Yesterday, was a volcano day for me! I climbed with a couple of friends, Ashley and Dirk, and a guide, Julian. The volcano is in a national park, and there is a entrance fee for the park. The fee is the same with or without a guide, so we chose to employ a guide for the day, and hoped we would get some good information from him.
From the town of San Pedro, the volcano doesn’t look all that big. Perhaps that’s because I live in the mountains, and I’m used to seeing big mountains, or perhaps because the summit was covered in trees, in any case, it is deceptive, and was much harder to climb than I initially anticipated. For those of you that have climbed the mountains around Banff, it was similar to climbing Mt. Cascade – 6 hours car to car, or more appropriately, 6 hours tuk-tuk to tuk-tuk.
The climb was steep! The distance over ground was 4km one way, but we gained an amazing 1.2 vertical kilometers over this distance, so the average grade was over 25%. The trail was well packed dirt, and the tree roots created natural stairs in many places, but the steps were HIGH. Half way up, we crossed paths with a local coming down. He was carrying 100lbs. of wood on his back. No pack, no padding, no nothing. A couple ropes tied the sticks together, and he looped the rope over his head. Crazy! I asked if I could take his picture, and he didn’t want me too. Too bad. My legs are burning today, and I bet his aren’t. 🙂
Along the way, we saw some great little creatures! On the way up, we saw a GIANT centipede of some sort. It was striped yellow and black, was thicker than my thumb, and was about 20 cm long. Dirk moved some leaves that were covering it to get a better picture, and it curled up into a very cool optical spiral for its defence mode.
The view from the summit was terrific! Great views of Lago Atitlán, and the other surrounding volcanos. As expected, there were many bright blue and green Iguanas sharing the sunshine with us at the summit. We also had a local dog decide to join us at the summit. She followed some other hikers up to the top, and when we went down, she came with us. She walked all the way down and into town with us, and then went her own way once in town. Funny! She must have felt like some exercise!
Our guide was quite quiet, but very friendly. He knew the names of our little creature friends (which I forget now), and was good to talk to to practice speaking spanish. A very gentle man.
Today, we’re chilling out inside, and watching the rain. There is an active volcano in Antigua that is climbable, and I saw photos today of the bubbling lava from another traveller that was there. Maybe I’ll go there next. 🙂
