I left San Pedro and headed a couple hours east to Antigua. Antigua is the tourist city of Guatemala. Its clean, its expensive, it has tons of upscle shop selling crap that you dont need, full of upscale restaurants with quite good food, and plenty of tourists from all over the world. Its like San Cristobal in that respect only a bit more expensive and in a much more beautiful setting. If your coming here to get away from people, look somewhere else. Neverthless, its a great place to visit for a few days before jumping back into the real Guatemala.
Here are some views from my hotel roof sitting area. Probably the best rooftop views in the city.
And of course the obligitory secure bike parking in the hotel. At first this hotel said that I could not park my bike inside. As I was walking out the door, all of a sudden a plarking place opened up! Imagine that.
I didnt walk around town with camera in hand. Just getting lazy I guess. Playing picture taking tourist gets old after a while, so I kind of blew it walking around town with no camera. I decided to go directly to the Volcan Pacaya the day after arriving in town.
Hiking the active volcano was on my list of things to do, but, instead of doing it the hard way, I simply paid 10 bucks to hotel front desk, then that afternoon a van picked me up, took me to the park, had a guide set up, and off I went. Wow, that was so easy I could hardly stand it.
Be warned, this is a super touristy thing to do, but still its very cool to see, so its worth putting up with all the people at the volcano. You would never be allowed to do this in most other places in the world. Hell, in the states they probably would let you get within 5 miles of red hot magma, so this is kind of a special experience in my opinion.
About an hour south of town, you get to the park entrance, buy a walking stick from a kid for 5 Quetzales (you will want that stick, trust me) then hit the trail behind the guide. You dont need a guide, you can simply ride your moto or take public transport and walk up the trail yourself. But I was lazy so I did it the easy way.
You get picked up right at your hotel about 2:30 in the afternoon, go to the park, hike in, look around, enjoy the sunset from above the clouds then hike back down in the dark, get home around 9:30 pm. The whole thing takes about 7 hours, hotel door to hotel door.
You start off on a nice easy trail and walk up into the clouds.
As you get above the clouds you are rewarded with some pretty cool views of the area. The volcano itself:
And some stunning views of the surrounding volcanos near Antigua.
Heading further up the trail it turns into loose volcanic scree and lots of fine ash.
Then after about an hour and half of walking, you get to scrambling on the volcanic rock. There is lava flowing underneath you in places and you can feel the heat singe the hair on your legs, burn your feet, and start to melt the soles of your shoes. Cool.
A little higher up the heat gets alot worse and you start to feel like your walking in hell. Humm, what the hell is going on down there?
Now it gets even hotter……
Your leg hair is singed, your shoes are melting, the bottoms of your feet are burning, and you have to be very careful where you step or you could break through the crust, and that would not be good for your health. Whatever you do, dont slip and put a hand on those rocks. That would be bad as well.
This would be called “liquid hot magma.”
OK, my feet are on fire, its getting dark and I’m ready to go, but not before I take in one more beautiful view.
On the way down in the dark I managed to get get a semi decent shot of where we had been, just to give you some perspective.
This is a must do trip if you are in Antigua. Be warned though, its serious business walking around up there and you could easily hurt yourself. One girl twisted her ankle and another girl burned her leg pretty badly and had to be carried out and taken to the hospital, so be careful. Its a freaking active volcano after all!