Pacaya Volcano

3rd February 2016

I spent the morning changing accommodation to the fantastic Taanah's, and out of the miserable back alley nonsense of "Eric's" airbnb listing, and chasing up a few loose ends regarding my ticket to El Salvador.

At 2pm the bus to Pacaya volcano left (picking up a dozen passengers in numerous locations on the way).  Why don't they just tell passengers to meet all in one place? It would be so much easier and save a lot of time and frustration.  None of the lodgings are more than 5 minutes walk from the centre, but it takes 20-30 minutes to drive around picking everyone up each time there's any kind of tour or journey.  Completely stupid.

An hour or so later we arrived at the trailhead for Pacaya and were met by our guide and a handful of obnoxious children shouting, "Stick mister, pishh, Mister, you want stick?  Mister, Stick?  Stick, mister!  Stick.  Psshh.  Mister, you want stick?"  And in case you had changed your mind, they repeated this to everyone present for the next fifteen minutes while we waited for the walk to commence.

Do I need a stick?  I dunno.  The guide doesn't have a stick.  I reminded him that he had forgotten his stick.  He looked at me, unsure if I was serious, but this guy was one of the smart ones.  Ok, so I wouldn't need a stick, as attractive as the idea may seem.  I do love a good stick.  You can beat obnoxious kids with sticks.  And there have been bandits on this trail in the past.

Fifteen of us set out ranging in age from twenty to over seventy.   I don't think much of the chances of the one Israeli man way over seventy.  I wasn't much sure of my own chances either.  I had no idea whether I could still exert myself what with the cough and not having trained for a year at least.  But everything was fine, I'm still a tough guy... the walk wasn't particularly difficult in the end, just extremely dusty.  A lot of ash and pumice from the recent eruption in march 2014 covered the paths, although it could well be that there's been ash there since the first eruptions occurred back in (navigates to Wikipedia.. wait this in Spanish, how dare they?  <Click Ingles>), approximately 23,000 years ago.

That's an active volcano

There's not much to tell about the ascent but near the top the cone comes into view and everyone gets snap and selfie happy.  Then we descend into an old crater which is now just filled with hardened lava.

The guide takes out some bags of marshmallows and gives us all sticks, because volcanos are for toasting marshmallows of course.  I wonder which nation decided that? hmm?  After approximately 3 seconds holding a marshmallow into a gap in the dried lava trying to get it slightly toasted I give up and eat mine.  It's disgusting, no it's delicious, no it's disgusting.  I tell some of those standing nearby they are better untoasted.  Not everyone agrees, but a few agree that they are revolting.  If Americans didn't eat this at camp when little, I doubt they'd eat the later on.  I try another two to make sure they're not worth eating.


The hot lava isn't around to see any more.  Either it's all gone or we're not allowed, I can't tell which.  The guide and the operators say there's none to see, so that must be the case. Unless it isn't.  There used to be a slightly illegal tour that took tourists to a lava flow for an extra £3.50, but that wasn't sold openly or advertised as the government forbade it.  Perhaps they have finally clamped down.   When I asked the tour operator they looked incredibly shifty and denied all knowledge of these tours.  I know someone who has been on an illicit tour a year or so before, so I know they know that I know they exist.  I get the feeling that when the authorities put their foot down, most people take notice.  I wish I'd located those that don't.

Agua Volcano just visible in the distance

The view to Antigua and Guate City was blocked by clouds sadly, but we did get to see a magnificent sunset through some well places radio masts.  I cheekily told one Scandinavian guy that he had enough selfies.  He didn't agree, and carried on.  It seemed like a lot of fun so I tried a few of my own.  It was a lot of fun!

Selfie like you just don't care

No matter how many I took, I couldn't get the distant volcano into an acceptable background position.  My head kept getting in the way.  I might need a selfie stick.  "Selfie-stick Mister.  You want Selfie-stick?"  Now you're talking!  I'm going to selfie the heck out of that stick one of these days.

As we descended night fell and the head-torches came out.  At the bottom of the trail the obnoxious stick selling child asked for my head-torch.  There's really only one response to that.  **** off.