We had to rise very early that day, and shake off the beers from the night before. My travelling companion, who shall remain anonymous, was having some travelling stomach issues. Neither of us was at the top of our game. I flagged the bus over and we climbed in. We were quickly surrounded by blonde-haired, gangly-legged European youths, who looked far too healthy and sober to be sharing a bus with us. The journey was long, and after we left the paved road behind, it threatened to reshape my spine. Pulling up a sharp incline we reached a small village. A [View Full Entry]

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BE SURE TO VIEW THE EXTRA 33 PHOTOS ON THE BOTTOM OF THIS TEXT!! ************************************************ We woke up at 4am and by 5am we were headed out the door to pick up Lydia, Max and Ivy, who were just as tired and exhausted as we were. Not a good way to start off such a physically challenging day. We arrived in Antigua at the O.X. offices and climbed into their van and made our way to the Pacaya Volcano, signing waivers of release in case we died or got injured. Nice. The van took us up the volcano up to a [View Full Entry]

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It took about 1.5 hours to drive to the Pacaya National Park from Antigua, with the time passing quickly with us viewing the landscape, chatting to fellow GVI organisation volunteers about what we are to expect in our coming weeks and chatting to the other Northern Americans that had joined the tour. A boy, named Jorge, jumped onto the ladder afixed to the side of the Dodge van that we were travelling in, whom we met later as a helper for our journey. Jorge was hired by our guide to show us exatly where the latest flow is. The guide said [View Full Entry]

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By far the most memorable day trip of this journey has been the hike up Pacaya to see the flowing lava (only somedays is there lava flowing, we got there on a good day). Other than the Lava, what made the trip the most memorable was the preparedness of some of the other travelers. I will refer to them as the President of the Valley Girls of Southern California and the future leader of Blondes of Briton respectively. The first gal was staying at our hostel. I was browsing the net in the lobby when she arrived from the airport. This [View Full Entry]

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Here´s a video of the lava at Pacaya. They sell sticks and marshmallows. [View Full Entry]

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The alarm came way too early the next morning, especially because Miguel ended up snoring ridiculously loudly all night. That teaches us to bring kids who aren't technically staying with us back to the hostel. Only four of us ended up getting out of bed for the hike, so Emily, Adam, Ryan, and I collected our belongings and went outside to wait for the shuttle. We figured we'd be able to sleep in the van, but definitely didn't factor in the whole cobblestone-followed-by-dirt-and-bumpy-road thing, meaning that letting your head stay loose would result in either becoming a pseudo-bobble head doll [View Full Entry]

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I rolled down the window as we approached the little town at the base of the volcano to find some young kids running along side the van holding bundles of sticks. One of them looks right at me and asks in perfect English without an accent, “STICK!?” By the time we parked, we were bombarded by a group of twenty or so of these little salesmen between the ages of 6 and 9, roughly. I ended up buying a “walking stick” from the one that claimed to be the youngest. It was only a dollar and it’s hard to turn down [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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The ground was starting to get hot, as warm as a freshly baked loaf to the touch. We were getting close. James and I were near the summit of Volcano Pacaya - a smoking giant in the south corner of Guatemala. We had seen it puffing away from a distance in the mini-van from Antigua, the wind carrying its smoke clouds northwards over the dirty sprawl that is Guatemala city. It looked cool enough from there, but on the upper reaches of the active volcano, blurry heatwaves shimmered up off the ground. At our feet between jagged volcanic rocks were fiery [View Full Entry]

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When we arrived back in Antigua from Copan, lex had remembered that Handel's Messiah was playing that night at a convent ruin turned hotel, so we rushed home to get ready and quickly headed there. It was so so so amazing!!!! Thurs. morning, we got up and headed in to the market to buy things to cook for dinner. It was amazing, in the end we ended up with enough food to last probably 3 days for about $2. All fresh and amazing! We did have to pick up some things from the grocery store though, so that was about another [View Full Entry]

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