Arghhhhhhh! Eeeeeeeeep! All of the excitement noises! Today's the day we hike & camp on an active volcano!
At 12pm we are back at Lemon tree hostel getting ready for our hike & overnight stay on the mountain. As well as a small day pack for the 2 nights following the volcano where we will spend away from Antigua.
Tomorrow after we hike down & return to lemon tree, we will have very little time to prepare these day packs before were on the road again. Tom is awake now & has had a large breakfast, so we can help each other pack, which is rather annoying when we are in separate dorms.
By 1.30pm we are all ready & are loading ourselves into the van which will take us to the base of the volcano, however first stop is their office. We are using a company called OX & they are excellent & provide any & all gear required for this. Not a lot of people come to central America knowing or being prepared to hike & camp on an active volcano. Some people literally need to borrow everything from boots, packs & clothes. Tom & I are quite proud that we are using our own packs, clothes, boots & torches. We've been lugging all this hiking gear around since Nepal, it's good to put it to use again.
** This is our friend called Svea, she's the German version of Tom's little sister called Emily. It's very uncanny sometime's, she looks like Emily & has the same mannerism's as she does! We have a plan to one day to introduce them**
I wake early & bursting with excitement, Tom will need some recovery time & is comatose when I come in to get some money for breakfast. I'm sure him & the lad's have had an excellent night out.
I go to a breakfast place called Mama Jojo's with Hannah, Barbie, Carla & Diarmuid.
Breakfast is amazingly fantastic! Everything from the food, coffee, juices, music, service & the funky cafe itself.
After breakfast we go for a wander through town & check out the local craft market. There are the usual street vendors walking around selling wooden flutes, blankets, necklaces, bags & scarves.
We find a very large shed with every imaginable souvenir inside. We have been told that a lot of the stuff here is very generic & factory made. If we want to buy something that is locally hand made & has more meaning, to wait until we get to the village homestay.
Despite seeing lots & lots of things, we make mental notes & will wait to see what is on offer in our next 2 stops.
I go to a breakfast place called Mama Jojo's with Hannah, Barbie, Carla & Diarmuid.
Breakfast is amazingly fantastic! Everything from the food, coffee, juices, music, service & the funky cafe itself.
After breakfast we go for a wander through town & check out the local craft market. There are the usual street vendors walking around selling wooden flutes, blankets, necklaces, bags & scarves.
We find a very large shed with every imaginable souvenir inside. We have been told that a lot of the stuff here is very generic & factory made. If we want to buy something that is locally hand made & has more meaning, to wait until we get to the village homestay.
Despite seeing lots & lots of things, we make mental notes & will wait to see what is on offer in our next 2 stops.
We are coming back to Antigua & will have this opportunity again. Personally I'd much rather buy hand made, local & authentic items that mean more to me because of the link this creates between us & a small community. It's appalling & shocking how many souvenirs, world wide come from China.
At 12pm we are back at Lemon tree hostel getting ready for our hike & overnight stay on the mountain. As well as a small day pack for the 2 nights following the volcano where we will spend away from Antigua.
Tomorrow after we hike down & return to lemon tree, we will have very little time to prepare these day packs before were on the road again. Tom is awake now & has had a large breakfast, so we can help each other pack, which is rather annoying when we are in separate dorms.
By 1.30pm we are all ready & are loading ourselves into the van which will take us to the base of the volcano, however first stop is their office. We are using a company called OX & they are excellent & provide any & all gear required for this. Not a lot of people come to central America knowing or being prepared to hike & camp on an active volcano. Some people literally need to borrow everything from boots, packs & clothes. Tom & I are quite proud that we are using our own packs, clothes, boots & torches. We've been lugging all this hiking gear around since Nepal, it's good to put it to use again.
We do borrow an extra head lamp & jacket's (we gave our jackets away to the locals in Malawi) and help to carry some of the communal stuff. I have an extra 5 litres of liquids given to me, as well as spaghetti sauce & bread for dinner.
While in the office helping with preparations I am also messaging a girl called Angela, who we met in Mexico & who is from Cuba. She knew we were in Guatemala & was asking where we were so that she could try & connect us with another one of her friends, a guy called Josh, who was from Australia & met her while travelling. As soon as I read her message the tour guides called out it was time to go. I replied with a very brief message thanking her & promising to reply to her the following day once we got off the volcano. Once everyone is all packed & prepared we all pile back into the vans.
