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Published: January 2nd 2008
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The highlight of my stay in Antigua was by far the day trip I took out to Volcan Pacaya (2550 meters)- the active volcano located approximately an hour drive outside of Antigua. After hiking up the dense forests at the base of the volcano on a cold, overcast day for about two hours our adventure turned a bit crazy. We finally arrived to the dried up lava portion from the eruption in 2006 and had to traverse some really jagged rocky terrain through some extremely dense fog (at one point I could only see a couple of feet in front of me). As we made our decent we could clearly see rivers of lava in the distance as the fog started to clear a bit. We followed our guide as the air started getting hotter and hotter until I could see lava literally only a few inches below my feet through the cracks in the terrain. An top of all this, as I was carefully planning each next step in order not to fall and cut myself on the jagged dried up lava, the ground at times felt quite unstable as if the dried lava were about to collapse from underneath
my feet- nevertheless I was not about to go out like Super Mario I had already made it this far!! At this point the ground was so hot that I could not stand on my two feet for more than a few seconds as my feet were burning up so I had to pace in place so my feet could cool off one at a time from the intense heat they were experiencing (our guide said that the lava is 1500 degrees Celsius or about 3030 degrees Fahrenheit). Somewhere along our our trek, I looked down at my Nikes and realized that the soles were coming off due to the intense heat.
As we were making our way to the huge rivers of lava in the distance, people were turning back (as they did not realize what they got themselves into) and cutting themselves on the jagged dried up molten lava. Finally we reached a section of the volcano where we were surrounded by lava from all sides (only a couple of feet away) and at this point our guide was no where to be found as our group had gotten split up. On top off all of this
I realized I should not have drank so much water on the way up and took it upon myself to relieve myself on the nearby molten lava (I figured this would be my only chance to pee on hot molten lava so I took advantage of the opportunity and can now check that one off my list of things to do before I die HAHA). This was by far the most intense heat I had ever felt in my life, as I was only about 3 feet away from the gurgling flow of lava- it was almost like approaching the rocks in a sauna, only many times hotter! Finally I decided to go up and check out the two rivers of lava flowing parallel to each other and only about 50 feet apart and stood there in awe of what I was observing- simply amazing (see pictures)!!
I thought I had better go find the rest of our group as it was starting to get really dark out. On my way back I ran into Karen, our British volcano hiking mate, and we saw another group off in the distance that was heading back. As we were trying to
catch up with the group, Karen stumbled on some jagged rock and severely wounded her leg. At this point we were yelling at the group in the distance "ayudanos" (help us) and the guide came and helped clean up the wound and we helped get her slowly back to the forested part of the volcano. At this point she must have been running on a lot of adrenaline because she was eventually able to walk on her own and her wound looked pretty terrible.
So we finally caught up to our group and we were reunited. Many of our group members had battle wounds- the soles of my friend Landon's new shoes (that he purchased the same day at the market in Antigua) were completely burned off and he had a large stream of blood along his leg (nothing serious though thankfully). Luckily the worst thing that happened to me were the burned soles of my Nikes- no big deal. We then made our way through the dark forests as night had fallen- all of us tourists had our flashlights and were walking really slow. Our guide however, was walking briskly using only the light of his cigarette- I
found it amazing that he took basically nothing with him except for his smokes and all of us tourists brought tons of food, water, flashlights, etc as he seemed to know every step of our journey like the back of his hand.
On our walk down to the base of the volcano, Landon was telling me all about his experience conquering Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He said he made it up over 19,000 feet (or about 5900 meters) in about a weeks time. Due to the mountain's equatorial location and high elevation he said one can experience almost every climate type on earth. He told me the story of how he passed out due to altitude sickness during the last 200m and his guide carried him on his back up to the top- pure craziness, sounds like a great addition on my to do list!!
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Veronica
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WoW!!!
WoW!!!