Volcan Trek - Acatenago

Day 353.

Our return to Antigua was fairly revolved around trekking Acatenago, an active volcano just outside of the city. With skies forecast to be clear we booked straight onto the tour, hoping that we would be the lucky ones to avoid the clouds and the rain.

We arrived early for breakfast to find that we would in fact be trekking with a group of 24 others, this was a small concern that quickly increased when we learnt 10 of the group were Chinese Huewai employees here on business. When they arrived in jeans, without any gear and asking where they could buy oxygen for the climb we all began to worry if we would now even make it to the top.

It turned out after a promising start the Chinese weren't avid trekkers, their additional 3kg per person of snacks and coca cola certainly wasn't helping either. Once they had enlisted the help of a few horses (at a serious expense to themselves) it was decided to split the group in two, exlcusivley Chinese and non Chinese. And we were on our way up at last.

It was limbsters ideal conditions, 6 hours of up hill walking, the steeper the better. For me this meant my rather heavy panting returned but being in top condition from our previous trek it meant we rarely found ourselves not at the front, leading the climb (a rare sight indeed). Break times were tough, not because of the walking but because it was when everyone else on the trek cracked open their luxury snacks, snickers bars, powerade to blocks of premium chocolate, but hey we had a banana and budget granola bar each - for the entire two days....

The climb was unforgiving but breaking through the clouds was more rewarding than we had expected. We had scaled up one huge volcano in a matter of hours, and with coming through the clouds could now see the surrounding mountains and volcanoes in every direction. We were looking for one very specific one however - the most active in the region. Traversing around the black volcanic Ash we finally made sight of camp and in turn Fuego, the volcano we were there to see.

After some celebrations amongst the group, and a few surprised faces once half of the Chinese arrived at camp the guides were quick to get the fire going. It was more emphatic than we had anticipated the thundourous roars of the volcano echoed around the valley quickly followed by an explosion of lava that would last for about 15 seconds a time. Fortunately this eruption took place about 10 times an hour, which meant plenty of viewing for us.

The volcanic eruptions were only made better with the adjacent lightning storm which provided for a spectacular light show. It was hard at some points to comprehend the full scale of nature around us, with the sun setting on one side, the volcano erupting and the sky alight with lightning bolts - incredible indeed!!

As the sun set however the temperature rapidly changed, which in turn meant a scramble for the heat of the fire. After a few minutes of warming up limbsters hands we tucked into quesidillas and marshmallows whipped up by our guides. The temperature was down to 0 but it felt colder with the cold breeze coming in. By 8.30 15 of us had bundled into one small hut, wrapped in every layer possible and tucked into our sleeping bags.

What would normally be a horrible exercise - a 30 meter dash at 2am in the freezing cold to use the wooden festival like toilet was in fact a pretty awesome one. With the sky alit with stars and the volcano still erupting freely it was certainly hard to force myself back to bed.

Come 4.30am we were up (no thanks to the guides 4am wake up call). It was time to climb to the top, we had been warned this would be tough, and seriously windy. Fortunately we had slept in everything we wore the day before so there was no time for changing needed, at this point nobody cared. We summitted the top just in time for sun rise - the views were incredible, volcanoes all around! The wind however was also rather incredible, I had seriously underestimated the cold and the lack of gloves meant for fairly numb hands - my frozen banana as a final snack didn't much improve the situation.

It was incredible to be at the top with the clouds passing right through us, we were now higher than Fuego, the erupting adjacent volcano so could look right down on it. After a good few snaps, which meant even colder hands (I would like to note limbsters never came out of her pockets, nice and warm in those gloves so I'll be taking photo credit..) we all began to race down.

Finally some down hill, and a lot of it. After stocking up on some banana bread and coffee it was time to power down, and boy did we. After opting for a jog down approach we descended the entire volcano in just over 2 hours, quite a feat.

In desperate need of a shower, and a sleep we headed back to Antigua - we won't be forgetting this one in a hurry.Read more