It's at this point a guy sitting behind us taps me on the shoulder, shows me a recent photo of Tom & I that he has on his phone & asks us if we know a girl named Angela! It's Josh! The guy that Angela wanted to connect us with & she sent him the photo after my last message when I said we were about to hike a volcano. He said she messaged him the photo while he was sitting behind us & told him to look out for us. Haha it was the strangest thing!
It's at this point a guy sitting behind us taps me on the shoulder, shows me a recent photo of Tom & I that he has on his phone & asks us if we know a girl named Angela! It's Josh! The guy that Angela wanted to connect us with & she sent him the photo after my last message when I said we were about to hike a volcano. He said she messaged him the photo while he was sitting behind us & told him to look out for us. Haha it was the strangest thing!
The drive to the village at the base of the volcano is about an hour away & full of twists & turns.
On the drive up, we notice some semi familiar accents & meet another Aussie couple from Melbourne who are also doing a big world trip. We spend a fair bit of the trip chatting with them & Josh about various places in the world & where we've travelled.
They've spent a lot of time in the states. It's nice to get a different perspective on America & hear about what they enjoyed.
It's exciting stuff to arrive at the village which resides at the base of Pacaya & we are well ready to hike it.
Pacaya is an active, compound volcano & is one of the volcano's in the Central American Volcanic arc, which is a chain of volcano's stretching along the Pacific Coast. Pacaya sits on the southern part of a volcanic caldera which formed in the Pleistocene age & has been the source of 9 very large eruptions over the last 300,000 years & has ejected approximately 70 cubic kilometres of magma.
They've spent a lot of time in the states. It's nice to get a different perspective on America & hear about what they enjoyed.
It's exciting stuff to arrive at the village which resides at the base of Pacaya & we are well ready to hike it.
Pacaya is an active, compound volcano & is one of the volcano's in the Central American Volcanic arc, which is a chain of volcano's stretching along the Pacific Coast. Pacaya sits on the southern part of a volcanic caldera which formed in the Pleistocene age & has been the source of 9 very large eruptions over the last 300,000 years & has ejected approximately 70 cubic kilometres of magma.
Pacaya's first eruption was said to have been 23,000 years ago & it has had approximately 23 significant eruptions that have been recorded since the Spanish invaded Guatemala. Pacaya then became dormant for 70 years & then woke up in 1961 & has been vigorously & consistently erupting since this day. Thankfully, most of it's eruptions are of the strombolian type, meaning they are mild, with an occasional & more serious plinian eruption. It was quite cool, researching about Pacaya & the many different aspects of a 'basic' volcano & it's terminology. Both of the descriptive words strombolian & plinian are named after previous volcanic eruptions, plinian is by far the more famous & this type of eruption was named after the famous volcano Mount Vesuvias in 79 AD, who's tragic eruption resulted in Pompei. Pompei is definitely on our list of things to see!
We were told by our guides that Pacaya recent activity has been to erupt 4-6 times every hour !
Finger's crossed this is what we see.
The first 20 minutes of the hike are quite hard especially with our packs. The hiking path is steep, slippery with mud, uneven & there's an obvious battle against rain erosion going on. The erosion is definitely winning & in places it's not very obvious where you should step.
The first 20 minutes of the hike are quite hard especially with our packs. The hiking path is steep, slippery with mud, uneven & there's an obvious battle against rain erosion going on. The erosion is definitely winning & in places it's not very obvious where you should step.
Some of the locals are following us up on horses & donkeys offering to take our packs. By the first 20 minutes nearly all the girls apart from myself & 3 others in the group & half the boys have given up & paid for the help of a pack animal.
The people who went out last night look like they are struggling. It's a matter of pride & stubbornness that prevents me from relinquishing my pack & I'm very proud to have carried it to the top.
After the initial 20 minutes it becomes less steep & my legs have sufficiently warmed up therefore making it easier. The view is awesome!
From a halfway point we can look across the valley that Antigua is nestled in & see the other 2 volcanos, Fuego (who is also very active) & Acatenango.
From three quarters of the way up we can see the summit of Pacaya & see balls of red lava being ejected from the top & rolling down the side. How exciting !!! It's kinda hard to comprehend that we are looking at lava & standing so close.
The last bit of the hike is now in sight & so is the camp, as each person reaches camp a round of applause & cheering happens. Gosh, we just love these people! What a team! What a great vibe!
Once everyone reaches the top, we have 10 minutes to cool off before we need to set up the tents & get ready to hike to the top.
The guides are starting to look a bit concerned & were starting to notice the chill. Within seconds dense, white cloud starts rolling in, obliterating everything of colour & shape from sight & leaving only white. This is bad news for us.
