This trip to Guatemala and Belize has been so full of incredible experiences, amazing people and unique places that if I wanted to, I could write dozens of pages on the last few weeks. However, I have been told not to make this blog a really long and uninteresting rant about a month’s worth of stories. So, I will focus on the weekend that 4 of my friends and I climbed Volcán Acatenango an hour or so outside of Antigua. We checked out an American-owned travel agency, and were told that the price would be $130 per person for the 2-day trek. Seems like a reasonable enough price, but since we are all broke college students, we found a much more sketchy “travel agency” that had its front desk awkwardly inside a baby toy store, and its logo haphazardly drawn on the wall. Probably not a good idea to trust your life to a Guatemalan agency like this when they won’t show you the equipment, food, or camping stuff you will be using, but the price was $13 per person so….yeah we did it. It was only after reserving our spots that I looked up the volcano to find that 8 hikers actually died there earlier this year because of the cold at the summit. We almost thought we had been ripped off when the van to pick us up did not arrive for 45 minutes after the scheduled time, but nevertheless, by 11 am, we were at the beginning of the hike, an open shack on the side of the road. The first four hours of the hike were somewhat difficult, but the views of the cloud forest around us, the company of my friend Quinn, and the dry jokes of our sixty-year old Mayan guide kept me motivated to continue even as the rest of our group would fall so far behind as to be out of sight within a few minutes of starting to hike. About 5 hours in, Quinn and I stopped and the guide went back to check on the rest of the group while it began to rain. I was so exhausted that I just lay down and let it hit me. However, it soon became a downpour, and just when it was looking like the rest of the hike (which the guide had assured us was only 15 minutes for the last 4 hours or so) would be a soaking wet mud trudge, the guide returned with the others and pulled out a tarp for all of us to stand under for 15 minutes while the rain passed. It was a good time of rest and bonding. The next 2 hours passed quickly, as the thundering sound of the neighboring volcano, “Fuego” erupted every few minutes and we began to catch views of it and the surrounding clouds.
When we reached our campsite about an hour from the summit overlooking Fuego, the guide cooked us hot chocolate over a fire he started, and we watched spectacular volcanic eruptions until well after dark, when the glow of the lava and the lighting hitting the volcano made for a Mordor-like environment, but not so great photos.
We got up (implying incorrectly that we got even a single minute of sleep with 5 of us in one tiny tent on a centimeter-thick mat with too-small sleeping bags in the cold) at 4 am to hike the remaining hour and catch the sunrise. The views from the summit were the best I have ever seen. I will never forget this experience.
