Volcan Pacaya

---

Hello there everyone,
Well i´ve been here 2 weeks now and it´s flown by.
I´ve finished my 2 weeks (40 hours) in spanish school and it was hard. There´s so much to learn, but what better place to do it than here. The weather has been on the whole good apart from the daily shower when we have some pretty heavy rain (as it´s rainy season) and the little tremor on Wed from an earthquake. Now I know what to do if there is a proper earthquake. It´s pretty crazy really but also not that unusual, my host family are used to it.
Yesterday I climbed up a volcano called Volcan Pacaya. It´s about 1.5 hour drive away and we set off at 8am. After arriving at the start point it was then a 2 hour hike up to the foot of the volcano through some lovely scenery but mainly uphill! If you got too tired it was always possible to take a taxi - check out the photo for the local taxi service. Once we had arrived at the foot of the volcano we took a few minutes to take in the spectacular view of this ACTIVE! volcano. The last proper eruption was 5 years ago but it was making amazing groaning noises all the way up which my guide said that she´d never heard before. She said that she thought that it was probably because of the tremor earlier in the week and the volcano releasing more gases than usual. It was a very strange sound, almost like a bear in the bushes.
We walked quite far up the volcano, the terrain is quite prehistoric and spacey at the same time, it definitely doesn´t feel like you´re on earth. Also the heat coming off the volcano is amazing, like you´re standing right next to a camp fire and you can see the heat coming off the surface. We managed to get quite close to some actual lava and there it really is hot. I had hired a stick off some of the local kids at the beginning of the walk and stuck it in the lava and straight away it caught on fire, we also threw some water over it and it evaporated instantly. It is not uncommon for people´s shoes to melt sometimes, luckily mine didn´t. The lava wasn´t a flowing stream, it was more like huge rocks of coal falling down the volcano, you did have to be pretty careful. The volcanic rock is also incredibly sharp, if you fell on it you would hurt yourself pretty badly, luckily I didn´t have a repeat of last weekend. My knees are still on the mend but still not 100%. We were on the volcano for about 1 hour and when we came off we then had lunch in front of it. During this time the cloud starting swirling around and at one point the volcano was completely lost and out of sight.
The walk back down only took about half hour and then it was back to Antigua.
This week I start at the indigenous school full time leaving Antigua at 7.15 on the bus and getting back at 5, should be good.
Hope you´re all well
Lots of love
Sal

---