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Published: February 15th 2009
The highlight of our stay in Antigua was our hike up a live volcano. There are several to choose from here, as the city is surrounded by (active and dormant) volcanoes. We were picked up from our hostel at 6am and drove for an hour about halfway up the mountain. We were in a tour group of about 15 people, with a tour guide who called us the 'tiger family', so that he could call to us when other tour groups were around. We then all hiked straight up for another hour and a half, arriving at a point where we had a view of a hardened lava flow at the base of the mountain, and active red lava flows and orange falling rock at the top! Here, the mountainside changed abruptly from grass and trees to shards of porous black volcanic rock. It looked like another planet. Our guide told us we were going to have some 'fun' - we walked carefully along a slope made of tiny black rocks... and then skied down with our feet!
Then came some more serious hiking, and we went almost to the top of the mountain. Here, the lava streams were out
Climbing the Volcano
Laura, Judie, and Alex ascend behind our guide.of sight, but we were very close (probably too close to be called safe) to a section of glowing red and orange rock. This stuff would occasionally break off in chunks and cascade down the mountain. Clambering around the mountain at this point became tough, as the surface was made of fist-sized chunks of black porous rock, so every movement initiated small landslides. We made our way closer and closer to the molten rock (is it still lava if it's not flowing??) and the heat became intense. For Laura, who was at the front of the line, it was so hot that she had to put on her sweater to protect her skin, and shield her face from the heat radiating from the rock. The guide and some of the guys lit cigarettes from bits of glowing rock - a pretty standard, but pretty cool thing to do on the Antigua volcano tours.
On the way down, seeing the scenery change from lava to rock to dust to plants and birds, it reminds one of how we never get to see the hidden parts of nature like a volcano's insides, but they are just as connected to us as
...and going down
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! are trees and sky. (Or is that just corny?)
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