Day 6: Volcan Pacaya

Sorry for the posting delay! All of my time has been spent hiking around various places, eating, and sleeping. We've had to get up at ridiculous times (5am for Pacaya, 3am for Tikal) and I've been incessantly exhausted. I'll write a post about Tikal tomorrow, since I'm about to fall asleep on this couch.

As mentioned, we woke up at 5am on Tuesday to head off in a tour van with a bunch of other people. After a long drive through some mountains and up part of Pacaya, we got out at the small town of San Francisco to stock up on water and snacks and prepare for the hike. I found it weird that everyone else was in hiking attire, since Paul had told me that it wasn't that difficult of a hike. We realized how wrong his memory was about 15 minutes into the rapid uphill climb. The combination of the thin high-altitude air and my lack of hiking experience meant that I wasn't going to make it the whole way on my own. Fortunately, the groups are followed by "natural taxis"- horses guided by local people. For a small fee I climbed up on a horse for the rest of the ascent, and it was an awesome decision. In addition to not passing out from exhaustion, I got to look and feel pretty epic on a horse as well:

 

Most of the journey up is through a forest, but once you reach a certain point the area begins to look very apocalyptic. Dead trees everywhere are a reminder that this volcano erupted a year ago, destroying much of the life near the top (including a couple people).

At this point the horses must be left behind, as the terrain becomes volcanic sand that is easy to sink into. Tour groups used to be able to go right up to the top of the crater and look at the lava below, but no one is sure of the stability of the ground at the top these days. Instead we stop at a large plateau filled with natural heat vents and cooled lava formations. Here is Paul looking epic on one of them:

The heat vents below these formations are extremely hot, and our tour guide treated us to some volcano-toasted marshmallows:

After a while of relaxing and exploring the plateau, we started the descent. I went by foot this time and it was very quick and relatively painless (for everything but my ankles). When we got home we basically collapsed for the afternoon and didn't move much for the rest of the day. Despite the rest, my leg muscles were still incredibly sore this morning for our Tikal trek. Now I'm going to sleep off the last few days and spend my last day doing some shopping and last-minute sightseeing around Antigua. Expect an epic post or two tomorrow!