Here I am alive and well on the volcanic slope! All wet of course! Brilliant trip to Malala and Bogia to visit two schools. Rained most of the time though. Guest House really good. made from local materials but room spacious and very clean and not pests!!! Power was left on most of the night and manager, his wife and cook couldn't have looked after us better. Food was amazing but far to much for me even though I was hungry most of the time!

Took the opportunity to hire a boat to go over to the Isalnd which is mainly still unhabited as people moved to the mainland near Bogia in 2004 when 13 died. It took a lot of bargaining but we managed and got it for half of what Lonely Planet said it would cost!! We took Alphonse, our driver with us. It was the second time only in his life that he had been in a boat!! ben, my colleague suffers from travel sickness and when we were half way over and it was a bit choppy and you couldn't see the mainland nor the island I did wonder if we were irresponsible ahen I looked at ben's face!!! Anyway although very wet the skipper landed us on the island which we hadn't expected and we walked up the black stoney slope and just then the clouds lifted and we could see one of the two craters!! Magic. Some tiny ferns were trying to grow so rescued one for the garden!! Got back on the boat and followed the coastline for a bit and as we started back watched the mist coming down again.

That eveing we sat and chatted with Charles [manager] and Peter [cook] over a beer which we discovered he had [still ban in place] and between pidgin and English we put the world to rights.

Excellent trip.