Antigua and Volcan Pacaya

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Over the next four and a half months I will be travelling through much of Central America. I found on my last visit to Latin America that the locals no habla ingles, so I decided to spend the first three weeks of my trip in intensive one-on-one Spanish lessons, living with a host family.
Fortunately one of the best (and cheapest) places to learn spanish is the former colonial capital of Guatemala, Antigua; surrounded by three volcanos and densely forested hills this towns surroundings are very imposing. Cobbled streets and terracotta roofs lend Antuigua an old world character, this preservation is largely due to the 1773 earthquake which razed the city and prompted the capital to be shifted to Guatemala City. The town has been largely rebuilt but the cathedrals and civic building still show severe damage.

UNESCO site aside, the surrounding area boasts some of the best Mountain Biking and Hiking in CA!
For my first trip out of the city I went on a tour to Volcan Pacaya, a 2552m active volcano 25km sou'east of Antigua. Incredibly this volcano erupted only last May, so for much of the tour we were covering new ground so to speak (groan).

The hike started through thick forest but quite quickly the trees showed signs of heat damage, with the majority of the limbs burned and lifeless, they were clearly used to eruptions because the trunks were sprouting like mad. The trees stopped 2km from the volcano and in the distance we got our first glimpse of Pacaya, a classic cone volcano, it's surrounded by lava fields and appeaed to have had most of its summit blown off in the last eruption, it is clearly still very active as it belched smoke and ash the whole time we were there. At the tree line we descended down a steep ash slope toward the lava field directly below the volcano (by jumping in big strides down the valley slope, just like running down a sand dune). Down in this valley the rocks and ash were sharp and abrasive, you could feel the heat coming off many of them as you passed. The fallen ash was so porous it was akin to walking on charcoal. We stopped for lunch by a cleft in the rocks which pumped out volumes of super heated dry air, we used this to cook marshmallows for desert. There was a pleasant lack of safety barriers, if you did something stupid it was your own fault, the way it should be. Our last stop on the tour was a cave which has only appeared since the May eruption & which is easily accessible, our guide took us in & it was like going into a huge subterranean sauna, it must have been over 60 degrees; I only lasted a few minutes, it felt like my camera was about to melt. One nice feature of the lava field, other than the vultures flying overhead were the number of little yellow butterflies which gave a splash of colour to a predominantly black landscape. A good trip to start on, this is an amazing part of the world.

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Photos

Volcan Pacaya Forests
The trees must be very resiliant to survive an eruption!

Comments

[George]

Hola
Sounds like Lanzarote but more recent. How is your Spanish ?

[George]

biking
Ever thought about writing travel books ? Scary rides through the channels in the woods. Snowdrops are coming up here, spring is round the corner so we must get our own bikes going. How is your cold ? Mary Kate and Mike got it again, they are thinking about starting eating meat ! Hastalavista, G.

[Liz Wagstaff]

Sounds alright. Watch that biking! Remember what happened at Fort William. Lovely to see Rachel. Love Liz

[Suzanna]

great start
Hi Will, when you wrote this, I was flying to L.A. on the way to Death Valley & the Sequioa Nat'l Park, a repeat trip for me & wonderful & fascinating both. Now they seem tame compared to your adventure, which I am entirely delighted you are having. With still 3 months to go to practice your espanol, wonder where your blogs will takes us? Love, Suzanna