Volcan de Pacaya

On Saturday afternoon we set out to climb Volcan de Pacaya after a 1 1/2 hour bus shuttle ride with about 20 other visitors. Before getting to the main trail we were hawked by little boys trying to sell us walking sticks and flashlights for the trip, and still more people trying to offer us "taxi" service up the mountain on horse. Our group was named "Grupo Jaguar" to keep the confusion to a minimum for when we reached the top and mingled with many other groups.


The hike up was pretty tiring because they don't really have switchbacks on the trail, it's more of a straight up for 2.5 kilometers walking on a dusty soil trail. It was like we were walking in sand uphill most of the time. Although a few people in our group opted for the horse taxi, we did not. Finally we broke through to the clearing and could see the top of the volcano and a huge flow of lava rocks where a bunch of people gathered. We had to climb along on the lava rocks for quite a while to get up close to the flowing lava. The rocks are super sharp (some people had big gashes in their legs) and quite hot in some areas where there are glowing coals underneath. We could smell burning rubber while we were up there so we tried to move around a lot to avoid our shoes melting.


We got up to our highest point (not the summit because it is too hot up there) in time to see a bright red sun go down and see the moon rise. We did miss the peak of the eclipse but watched the moon come back into it's full state. On one side of the mountain flowed lava, and in another part hot rocks crumbled down a hillside where some people were roasting marshmallows. Over to the West we could also see the 3 volcanoes that are very close to Antigua. From closest to furthest were Volcan de Agau, Volcan Acatenango, and Volcan de Fuego that was smoking out it's top. We stayed up near the lava until it was dark and then made our way down very carefully over the rocks. We were smart enough to bring our own headlamps, but other people didn't have flashlights and only could see with the help of the flashlights from one of our 2 guides. And, even though we were quite exhausted from the hike up, it was well worth it to see an active volcano up close.