I went on a night visit to Volcán Pacaya, an active volcano outside of Guatemala City. The night tour is popular because of the great views of the glowing red lava, and we weren’t disappointed!
There were many children at the trailhead renting “sticks”, which you could use as hiking poles, and the adults were standing with their horses for rent, yelling “taxi!” I chose to employ two broom handles as poles, which I knew would be handy for the rough trail. I didn’t realize then just how handy they would be.
It was a short hike in comparison to Volcán San Pedro, which I climbed just a few days ago. The path was more travelled, and therefore less rugged, which was good, because it was pouring rain. By the time we got to the first good viewpoint, there was a spectacular thunder-storm happening. It was cool to see the glowing red lava, and steam pouring off of the volcano, highlighted by bright flashes of lightening, and loud booms of thunder. A great light show!
To get our group moving, our guide, Rudolfo, would yell with a big grin, “a la playa!” (to the beach!) Ha ha! I told him I wanted to walk on the lava, and wanted to know if it was possible. He replied “Claro qué sí. Uno ves.” (Yes, of course. Once.) It was fun to joke with him, he had a great sense of humour.
We continued on from there, and reached the point where there was no more path to walk on, we would have to make our way closer to the molten lava by walking on really sharp old volcanic rock. There were areas of loose rock, separated by streams of solid rock that solidified without starting to roll and breaking into pieces. Since the rock was very sharp, and unstable in a lot of places, about half of our group shed blood by falling. Even the softest contact with the sharp rock would slice your skin like little razor blades. I was glad I had my trusty broom handles for stability, or I surely would have been sliced open too.
The air and rain were chilly, and I had my rain jacket over a t-shirt, so my bare arms against the nylon rain jacket felt cold. My face and hair were soaked even though my hood was up most of the time. I had a warm shirt and dry pants in my pack, but I haden’t bothered to put them on yet. I had not bothered to think about it until it happened – a warm blast of air hit my face and body like walking out of a cold air conditioned room on a hot summer day. This was the real thing! The rain poured onto hot rock, and steam was gushing out of little cracks in the lava. As we walked, we could often look down into little cracks and see molten lava right below our feet. The air was hot here, and your feet were warm from walking on the heated rock.
We finally reached the “flowing” lava. Our guide borrowed one of my walking sticks and walked up to the lava and shoved the end of the stick right into the glowing red lava. I tried afterwards, and it was amazing to walk right up to the molten rock and poke it with a stick – it felt spongy. It didn’t take long for the broom handles to catch on fire, but it was so cool to poke the lava! I realized then just how often the local children had to replace their precious walking sticks, in order to have them long enough to rent out!
I started my retreat when I smelled the burning rubber of my shoe soles. On the way off of the lava rock, someone pointed to the sky and said “smoke-rings!” When I looked up, I saw giant smokerings descending onto the neighbouring hills. The volcano had blown them high into the sky, and they remained in smoke-ring form for minutes while they fell out of the sky and into the trees. Crazy!
We walked down in blackness, and could look back and see the red lava in the distance until we were far enough away that all we saw was the steam pouring off the mountain. A very cool (hot) experience!
Sorry for the crappy image quality, but isn’t this the coolest thing? Giant volcano smoke rings? Wow.
