A quick hip to the toilet defined the time at 1.30am and I quickly went back to sleep leaving the candle on. About 3.00am I awoke, and lay there thinking and only thinking about getting up. At 3.30am Deb’s alarm went off and this time I, had to get up. A quick peanut butter sandwich later and we set off with Giles and Charlotte following. About 4am we had made it to the base forest at the foot of the volcano. The next 2 hours were completely gruelling and lots of hard work. Who says we needed a guide! (That had been amusing leaving our room, as two guys tried to follow us, but stern words from Deb’s stopped that Charlotte gave up 2/3rds of the way up and Giles Debs and I carried on up to the top of the crater rim. We couldn’t see much due to the cloud layer that engulfed us. After a rest we walked to the hot steaming rocks and cooked some eggs and bananas for breakfast! It was light by now but you couldn’t see a lot apart from cloud. After breakfast we decided there was little point in hanging around as it was cold, so we headed on down. After what seemed like years we made it back to our rooms where Charlotte had managed to crawl back to more breakfast and sleep later we had lunch and a beer. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing. When the evening came we had dinner in the hotel restaurant and got tomato and basil instead of spaghetti and basil/tomato. Whoops but soon that was changed. After that we went back to our rooms and sat talking before Debs and I curled up asleep…..My birthday!…This time I’m 23!