Acatenango & El Fuego

September equals rain but…

The day started quite inconvenient. It was 8am. and the shuttle bus didn’t arrive at the Hostel on time, in fact it never appeared. After an hour waiting, I made my way to the agency which was supposed to be open at 9am. However it was still closed. A restaurant owner on the other street side tried to help me. I already called three different numbers for several times but nobody picked up. Luckily the restaurant owner had two private numbers of the agency, thus he could broadcast on WhatsApp and tell them that I was waiting near the agency for the shuttle bus which at this time was already supposed to be in front of the volcano. At 10am. a shuttle bus stopped in front of the restaurant and the journey finally started.

With 6 other people we hiked up the volcano Acatenango where we watched the sunset, had a cozy campfire and last but not least enjoyed every singe eruption El Fuego had to present at this mostly cloudless evening. After a dozen of eruptions and some informative conversations we went to bed around 10pm to get at least 6 hours of sleep.

Next day at 4am. we went up to the summit of Acatenango. The first 5 hours to the basecamp the day before weren’t too stressful whereas the sunrise hike to the summit in the darkness up to 3976 meters above sea level was quite exhausting. Nevertheless we made it up there and had a beautiful sunrise around 5:30 in the morning.

The decent was long and one or the other was suffering from any kind of pain in their legs. Even I was not in top form by virtue of my 18 days of quarantine, I was not suffering of any muscle aches even not the following days.

With mentioning, we never had any rain which was a huge fortune by knowing that it rained day for day for day before and after our unforgettable trip up to the volcano Acatenango.Read more