WED 11pm. Went to a hostel called Casa Argentina with a backpack full of sweaters. I heard it would be cold. I figured, hey, Im Minnesotan, guatemalans don´t know cold. Yeah I was wrong. But we´ll get to that later. An organization called Quetzaltrekkers runs out of Casa A. They run a full moon hike up the second highest volcano in Guatemala. After a dinner of delicious vegetable soup and home made bread, we piled into the backs of 3 pickups and left. Ive said it before, but I really love the feeling of riding in the back of a pickup through a Guatemalan mountain range. After about 30 or 40 minutes, we arrived at the base of Santa Maria. We could hardly see anything but the outline, moon and stars.
We started trekking up, and after around half an hour, our guide said she couldnt find the right path, so we just stayed put. I was grateful for this, because I was already getting really tired. This gave me a chance to get to know some of the other hikers. Xela really attracts an interesting group, so that was a lot of fun. When the rest of the group arrived, we found the right path and continued up. We stopped about an hour later and had some granola and social time. This is where we got our first real view of what we were in for. The mountain didnt look any smaller, at all. The guides told us we were in for about 2 to 3.5 more hours of intense switchbacks. Thats basically a steep trail winding left right left right left right up hill. And so on and so on and so on, until finally I thought I saw the top. But I was wrong, we just had to walk through a cloud. At this point, I was really getting tired, and the way it was structured you didnt have to stay with the same group, you just couldnt go behind the last person in the group (who was one of the guides.) So I slowed down, and walked alone through a volcanic cloud forest at 330 in the morning. Probly the coolest thing ive ever done.
About an hour later, I felt like I had to sit and take a long break, so I sat on a log and played Kalimba. Eventually I saw the people behind me coming up, and decided to wait for them. I joined there crew and we kept on. Eventually we got past the treeline. Once we got there, we all agreed it was time for another break. (Stamina is nonexistant at 3772 meters.) The landscape was amazing. Nothing but sand and rocks, and clouds below. It looked like an island on moon or something. As we were sitting there, We saw a bright light appear in the clouds a bit higher up. None of us knew what it was, and I swear to god it looked like a UFO. It turned out to be the guides headlamp. He took us to the spot where everyone was camped out, and said go ahead and rest, we had an hour and a half til sunrise. From there, you could see the embers in nearby Santiagito, and a forest fire burning on the other mountain. And the best view of the stars i have ever seen. I was a bit exhausted from the 4 hour hike up a mountain, so I went to unravel the ''sleeping bag'' I was given. As I took it out of the bag, I realized something was wrong. It was really thin. It seemed bigger than it should be. It should have been heavier. It just wasnt right. It was..
It was a tent.
Oh well, you gotta roll with the punches sometimes. I wrapped myself in it and took a nap for about an hour. Eventually the guides woke everyone up once you could see the sun was about to rise over the volcanoes to the east. About 20 minutes later, Santiaguito started to erupt. The guide was nice enough to explain a bit of slightly unsettling history. Santiagito used to be Santiago, until it blew up in the earliy 1900s. When this happened, it drained out the core of Santa Maria (which we were standing on.) Thus, Santa Maria is just a big hollow rock, and geologists think that some day, probly during an earthquake or eruption of santiagito, its all going to collapse. So we watched santiagito erupt (really just huge huge huge plumes of smoke coming from the top, werent close enough to see the magma flow.) Sat around and had breakfast, watched the sunrise, watched clouds roll in and out, typical stuff. I decided to climb around a bit, and make it to the actual highest point. It was pretty cool there being alone up there, at the top of the world, a few thousand miles closer to the sun than Id ever been before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duvDiVM3nO0
Uhh, we climbed down, i met a cool girl, and I think i might go stay with her in Utila in a couple weeks. Its a rad scuba diving island where you can get certified for wicked cheap. And the whalesharks are mating there now, so you can swim with the biggest fish on earth!
Got back, real sore, went to the fuentes. Cool journey, we rode the chicken bus to zunil, and from there hitchhiked in the back of a pickup to Fuentes Georginas. Its really rad hotsprings that they kinda turned into a huge hot swimming pool-bar-hotel. Its up in the couldforest, so theres all kinds of oversized super super strange looking foliage.
Relaxed, slept in the fountains, went back to xela, hung out with the twins for a bit, then i had to go bed. Id been up over 24 hours, having the raddest day of my life. Slept like a rock.
today... more or less typical. but i think i might have fleas. :(
