Blogs from Pacaya, Capital Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 4

First of all, I am no volcanologist. So, bear with me, because I might use the wrong technical words for what I saw... The Pacaya volcano is an active volcano located approximately 30 km South of Guatemala City. Its summit is at 2552 mt. It is considered a "stratovolcano", which means it is tall, conical, has periodic, explosive eruptions, its lava is highly viscuous, cool and hardens before spreading too far (out of shame for writing something way too wrong, I just got this from Wikipedia). After approx 100 inactive, Pacaya erupted in 1961 and has pretty much been active since then. Its active cone is called the MacKenney cone, and its located on the SW of the volcano. Until this year, there was another crater, called "Cerro Chino", to the NW of the volcano. This ... read more

6/29/06 Last night, my school showed a movie ¨La hija de la puma¨about a Mayan girl who because of the army massacring her pueblo and surrounding pueblos, doesn´t know what happens to her brother when the survivors of her village flee to a Mexican refugee camp. She travels back into Guatemala and risks her life to find her brother. This movie takes place in 1982. 1982! Horrible events happening 20 years ago. It truly is inconceivable to me that terrorizing to this degree still happens. It´s a very hard thing to digest. We truly are lucky to have the rights, freedom amd lives we have in the US. I can´t even begin to explain how lucky I feel to be an American citizen. Today was my last day of classes. I feel a multitude of emotions, ... read more

Our last excursion was a trip to Volcan Pacaya. Trudy and Jasmine stayed in Antigua, the boys and I were joined by our Canadian friends and Sam from Belgium for the trip. Hiking in sandals was a pain (literally) but it was not worth lugging boots along the last 6 weeks for this. ... read more