It was Monday afternoon that I forked over the cash (around $6 US) at the Barco travel agency for my bus ride and a guide to volcan Pacaya. I decided long before getting here, that climbing Pacaya would be something I had to do. I’d basically been looking forward to it for months. Needless to say I was pretty freakin excited.
Then, as if it couldn’t get any better, the front page of yesterday’s paper was filled with a picture of Pacaya spewing lava something like 50m into the air. Apparently it erupted Monday morning.
So yeah, words can’t really describe the experience so I’m not gonna try super hard to write it all nicely or anything. Even the pictures don’t come close to what it was actually like. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my short and boring life.
We got on the bus at 2:00 yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon and headed out on the 1 ½ hour drive to the park at the base of the volcano. The drive itself was pretty cool, though once we got onto what I guess was basically the base of the volcano the roads got pretty sketchy, what with being super narrow and having large drop-offs and what not. We got there alive at rate, and were immediately inundated with small children selling walking sticks, and guys with horses asking, “taxi? Taxi?” despite the fact that I’m dying to go riding, I decided that this was not the time, and these were not the horses on which to do it, and besides that I really wanted to hike the whole thing. I needed the exercise to counteract all the eating I’ve been doing here.
I found the hike up to be pretty hard. Not so much on my legs but I was definitely out of breath really quickly. Fortunately the scenery was pretty awesome, so that made up for the difficulty of the hike.
We walked for just over an hour and a half before we came to a point where the vegetation just changed completely, I found myself on a relatively bare hill, looking out over Guatemala city and volcan Agua and Fuego on one side and the remnants of lava flow in the valleys on the side of the mountain on the other, it was like rivers of black rock had been flowing and then just got tired and stopped. I dunno, I can’t describe it, but it was cool. The wind was really strong here, and the clouds were moving faster than I’ve ever seen a cloud move before in my life. Between the way the light was shining through the clouds, and the sound and speed of the wind and the movement of the clouds, the whole scene was really eerie, but also really cool. I tried to get video, but it was like everytime I turned my camera on the wind would die down. From this point it was a really short distance to the volcanic rock that had been deposited there in November by the last huge eruption.
The rock was really cool, you could feel the heat coming up out of the cracks, and even just the formation of it was really cool to look at. It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. Geeky but true.
There were some spots where the cracks were big enough that you could see the orange glow, and if you stuck a stick in there it would catch on fire. It had just erupted on Monday but it looked like the lava had already hardened for the most part, though we weren’t able to get all the way up close to the crater (mostly because it’s been really active lately). We spent about a half hour just hanging out on the rock, eating the food we packed for dinner and watching the sunset, which was absolutely amazing.
Like I said we didn’t get to go right to the top, but that didn’t even bother me, what we did get to do was just so incredible. It was definitely worth the hike. We started to head back just as it was getting dark. The wind was insane on the hill before we got into the more forested area. There were a couple moments there when I thought I might actually get blown off my feet. It was at this point that Daniella got kicked by a horse. There were two of them that had been let loose to graze or whatever and as we walked by the one (and we were a fairly decent distance away) he pinned his ears and walked towards us before swinging his ass around and letting both legs fly. I could see it coming, but all I could managed to do with the wind and everything was just kinda say “ummmm,” and pull on Heather’s arm to get out of the way. Fortunately Daniella was far enough away that it just got her in the shin, instead of the knee and it wasn’t a hard blow. It was pretty funny on account of she didn’t get hurt, but it could have been bad. Here I was worried about getting injured by an eruption, it never occurred to me that the horses would be the thing to worry about.
Anyways, we came down the mountain in the dark, using our flashlights to find our way over the uneven ground, there were a few stumbles but nothing serious, and everyone lived to tell the tale. I got home exhausted and filthy. My feet were black and my shoes were filled with ash and dust, so I took a shower and went to bed, I think I must have been asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, I was just that tired.
Definitely worth the effort though, I want to go again… just not today.
