Mud and Humidity

Yesterday we hiked up Rincon de la Vieja, an active volcano. Only 12 of us went, because that's all that could fit in the back of the truck (as it was, it was an extremely long 2.5 hour drive to get there). Also, Pete gave us such a strong warning about how hard the hike would be that even though we now automatically apply our Pete-filter to everything he says, there still were some who thought that it might be too hard. The real dissuader was that Pete said that we would apply the Pirate's Code ("He who falls behind gets left behind" for those of you who aren't up on your pirate regulations). We were promised a fearsome hike across knife-edge ridges, a near-drowning in torrential rains, and that we would all have knee injuries.
...So, we pretty much ditched Pete by about halfway up the volcano. Just before the last of us got out of earshot we heard him say something about how we should wait for him up at timberline, which we did, against our better judgment.
We spent some serious time chucking rocks into the caldera. Actually, Anthony (our other co-coordinator) and I hit the summit first and waited around for everyone, but they had all gone to a different crater lower down. We found them. These photos are taken at the active caldera which was pumping out steam.