and I forgot to mention that we went to a rubber tree plantation in Rio Dulce and saw how they get the rubber from the trees. And they do it sustainably which is nice.. and that´s my story.
In Antigua today.. got up at 5.30 am and got a bus out to Volcan Pacaya, one of the 3 active volcanoes in Guatemala. I met a lovely dog with one eye and lots of kid selling sticks and ¨natuaral taxis¨ .. which is just a horse ride. Our guide was a crazy eyed Mexican who likes to yell Andele, Chicas and jump out from behind bushes to scare us and tell silly jokes. I really struggled on the walk up there.. it was tough but I made it. Our group was called the Pumas, but they group behind us kept catch up and calling us the Tortugas.. which we deserved but ey.
The walk up the volcano got us to 2500 metres high. The full height I think is 2700 but since the last eruption you can´t go all the way up. Most of the way up is lots and lots of foresty jungly stuff because the soil is so fertile with ash and volcanic minerals and things. Then we got to the big black chunks of hard, sharp, spiky and crumbly dried up lava that had spilled down the mountain in 2000. Walked over that for a while before we got to the HOT lava. It´s a bit creepy at that point because the ground underneath feels hollow and so unstable and every now and then you walk over a part thats reeeally hot or a big gap that excretes lots of hot air.
But then we got to the red hot moving lava. YEAH! The air that blows off it is so hot. We could get as close as we wanted to it and one of the guides was poking it with a stick to make flames. The whole thing just seems obsurd, I still can´t beleive they let people do this. There was a pool of lava filling up quite fast at the top that I have some movies of. And some dogs just hanging out and sleeping at the top which I also have photos of somewhere. The choc chips in my cookies melted. The walk down was fun because we went a different way along a windy path through thicker forest. Soooooooooo good. One of the best things I´ve done in my life. It was really cool to se how the lava had flowed down over a valley and splashed up against the sides of the mountain and then just filled up the valley.. what maybe used to be a farm.. no idea.
Lava is fun.
And our guide broke off some sparkly rainbowish volcanic rock which hopefully I¨ll be able to bring home. He was pretty informative but so annoying because he would snap off rocks and branches and flowers to show them to us... mmm.. sustainable tourism.....
Then we went back to Antigua and cooked up a big fresh stirfry and had a bottle of wine and spent ages updating THIS thing online on the net because I ramble so much so updating takes soooo long because I can´t write concisely .. ever. Then we had our last dinner with our tour group which was so sad. I´m going to miss them all so much. The food was crap and overpriced but we played bingo and had fun being silly and stuff afterwards. Missing my tour group already...
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