Volcanoes (ok, volcano)

I mentioned in the last post that I forgot to tell the story of climbing the Agua volcano. So here, faithful readers, is that story. Of course, I suppose the photo at the left gives away the ending (that we eventually made it to the summit). But the fun (or pain, depending on how you look at it) is not in the destination but in the journey.

I decided to join my friends in their conquest of the Agua volcano at the last minute. I'm well aware that I'm not the fastest of hikers and was worried I would slow down their ascent. I finally got over my hesitation, however, due to the fact that I was not sure if I would ever again have the opportunity to climb a volcano with such genuinely kind people who didn't seem to care that I wasn't really all that good at climbing mountains (or volcanoes). To protect the innocent, of course, I won't be naming names, but these people are friends of friends (and now friends of mine), one who lives in Guatemala City and the other who is traveling in Guatemala but who hails from the Basque Country in Spain. I made a last minute decision to join them and we grabbed a cab to Antigua Friday night (not so bad if split three ways and much safer than a bus after dark). The Agua volcano is the most prominent of the volcanoes that can be seen from Antigua. While it is not the largest in the area (this proud designation belongs to the Acatenango that sits at 14,000 ft), the Agua volcano rises 12,325 ft and is often pictured in postcards of Antigua. You can see it looming in the background in the photo on the right, which I took during Holy Week (hence the massive crowd). Many tour groups will take a two days to climb the volcano: one day to subir (climb up) and one day to bajar (climb down) so that you can spend the night at the summit and see the sun rise. As we lacked warm clothes, we decided to do the whole thing in one day. Of course, since we were in Antigua staying with friends, we started out a little later than expected due to a bit of a late night out socializing.

So here is the rundown of our hike. It was, for all intents and purposes, an adventure. We couldn't get find a bus out to the village were the trail begins, so we acted on our Basque friend's claim that the village was only 4 km from Antigua and just started to walk towards the volcano. It could only be about a 30-45 minute walk, right? What's that for three adventurers ready to climb a mountain? 30 minutes later with no bus or town in sight, we come across an old man walking down the same road who informs us that the village is, in fact, still an hour march away up a steep road. What! An hour more and we haven't even reached the volcano yet? With that information at our disposal (and some covert dirty looks at our friendly Basque), we set our intentions on hitching a ride in a pickup. Not too much longer after that we were happily bumping along in the back of a pickup full of vegetables ready for the market in town. Thank goodness for pickup trucks! Shortly after that (the road was really steep, I'm not sure what we would have done if no trucks had driven by) we were breaking our fast (eating breakfast for those of you who aren't paying attention) in the local market: black beans, eggs, cheese, sour cream, freshly made tortillas, and ridiculously sweet coffee...my favorite. Then on to the volcano, oh brave adventurers!

So all the guidebooks suggest using a guide while climbing this volcano, mostly for reasons of safety. We, however, ignored this suggestion and carried on by ourselves. I will add here that we saw nothing to suggest that we were in any danger while climbing or descending the volcano (although I did see a man in a ski mask, all he did was say good morning and climbed down past us...not sure what was going on there). The nice part about a guide would have been that he or she could have pointed out the shorter route up the volcano. We only figured out that we had been climbing the long way 'round when we were about two hours into the hike and sitting at the first of many crosses on the path trying to catch our breath. Out of the woods comes this lovely indigenous family that we met several times later on the journey (and would end up walking with for at least the last hour or so of the descent). The looked at us, pointed at the truck path we had been climbing at and laughed bit, saying something along the lines of "Wow, you climbed up that? That adds at least an hour on to the climb. Didn't you ask were the sendero was?" Well, we had asked, but must have been steered wrong.

It took us about 4 1/2 to 5 hours to climb the mountain, mostly because I was lagging quite a bit. The thinness of the air really got to me, to tell the truth. I couldn't ever quite catch my breath. Truly, I thought I was going to die at least a few times. But my friends were patient and we dragged my ass up that damned volcano. And I will admit it was worth it. The view alone was worth it. It was the first mountain of any kind I'd climbed (I'd gone up Chicabal and Pacaya, but not the whole way on foot). And I'm proud that I made it, even though my friends made it look easy and I struggled the whole way. For what it's worth, they are experienced mountain climbers. I don't even want to discuss how painful it was going down. My legs shook the whole way and my big toe on the left foot turned black and blue. But there were some fun parts to the climb down. At the summit there is a perfectly formed crater (the volcano is inactive) that the locals have turned in to a soccer field, as well as a run-down church and a small shelter for camping. We hung out for a bit at the top and then started back down again. The descent is a lot faster than the climb, and we decided to stray from the path a bit a climb/slide down the sandy stretches between the winding parts of the path. My friend from the city took one path that looked to steep for me (my fear of heights kicked in big time) so I dragged the Basque along with me on a different, less terrifying patch of sand. Turns out this was a good call, as my other friend apparently ended up hanging from a tree over a small cliff which then led to a small drop from said tree and quite a bit of rolling down the side of the volcano. I'm really glad I only heard about it and that I didn't witness it. We had some fun sand-skiing but there was not rolling or dropping involved. We caught up with my other friend after an hour or so, and finally made it down the mountain in about 3 - 3 1/2 hours, sliding and running most of the way.

After the grueling eight hour plus hike up and down, we caught a bus back into Antigua and despite our intentions of catching the next bus back to Guatemala City, decided to stay the night (it was almost dark and we were dead tired). However, instead of resting as we probably should have we danced the night away with our Antigua compatriots and bunked down on the floor of our friend's apartment for only a few hours before trying to catch the early bus back to the city. I swear I must have had a limp for a little while after that weekend, and my legs cramped up during the night for a week afterwards. My whole body rebelled. But, thank goodness, we as humans have very little memory of pain but quite a capacity to remember beautiful vistas and good company. As they say in Spanish, vale la pena. Loosely (well, actually, literally) translated, that means it is worth the pain. And so it was.