Thursday, February 24, 2011

Volcano hiking in Guatemala

The plan was to hike Santa Maria volcano in Xela at midnight under a full moon to get a glimpse down onto it's neighbour, the explosive Santiaguito volcano which is highly active. Sound too good to be true!?
It was. The night of our supposed hike, we found out it had been cancelled. Santiaguito was getting a bit too active making it too dangerous for even las chicas aventureras among us.

So we settled on the well-trodden path of Pacaya in Antigua. Less dangerous, less adventurous and less unique, but actually still a great experience.

The climb was meant to take 90 minutes, we powered up in 45. The higher you go, the thicker the fog encapsulting you in the forest, making it impossible to predict your position on the mountain. We only knew we´d made it to the top when we arrived at a flat peak, completely fogged over. 

We then crossed a thick, rocky path downwards to get to the ´Sauna´. The landscape its covered in lava produced in last eruption in May 2010, which saw ash float 5km high. It is a black apocalyptical setting, completely surreal and foreign, nothing living, nothing even dead. Just us crazy hikers, daring to walk through this hot crater. We felt like we´d laned on mars, or some black, cloudy version of it. The sauna is a cave like formation, heated by natural heat expelled from the volcano. It´s steamy, two minutes leaves you breathless. It was so hot in some parts we could even cook marshmallows off the rocks.

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