Crater Wasteland

We ended the Crater Adventure by hiking/ climbing down into the basin.  Our first attempt almost ended with the Latinos falling off a cliff, so we had to back track and start over again.  On descent #2, we found a proper path and easily walked down the kilometer into the Crater.  Unfortunately, we got to the bottom of the hole around mid day, just when the sun was at its hottest.  The fair skinned were morphing from pink to red, and we are all starting to count how many bottles of water we had for the vertical ascent.  I felt like we were on Mars in the bottom of the Crater.  The bone dry ground cracked under our feet to show a layer of white salt? under the dried mud.  It was a desert wasteland.  Feeling a little weirded out and nauseous from the heat exhaustion, I rallied the troops and we headed back up up up.  We had to stop several times for water breaks and to keep the hot blackness from clouding out our vision.  One of the Saudi kids that was hiking with us started puking from overheating.  As the sun continued to climb, we pushed out way up and finally out of the desert.