Acatenango

Looking for something to do over the weekend, attention quickly turned to the volcanos constantly looming ominously over Antigua. Coming from Australia where these things simply don't exist, the curiosity factor was high, and I was quick to sign up for an overnight stay atop a dormant volcano.

Vulcan Acatenango presented  psychological and physical challenges like no other I've experienced before. At 3970m it's Central America's third highest peak, and the 'hard' rating is certainly appropriate. 

Starting at 6am, we left Antigua (~1500m) and drove through some more authentic Guatemalan towns, similar to Antigua in street scape, but obviously without the huge tourist influence. Kids play in the main street though the town, stray dogs roam free, and it seems that everyone in town has their own fruit stall set up by the roadside. We stopped amid some very picturesque farmland and started the days hike at about 2400m above sea level. 

There was four distinct sections of the hike through varying types of terrain. First was through farmland, which meant walking in the small passageways between fields. Sounds nice, but these passageways were just dry  little gullies full of 3 or 4 inches of loose gravel, it was one step up, half a step back. This section was hard! 

Next up was the cloud forest, the landscape suddenly changes to thick, lush, green vegetation, but surprisingly little wildlife (the whole hike the entire group saw a few birds and a couple of lizards, I only saw one bird myself). This section was steep, with lots of traversing, but solid underfoot, overall I'd say moderately easy. 

Moving above the cloud forest, the terrain dries right out again, and we had an hour and a half or so of walking through the pine forest. This section was less steep, as we did less traversing and just wound ourselves around the volcano. If you replaced the pine with gum trees, and flattened it all out a little, I could have mistaken this landscape for a piece of the Australian bush. 

Then things got tough again, tougher than before. Above the pine forest is where you realise your climbing a volcano, not just a mountain. All of sudden you're walking on black volcanic crushed rock, and it's like walking up a sand dune of fish tank pebbles. We set up camp in the saddle between the two peaks, then continued up the remaining 150 vertical meters or so to the summit. This section was extremely hard, there was no traversing, it was just straight up on 6 inches of loose gravel. One step forward, 90 percent of a step back at some points. Being at 3900m for the first time in my life probably didn't help the situation. 

Getting to the very top was every bit as exciting as I'd imagined it to be, climbing 1600m in one day is no joke, but the views justified the 6 solid hours of hiking. The barren alien landscape and the bright blue sky both equally different to anything I've witnessed before. Mind blowing stuff.

Of course once I'd recovered from the final part of the ascent and taken in the view, I had to have a crack at the tour guides challenge of running around the volcano's crater in under 4 minutes, we guesstimated it to be about 600m. Coasting for the first 2 minutes, I thought I'd be done in under three. Then it hit me, muscular fatigue like I've never experienced before, it felt like my lungs were the size of a couple of coin bags from the bank, or even smaller. I tried not to stop, but simply had no other option, my legs would not keep walking. Eventually finishing in 4 minutes and 14 seconds, I missed out on the free t-shirt up for grabs. Damn it. Next time. A pretty sweet experience though.

The tone in our guides voice changed when the clouds started rolling in a little thicker, and we could literally feel (and hear) the electricity in the air. We had to descend back to camp quickly, and just made it before the rain really set in for an hour or so. When it cleared the stars appeared, and we had a nice little meal and sipped some red wine before heading to bed for a well earned sleep. It was a cool night, and I woke up with a layer of ice atop my bivvy bag. Certainly the coldest conditions I've used it in, but I was dry, so I was happy. At 5:30AM we again started the tough climb back to the summit, this time by torch light in pitch black conditions. It was probably slightly easier this time because 1) the gravel was sort of frozen together making your footing a little more solid, and 2) without being able to see the top you had no option but to keep on trudging uphill.

If you've never experienced sunrise above the clouds on top of a mountain, you simply must do it, soon. It's hard to put into words just how cool it is, so I won't even try. Just do it! We even got to experience looking down on the nearby active Vulcan Feugo as it spat out a red hot rock or two, and saw them tumble down its side. Very cool indeed.

Once the best part of the sunrise was over, the weather changed in a matter of minutes yet again and a thick fog descended on the volcano. Visibility was down to about 5 meters so it wasn't really surprising when one of our party got a little lost on the way back down to camp. A rather anxious guide, along with our local porter & security guard searched fruitlessly for 15 minutes or so before our kiwi friend eventually found his way back on his own.

The descent back down to our starting spot was quick, and basically the reverse of going up. The loose gravel sections were easy to fly down, and the foresty sections were hard going with plenty of big steps down and lots of slippery tree roots.

After a few quick hours we were back to where we started the previous morning, weary, and somewhat looking forward to the cramped minivan ride back to Antigua. It was an amazing weekend spent with some pretty cool people, and full of experiences that I'm sure I'll be recalling for many years to come. If you haven't done something like this, I highly recommend you do. The world is just different, and even more amazing at 4000m, you won't regret it.