Big day today. We’ve arranged for a guide to take us up the 3,000 foot La Soufriere Volcano. Very exciting, they said they’d be at our boat at 6:45 am. They show up at 7:15 am so that’s not bad. Enough time to finish my oatmeal and coffee.

The water taxi takes us – Christy, me and our 16-year old guide Clarkie about 15 minutes up the coast to a dried riverbed/lava flow which is the start of the hike. We jump off the water taxi into the surf and off we go. Originally they said we’d take our dinghy and leave it on the beach but that would be a baaad idea. In hindsight, I don’t think we could expect to find it – either stolen or washed away.

Even the first part of the hike up the old riverbed is interesting – very dramatic cliffs carved out of the volcanic ash by the river. After about 10 minutes there is a little gap in the forest, you’d miss it if you didn’t know it was there, and this is the kick off for the main hike. “Get ready to hike” says Clarkie. So hike we do.

(Clarkie has been barefoot to this point, now he puts on some sensible footwear – flip flops.)

Up, up we go, through dense jungle, and staggering views when it opens up. Volcano evidence on the left, crazy wild mountains on the right. The jungle and mountains look impenetrable and, in fact, there are no roads anywhere around here. It’s steep in places but pretty manageable as we ascend the ridge towards the caldera.

What’s this? Cow patties? Yes and lots of them. How could there be cows up here? Sure enough, just below the end of the treeline we come across a herd of about 15 cows just munching on the vegetation. Crazy.

Now we’re above the treeline, not because of altitude but because the last eruption in 2021 blew away all vegetation. From the edge of the treeline the going looks relatively easy. We can see the ridge all the way to the top (well close, there’s still cloud cover at the top) and it doesn’t look that steep, just gravelly.

Turns out the gravel is like marbles and while the exposure is not too bad, the wind is now howling. Every step we take up, it gets stronger. Based on my days in Alberta, I would say it’s blowing at least 100 km/hour in gusts. It pretty much knocks you down and you can’t stand up in it. Clarkie tells us to get low when it gets really bad.

It gets really bad.

Clarkie is in the lead and he hunkers down into one of the ditches that run down the ridge, largely out of the wind. We climb in there too. It’s mostly protected tho there is still quite a bit of dust and gravel flying. From time to time the gusts get quite violent and we can see there is more cloud, more rain coming.

Can’t tell from this but it’s blowing 100 km/hr+. Clarkie tells us we can’t go on.

“We are not going to be able to get to the top” he says. To some degree this is a relief. We certainly have the energy to get to the top but I don’t feel safe and I think it would get a lot worse as we go higher. Think “Into Thin Air” except not at -30C. Disappointed we have been defeated by the wind, but glad to be getting off the ridge, we head down. Going down to the treeline is still a major challenge as we’re walking on marbles in a 100 km/hr wind.

Once into the trees, everything is fine again, just the usual challenge of going down on a slippery jungle trail. Christy’s knee acting up a bit but we survive the descent.

Clarkie has been good, tho disorganized. He forgot his lunch so we had to share ours, forgot to bring water, so we had to share ours, forgot to make sure he had cell coverage so he could call for the pickup boat, so Christy had to turn hers on (C$16) so he could share ours, forgot to call the pickup boat before we got down to the beach where there is no cell coverage, so we had to walk around two bays to find coverage.

Soon enough the pickup boat comes and takes us back. Turns out we have to pay Clarkie AND the taxi, we didn’t think that was part of the deal.

This part I do not understand still. Clarkie stays on our boat while the taxi heads back to town. Now I have to drive him in our dinghy back to the pier. Why didn’t he go with the taxi? I dunno. Possibly because he was trying to get us some coconuts or other local favours (he was genuine about that) but when I drop him at the pier, he says to come back in the afternoon. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

I go back to Milu, Christy and I are both glad to get back, go for a swim, clean up a bit, have a hot drink.

Of course two more guys come by looking for handouts. I surrender some cookies as I clean up the boat and get ready for tomorrow’s departure.