The alarm went off at 4:30.  At least I think it did. I sort of remember getting rolled into a bag.  Pokin and Nick left the hotel room, and met the guide who was already waiting for us.  The group of us climbed wordlessly into a taxi for our short ride to the hiking trailhead.

The two most popular hikes up Volcan Concepcion are La Flor, near Moyogalpa, and La Sabana near Altagracia.  We did neither.  Instead, our hike seemed to start on the southeast corner of the active volcano.  Since it was 5am, it was still dark when we got started.  Still, our guide had eyes like a cat and he walked pretty confidently up the trail.  Pokin and my bud used flashlights.  About 5 minutes into the hike, our guide decided to make Pokin a walking stick.

The first part of the trail was pretty “level”, though there was definitely an incline through private property.  After trekking for about an hour, we reached the park perimeter hut (somebody’s farm) where we paid our entrance fee of $1.

Here is where the real incline starts.  By now it became light enough for us to put away our flashlights.  We started making our way up.

Sunrise!  We’re on some serious slope.

Up and up we went, 2 hours, 3 hours.

Since it’s early, the cloud cover was still low, and probably about halfway up the volcano, we started heading into it.  Throughout this time, we’re on a 45 degree incline.  And that’s when things started to get dicey.

February is windy season.  Everywhere you go you can hear the winds howl.  Normally it’s just nice, but on a volcano, we really started feeling it whip is around.

And still we climbed.

And then we noticed our clothes were damp.  No, it wasn’t raining.  It was just damp from the clouds.  Darnit, I didn’t sign up for a bath!  I am so wet.  This sucks.

Four hours.  Five hours.  We kept climbing.  Now we are going almost vertical.  There’s our guide.  Wind is about 100km/h (60mph).  That dot in the background is probably Pokin.  I can’t really tell, I can’t see anything and I’m wet.  I’m going back in my bag.

At around the 5 hour mark, my bud and I made it to the summit and waited for everyone to make it up.  Pokin didn’t know, but my bud and I had big plans.   The guide made it up.  We waited.  Here’s Pokin still trying to climb up.

And we waited.  The wind is howling furiously and all of us are getting blown around the top of the summit.  We waited.

Turns out Pokin wasn’t coming.  We couldn’t really see her, but my bud eventually found her huddled in a heap, clutching to some rocks, bawling her eyes out.  It was pretty steep.  And wet.  And cold.  We were all miserable.  But we knew Pokin would want to make it to the summit so my bud and the guide helped her up to the top, basically by hauling her up with her backpack strap.  We all made it.

We are also all wet and cold.  And the wind is still beating us in the face at 100km/h.  But here we are sitting on the edge, looking down into the crater of an ACTIVE VOLCANO.

At this moment, my bud decided to enact THE PLAN.

“Hey Pokin, turn around” he says.  Pokin was still clutching to the side of the crater holding on for dear life as she’s still trying to regain her composure.  I got into position on his lap.

“I need you to turn around,” he says again.  At glacial speed, she finally does so.

“So I’d like to propose we forge an alliance here by the fires of Mount Doom with a ring.” (My bud’s a nerd. I only half approve.)

Pokin looks at my bud with non comprehension.  My bud gets on his knee.  Pokin doesn’t notice.  “Will you marry me?”

My bud produces a ring.  By the way, proposing on the side of an active volcano was something I thought I had definitely approved of… but that was before the wind and cold.  Oh well, it’s still awesome and I told my bud that if she said no he could at least throw the ring into the volcano like they did in Lord of the Rings.

The guide starts laughing.  (Earlier in the day, the guide kept asking if my bud and Pokin were married and my bud kept saying soon to which the guide jested that maybe we were planning on getting married on the mountain.)

However, Pokin doesn’t say a thing.

“Is that a maybe?” says my bud.

A cold Pokin finally answers, “After this hike? Yes it’s a maybe.”  “Ok good enough”, says my bud.  “Let me hold on to the ring for you as we climb back down.”

We “hurry” back down the hill.

Unfortunately going down the hill at a near vertical incline isn’t very quick.  It ends up taking as long going down as we took going up.  Pokin is on all fours right now inching her way down the volcano, so my bud decides to hold her backpack and hiking stick for her.

And a gust of wind comes along, blowing my bud down the volcano.

My bud loses his balance.  He catches himself with the walking stick.

The stick snaps in half.  My bud falls.  I fall.  We tumble.  Ouch.   I don’t like this.

Luckily, all our video gaming practice was good for my bud’s dexterity and he rolled down the hill like we do in our games.  My bud only scraped up his arms a little.

“You’re lucky,” says our guide “people have gotten way more hurt here.  Some have died.  And that’s why a guide is required on this mountain.”  We also later learn that the wind and incline means helicopter rescues are impossible.

We continue down the mountain.  Slowly.

At some point, Pokin finally defrosts enough to say yes.  We are all still totally soaked by clouds and still thoroughly miserable.  I’m on Pokin’s back now (bad idea) and she starts falling nonstop.  Owww.  This hurts.  She keeps falling on me.  Oww.

The nice thing about our return trip is that we got to take a different route down.  This route had a scree hill that let you run down a third of the mountain.  My bud and our guide ran down it pretty fast.

Pokin, on the other hand was too scared to do so.  So she sat on her butt and slid down.  Pictured in hand is a new walking stick, not the one that betrayed my bud.

If it were just the bud, guide and I, we would have been down fairly fast, but eventually we made it down past the scree and back into the forest.

You can see all the scree behind us!  Now that it’s finally back in warmer territory and as our pants are drying you can see Pokin is in better spirits.  She even had enough energy to demand a coke when we got back to the hut.

We did a check on my bud.  He’s bloodied up, but should retain his gaming dexterity.  I breathe a sigh of relief.

Eventually, about 10 hours after we made our start, we got back on the road.  THANK GOODNESS.  We survived.  I got sat on more times than I cared to be, but we all made it!

And that was the story about the time we had an aventura on a volcano (elevation 5,282 ft,  1610m) so my bud could propose.