Volcano Boarding Cerro Negro – Our Review
TL;DR
Volcano Boarding Cerro Negro travel guide including our personal review.
Volcano boarding is one of the best things you can do in Leon, Nicaragua. In fact, it was one of our favourite activities during our 6 months Central America backpacking trip – and we’re not even huge adventure seekers.
Here’s everything you need to know about our volcano boarding experience.
Volcano Boarding on Cerro Negro in Leon Nicaragua
How to Go Volcano Boarding
You need to book a tour to go volcano boarding – after all, who travels with a giant wooden board?
Two big tour companies offer volcano boarding in Leon:
- Volcano Day
- Bigfoot
Both companies charge around 35$. We also found this operator online who offers private tours for the same price:
You can choose to go in the morning, during the day, or in the evening.
We chose to go with Bigfoot in the morning because they have amazing free add-ons (it used to be a free night in a dorm, now it’s a free shuttle to Las Peñitas Beach).
We have written a complete blogpost about Las Peñitas.
Travel Guides
Las Peñitas Travel Guide (+ Map)
Quick travel guide to Playa Las Peñitas Nicaragua including a map.
Carina
Our Volcano Boarding Tour Review
Getting to Cerro Negro Volcano
Your volcano boarding adventure begins with a rather bumpy bus ride and a hike.
The hike is described as “moderate” with an estimated walking time of 45 to 60 minutes to the top. The path is a bit scrambly. The hardest part is carrying the wooden boards. They are not heavy (around 7 kg / 15 pounds) but quite unwieldy.
For us, this hike felt like a piece of cake after recently having done the Acatenango hike in Guatemala.
The Crater of Cerro Negro Volcano
We did get some time to explore the crater of Cerro Negro on our own. We could find some fumes and spot some sulphur.
We also refreshed with a little snack before making the final push up to the crater rim. The views from the top are amazing by the way – you can even see other volcanoes in the distance!
Boarding Down the Volcano
Once you reach the top, your tour guide will give you a breakdown of the proceedings and a thorough safety briefing.
Afterwards, you put on your safety gear. We strongly suggest you have as little skin and hair exposed as possible. Wear long socks to keep your ankles covered, cover your mouth and nose with the bandana, and cover your hair because those nasty little rocks go everywhere – we mean EVERYWHERE – we were finding some in the crevasses of our bodies days after the tour 🙈.
To go down, you sit on your wooden board and grab the rope attached to it. On our tour, we were going down in pairs of two at a time so you don’t have to worry about crashing into others.
When you look over the edge, the slope looks deceivingly steep. We found that we didn’t go nearly as fast as we thought. Additionally, you can break with your feet. In case you want to go faster, take your feet off the ground and lean back.
Confession time: Our company measured our speed with a radar gun and I went down the volcano with a whopping speed of 25 km/h (15 mi/h).
After the Tour
When you make it down the volcano safely, you might want to treat yourself to a free celebratory drink.
After the bus ride back to Leon, we were handed our mandatory volcano boarding shirts.
The company emailed us many amazing pictures and videos of our adventure on the next day.
Volcano Boarding Leon Travel Guide
Is Volcano Boarding Worth it?
Volcano boarding Cerro Negro was one of our travel highlights and absolutely belongs on your Nicaragua itinerary.
Contrary to what you might think, it's not solely for thrill-seekers. While you have the option to descend the volcano at a thrilling speed of 100 km/h (60 mph), you can also opt for a more leisurely pace by using your feet to brake – like we did.
Here’s our Nicaragua itinerary including volcano boarding in Leon:
Is Volcano Boarding Dangerous?
While volcano boarding is not extremely dangerous, minor injuries can happen quickly. You’re going down a volcano with quite a high speed on a gravelly surface so cuts and grazes are always an option. We personally never heard of any more serious injuries.
What to Wear to Volcano Boarding
You should wear:
- Comfortable Clothing (we recommend long legs/socks).
- Hiking Boots or Closed Shoes
- Bandana or scarf
- Sunscreen
- Sunglasses
- A braid/hair tie if you have long hair
Additionally, you should get from the tour company
- Overall
- Safety goggles
- Gloves
- We got a small backpack to carry our gear
This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. You would help us a lot if you do so. Thanks.
