Tales from an intrepid viajero in Latin America Despite promising myself that I´d never be so self-indulgent as to write a blog that´s exactly what I´m going to do. Welcome to the blog that I´m writing while studying Spanish and travelling in Latin America over the next 8 months

We went for a trek up Volcan Santa Maria the other with my Spanish school in Xela. Santa Maria is a volcano with an altitude of 3768m above see level at the top and it was definitely one of the most impressive hikes that I´ve done.

Santa Maria itself isn´t that impressive but the purpose of climbing it is that from the top you look down onto the active Santiaguito, which is one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world. It erupts every couple of hours or so and I´d highly recommend that you look that the photo album of the trek...

In all, it took me about 2hrs 45 mins to climb the volcano which is pretty good going. Somewhat bizarrely, two dogs decided to accompany me to the top despite my best efforts to get rid of them at the beginning. Apprently, they go up the volcano every day. I seemed to cause much amusement to the locals when we reached the beginning of the difficult part of the hike by asking if Santa Maria was "behind that hill in front of us". I got the "that´s the bloody volcano in front of you and you won´t be calling it a hill in a couple of hours" response from them. Having said that, it wasn´t as difficult as everyone claims is it if you are in reasonable shape.

The views are great as you climb up the volcano - you can look down on Xela (which is located in a huge crater). When I reached the top there was nobody else there and it was a pretty clear day - you can see the Pacific from top, other volcanoes and I was lucky enough to see Santiaguito erupt as soon as I reached the top. Much to my amusement, everyone else missed the first eruption (haha) and had to wait another couple of hours for the next one. By the time Santiaguito erupted again it was a bit more cloudy and you couldn´t see up to the coast...

We are definitely going to climb Tajamulco at some point in December (the highest point in Central America at 4500ish) and I was talking with a couple of Guatemalan mates about trying to climb Santiaguito. That will definitely be hard as you pretty much have to wade through volcanic ash to get close to the crater...