Antigua & Volcan Pacaya

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Got home early early morning on the 30th, but wanted to write about the last adventure Ashley and I had.

Spent two days in the cute small town of Antigua - a colonial town with beautiful landscape all around, a couple huge markets to shop in, pretty churches. We had a veeeery kind couchsurfer, Luis, who helped us out a lot and made sure we were taken care of.

On our last day, we climbed an active volcano!! They don't tell you before how difficult it's actually going to be... let's just say it was a HIKE! The beginning is like any regular hill with brown dirt and green trees. Then you get to a kind of "sandy" part where you take 2 steps up and 1 step back and it feels like you're running in sand dunes. Next comes the rocky part of old volcanic rocks and ash. Lastly, at the top, the rocks are so jagged and it is so incredibly windy that it takes all you've got just to take a step and not fall over. However, when you reach the moving lava, it's definitely worth all that work! You can feel the heat coming off the rocks though it's still a bit chilly with the wind. But when you stand right next to the flowing lava, it burns your skin.

That's all for Central America! Next adventure is volunteering in Tijuana, Mexico for about 6 months starting at the end of January. I'll try to update once in awhile with the interesting stories :-) Thanks for listening/reading!!

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Photos

View from the top
There are two other mountains nearby and lots of greenery to see.

Next to the start of the flow
Trying not to get blown in and at the same time protecting my face from getting burned.