Day 1, part 2 - Hiking the Volcano Pacaya

After putting all of my family's luggage at my house in Guatemala City, we headed off to Pacaya via the "back road" by lake Amatitlan - not to be confused with Atitlan, which is much further from the city. The road is simple - once you turn off the "main" road around the lake, you follow the dirt road for a little under an hour without taking any real turns, passing through several tiny towns and around a nice second lake, smaller than Amatitlan, high in the mountains. We passed some random and creepy stuff, like this:

The road literally dumps you out at the start of the Pacaya hike rather than in the town just a bit down the mountain. So as lost as you may feel driving the "back way," it really is a straight shot. We hired a guide for about 100Q - the same guide who took Phillip and I back in August! It was cool that I was now able to talk to him way better than I could the first time, when my Spanish was nonexistent. His name is Eduardo and he left me his phone number (53209678), saying that if we were ever coming back to Pacaya to call him and he would wait for us at the base. He is a nice kid if a bit quiet, about 14 years old, and only speaks Spanish.

The hike is pretty long and was difficult for me (24 years old), my brother (15), my friend Keeley (23), & my mom and my dad (50s). My dad and brother caved in and rented a horse from the relentless salesmen that walked halfway up the mountain behind us.

My mom, in her stubbornness, became even more adamant that she would walk with the horsemen at our heels.

The last time I hiked Pacaya, in August, we had to stop at the end of the tree line. This time, that point was about the halfway mark, and we got to go much, much closer to the crater (while still uphill, the hike was much flatter after the treelike.)

Much had changed with the crater's landscape since Pacaya's massive eruption back in May. While we saw no free-flowing molten lava at the time of visiting (March 2011), there were several cool cracks in the earth where sticks caught on fire, and a small cave that felt like a sauna. The crater itself was very Mount-Doom-esque. Here are some shots:

The sun was setting about the time we started back, so we snapped some quick sunset photos at the top with Volcan Agua in the back - photos which will hopefully satisfy my mother for our 2011 Christmas Card, pending photoshopping in my other brother.

Probably the coolest thing came at the very end as our guide, before getting in our car, shouted "Fuego esta tirando!" which meant that the volcano Fuego (visible across the horizon from Pacaya) was erupting! There was a small stream of red light at the top of one of the mountains which, combined with the brilliant sunset and glitter of the city lights as they turned on in the distance, made for an epic end to a long, full day.