Birthday Highpoint

On my 47th birthday, I set out to reach a new highpoint with my brother Peter and a Guide Macario. We got up at 3am, (since beta is sometimes hard to come by in Bolivia, we did not know what to expect and wanted to allow for any trouble). Drove to the base of Licancabur, started up in the dark. Other than the high altitude, Licancabur is really straightforward, like a lot of volcanos, a big pile of rocks, lots of loose scree of varied sizes. We slogged upward as the beautiful sun rise went on around us. Pretty uneventful, aside from the spectacular views of a spectacular part of the world, four hours we were on the top. Licancabur is on the Bolivia Chile border, so i walked over into Chile (I had never been there) we took a half hour then a controlled (sort of) run in loose scree to the bottom in 1 1/2 hours and on to the next one. I reached a personal high point, but the next day set a new one on Uturuncu, then a week later, again on Aconcagua.