The guides are hopeful it will shift & give us visibility, so as planned, we begin the hike up to the top.
If we thought the mud was slippery & dangerous, this was worse ! Small, sharp & loose pieces of previously ejected volcanic material do not create much leverage or grip. With each step your foot would sink down into the unstable material & create a cascade of rubble. I, as well as many others fall over multiple times.
We all struggled up for about 40 minutes as the sky got progressive darker & the immediate world around us got progressively whiter.
The cloud was not dissipating at all, it was getting worse. Our torches were practically useless & from up ahead we could see a dull red colour being reflected through the cloud were the lava was.
It was at this point the guides finally called it quits & we aborted the hike.
With such poor visibility there is no way to see how close we were to the lava or how active Pacaya was currently feeling.
The guides explained that you could expect Pacaya to erupt 4 -6 times an hour on average, however this can increase & without a good visual there's no way to see how far the lava projectiles are travelling.
I think a lot of people were eager to get off the side of the volcano & get their feet out off the unstable volcanic material & back onto dirt.
I was also thinking about this, but mostly disappointed. The photos of people roasting marshmallows over lava & the sight of Pacaya erupting in front of us would have been unbelievable.
We have another opportunity in the morning at 4am, as long as the cloud clears.
We all slip & slide back down the volcano & reach camp. A few more people fall over, it's incredibly destabilising going down & was worse than going up. I clung onto Tom all the way down.
The people who went out last night look like they are struggling. It's a matter of pride & stubbornness that prevents me from relinquishing my pack & I'm very proud to have carried it to the top.
After the initial 20 minutes it becomes less steep & my legs have sufficiently warmed up therefore making it easier. The view is awesome!
From a halfway point we can look across the valley that Antigua is nestled in & see the other 2 volcanos, Fuego (who is also very active) & Acatenango.
From three quarters of the way up we can see the summit of Pacaya & see balls of red lava being ejected from the top & rolling down the side. How exciting !!! It's kinda hard to comprehend that we are looking at lava & standing so close.
The last bit of the hike is now in sight & so is the camp, as each person reaches camp a round of applause & cheering happens. Gosh, we just love these people! What a team! What a great vibe!
Once everyone reaches the top, we have 10 minutes to cool off before we need to set up the tents & get ready to hike to the top.
The guides are starting to look a bit concerned & were starting to notice the chill. Within seconds dense, white cloud starts rolling in, obliterating everything of colour & shape from sight & leaving only white. This is bad news for us.
The guides are hopeful it will shift & give us visibility, so as planned, we begin the hike up to the top.
If we thought the mud was slippery & dangerous, this was worse ! Small, sharp & loose pieces of previously ejected volcanic material do not create much leverage or grip. With each step your foot would sink down into the unstable material & create a cascade of rubble. I, as well as many others fall over multiple times.
We all struggled up for about 40 minutes as the sky got progressive darker & the immediate world around us got progressively whiter.
The cloud was not dissipating at all, it was getting worse. Our torches were practically useless & from up ahead we could see a dull red colour being reflected through the cloud were the lava was.
It was at this point the guides finally called it quits & we aborted the hike.
With such poor visibility there is no way to see how close we were to the lava or how active Pacaya was currently feeling.
The guides explained that you could expect Pacaya to erupt 4 -6 times an hour on average, however this can increase & without a good visual there's no way to see how far the lava projectiles are travelling.
I think a lot of people were eager to get off the side of the volcano & get their feet out off the unstable volcanic material & back onto dirt.
I was also thinking about this, but mostly disappointed. The photos of people roasting marshmallows over lava & the sight of Pacaya erupting in front of us would have been unbelievable.
We have another opportunity in the morning at 4am, as long as the cloud clears.
We all slip & slide back down the volcano & reach camp. A few more people fall over, it's incredibly destabilising going down & was worse than going up. I clung onto Tom all the way down.
Once at camp dinner was served! Spaghetti Bolognese with bread & a glass of well deserved red wine. There was a bonfire & we all sat around it, enjoying being out in nature & each other. Sadly the clouds got thicker & by bed time (shortly after dinner) it was even hard to find the tents.
I crossed my fingers & toes as I wiggled into my sleeping bag. Please no cloud, please no cloud, please let me see lava, please let me see lava!
- Alli
I crossed my fingers & toes as I wiggled into my sleeping bag. Please no cloud, please no cloud, please let me see lava, please let me see lava!
- Alli
** This is Bonita, a dog that lives down in the village & accompanies the hikers up every day so that she can eat the left over dinner & get all the attention she needs of a night time**
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