Hiking the Volcano and Cooking Class

Hello again! This past Saturday, I got the opportunity to hike the St. Vincent Volcano (La Soufriere), and it was a really neat experience. We hired a van to take us all the way to the trail head, which was a great plan since the road to the trail head is a LONG dirt road through some banana fields. It's a really pretty walk, but would add at least an hour to an already 4 hour hike. Since the hike is such a long one, the day started really early - I caught one of the first vans at 6 am to meet in Georgetown at 8. We started our hike at about 9:30. The first part of the trail is really beautiful! It winds through sections of rainforest, so it's green and lush and full of exotic plants and animals - and the mosquitoes are the size of small dogs! The path is basically a series of steps carved into the mountainside and it can get pretty steep, but we powered through with only a couple of breaks. We were feeling pretty harmonious with nature until we arrived at the second part of the trail, which was a slightly less neat experience. At this point, a significant portion of the trail is washed away (I expect it happens every year during the rainy season), so we were left to pick our way through. We followed a rocky path near the actual trail and didn't do that bad. It would have been no problem, except that it had begun raining at this point. Fortunately, we've been here long enough to always pack ponchos, but it made for a very slippery climb. Then the fog rolled in. It was the very wet, very dense kind of fog that makes the world appear mysterious and new while at the same time drenching both your body and mood. We couldn't see more than 100 yards in any direction! This was fun at first, in a "now you see me, now you don't" kind of way, but quickly grew old as we watched the mountain grow steeper with every 100 yards! It also made reaching the top less memorable as we couldn't see anything! We ended up waiting about 45 minutes for the fog and rain to clear up, freezing in the 65 degree weather (hey, I haven't been in temperatures lower than 75 degrees in over 6-months AND we were wet!). Finally, the fog cleared enough fo us to get a great view of the crater and the Caribbean Sea. I got some pretty good pictures - I'm posting them for you. At this point, we were all tired, cold, wet and pretty ready to hike down the slippery mountain side - don't worry, we only suffered a few falls, nothing major! I would definately go again, I just might check the weather forcast first!
As far as cooking class goes, I decided to make it a permanant Monday afternoon addition. I've taken on 6 young apprentices and we're going to bake all sorts of delicious cookies and cakes! Last week we made a scrumptious banana bread. We had a bit of a disaster today. We were in the process of making Lemon Glaze Cookies, when the dough suddenly found itself on my kitchen floor. We almost had a riot, but fortunately, I keep a secret stash of brownie mix for rainy days (or angry mobs) and there is nothing the gang loves more than brownies from a box. Good save.