking on the way down), she quipped cheerfully, “It looks a lot better now.”

Well, if nothing else I guess I have a story to tell. And my phone still works.

Update: Well, it did. Then the next day it kind of sputtered and died off.

1. Strombolian eruptions are named from the small volcano-island of Stromboli located between Sicily and Italy. It is characterized by short-lived, explosive outbursts of pasty lava ejected a few tens or hundreds of meters into the air, akin to hissing and coughing spurts. [↩]