It was a very cold night but having a winter sleeping bag with a fleece lining and three blankets on the bed, we all survived. Without breakfast, we left at 7am to drive to Quetena Chico, about an hour away.

Half way between the two places, we stopped to help a guy with a broken motorbike on the side of the road. His battery had ran out last night and he was lucky enough to have stayed in the little hut. It must have been freezing cold but probably still warmer than being outside.

We were surprised when a couple of ostriches ran across the road in front of us. Apparently they are not just an African bird, they live here in the wild too.

We arrived to the hostel in Quetena Chico, where we were going to stay overnight, to leave our bags and to have a pancake breakfast.

Quetena was, once upon a time, just a single village until there was a disagreement and some families moved a little way down the road to create their own village. Those who moved believed that their village would be bigger and more prosperous than the one they left so they decided to call it Quetena Grande while the existing village was renamed to Quetena Chico. The whole thing backfired though with Chico now being bigger, holding about 100 families, while Quetena Grande only has about 30 families.

A local mountain guide, Macario, came to meet us at the hostel with an armful of walking poles. It took an hour to drive up to the volcano, we past heaps of llamas, drove through a river with iced up edges and past an old sulphur refinery before going up the steep sided mountain terrain, the 4x4 capability of the Land Cruiser certainly came in handy.

We took the jeep up to the 5,700 m where we had to park the car, it was definitely a bit chilly and windy so we immediately put on every layer we had including windproof jackets and wooly hats and gloves.

Macario, the guide, used to work at this altitude on a nearby mountain collecting sulphur. They had to stay for six days a week and only spent one day back down in the refinery area to wash and get new supplies. Now, he spends all his time as mountain guide and has been to most peaks around in Bolivia and some in Chile. He walked at a good steady pace making sure everyone was breathing in through their nose and out their mouth. At this altitude, you shouldn't get out of breath while walking, otherwise the pace is too hard and you need to slow down.

The path was single track that zig-zagged up the steep sided gravel slope of the volcano. We seemed to be barely walking at more than a shuffle but we needed to be careful with our breathing and placing our feet on the slippery surface.

We arrived at a false summit with rocks, at about 6,000m, but it was just a little further to go to the real summit of 6,024m. It was thought that we would take about two hours to reach the summit but we actually made it in 1 hour 14 minutes.

There was beautiful panoramic views of mountains and lagoons surrounding the volcano. We could see mountains, not only in Bolivia but some not that far away, that were actually across the border, in Chile and Argentina. Looking down we could see Laguna Celeste with its striking turquoise coloured water.

After a 30 minute break at the top for some chocolate, photos and to sign the guest book (yes, they actually had one) we were heading back down again.

We took a different way down. It was pretty much a straight line, straight down. It was soft sand and we were sort of running downhill, very fast, in a fashion similar to skiing, bouncing from left to right as we went. It was a quick descent, only 24 minutes, but we were covered head to toe in thick dust.

With instruction from Marcario, Juan Carlos drove us back down the volcano to a rock canyon with strange rock formations. There were two rock trees and one rock that looked like a condor. There were nice views back up to the volcano.

Back at hostel we paid Marcario Bs.450 for his services and then he walked us through the village to a shop where we could buy a well deserved beer or two. There was no way we would have managed on our own, he called on one lady who shouted on another lady who gave him a key to a room with a few crates of beer in. At Bs.20 a big bottle of beer, it was quite cheap considering the remote location.

We had a combined lunch and dinner because we were in between mealtimes and starving. We had beef (which might have been llama), awesome fries, rice and veggies. Juan Carlos ate with us, he had climbed the volcano too so it felt fitting that we celebrated our 6,000m peak achievement together.