Second Pacaya Expedition

We wanted to make sure that Allison and Nancy got to experience a volcano, with moving lava close at hand, so we signed up for another expedition to Pacaya. This time, some local teachers were on strike for some reason, and so it took us almost an extra hour just to get up the mountain because we had to go all the way down and around to Escuintla and come back up. It was really unfortunate, because instead of ending up just ahead of the big afternoon crowds, we were just behind them, and waited in (what can form of a line in Guatemala) for a while. Well, I should probably say that everybody else got stuck behind. I was recklessly stupid enough to follow our guide and climb around everyone, luckily without a single injury.

This way, I ended up standing about four feet away from a river of flowing lava that was probably about, 6 feet wide or so. Probably more, but I'm not very good at estimating that kind of thing. Either way, I slipped a little bit and caused some volcanic rocks to slide down the mountain. Comparatively, it was nothing, because everybody was slipping all over the place. I just got lucky enough to be above some people who were real grumps about the whole thing. I think that they were actually really freaked out by the whole experience, and so took it out on other people. Whatever the reason, the rocks rolled down around their feet (without even touching them, I might add) and they promptly looked up the hill and starting yelling at me for moving and causing the rocks to slide.

Ben came up behind me at that point, to take a picture, and I lost my balance a little and rocks slide again. Those stupid people were still below me, and when I tried to stand up, causing some more rocks to slide down the mountain, they said that I shouldn't be above other people and mumbled under their breath that "some people are (were) just so stupid". It frustrated me, because they in their turn were also standing above other people, and as likely as not kicking some rocks down onto them. Hypocrites are really just not my favorite kind of people.

Other than that though, this lava experience was much better than the first time we went. The wind was blowing a little bit, but the rocks weren't really hot and we could actually stand close to the lava and not get burnt. Obviously it was still warm, since the lava could have been anywhere from 1300 to 2200 F. The best part about it though, was that we got to roast our marshmallows. Or, I guess a better way to put it is, got to take pictures of people holding the marshmallow above the lava. For some reason or another, maybe we just didn't get close enough, the marshmallows didn't roast, and so tasted really disgusting (being Guatemalan, and dyed pink and blue and yellow I'm sure didn't help). But we got out pictures!

Unfortunately, we only got to stay up there for about 20 minutes, because then it was time for everybody to start heading down. I was disappointed, because it wasn't quite dark yet, and I was hoping the maybe we could stay and see the actual sunset. Our guide however, had different plans, so we all started down the mountain. The sun set before we reached the trees again though, so I still got some nice colors around Agua and Fuego and Acatenango. I think the afternoon/evening trip is a better one to do than the morning trip, if there is that option. It's really nice to see the lava in the dark, although it just looks like something on the mountain is burning, not really distinguished as lava.

We realized walking down through the jungle though, that none of us had remembered to bring flashlights or headlamps or anything. Everybody else in our group had one though, and they were really nice and shared a few with us. That may have been my favorite part of the whole experience, hiking at night. It wasn't pitch dark yet, and I wasn't carrying a light, but enough other people where they I could see roots so I didn't trip over them. We saw some glow worms and fireflies walking down, and the breeze was blowing a little bit, and I just thought it was a gorgeous night to be out. Not to cold, and very peaceful.

About a week later, we talked to somebody who had hiked up and not been allowed closer than about 100 meters from the lava, because a couple days earlier something had happened, and somebody broke their leg and a couple other people got injured trying to get out of the path of moving lava or something. We didn't get a lot of details. That puts the accident probably the day after we went, so we were just in time. I knew something like this would happen eventually, but I figured we had a least a couple more years before they cracked down on security. Hopefully it's just post traumatic stress, and they'll open it up again soon, but either way we got really lucky.