Last week, Tim Carroll came to visit me in Guatemala. His flight was arriving into Guatemala at about 11:30 on a Saturday, and I asked him if he thought he’d be ready to hike a volcano that afternoon. I figured that with him having to get up at 4:00am and traveling all day to a country he hadn’t been to, where he doesn’t speak the language, would lend itself to having the desire to leave to hike a volcano within the hour of arrival. I mean, the afternoon was free, and we needed to do something to fill in the time

I was right, but of course, Tim is usually up for anything. It was a good thing he has such a flexible attitude because I arrived in Antigua at 1:15pm, an hour later than I expected, and our shuttle to the Volcano was to leave at 2:00pm.

Turns out we had quite a few errands to run in 45 minutes:

• Check into the Hostel
• Find an agency that would let us go to the Volcano
• Book our travel for the next day and decide if we were going to plan out the next six days ahead of time or go as the wind would lead us.
• Find a camera shop and buy a camera battery
• Use the bathroom
• Find a place that could get us lunch in 5 minutes
• Visit a store to buy snacks and water for the trip
• Pack our backpacks for the hike
• Eat lunch

We were eating our sandwiches when the shuttle pulled up. Plenty of time. There always is.

Volcan Pacaya

Tim had been in the country less than 2 hours and here he was just a few kilometers away from the Pacaya Volcano. This was the first Volcano I had hiked, and I was really excited to climb it to see the lava. For this special journey we nicknamed our fellow traveler, “Rosie” though we were pretty sure it was a dude dog.

Up at the top of the Volcano they let you roast marshmellows. Some people in our group decided they were going to toast sandwiches.

Tim got bored with the volcano and decided to crack open his book and read a bit next to the Lava Cafe.

Volcan Pacaya erupted in May and changed the terrain which opened up an opportunity to visit the “Volcano Sauna.”

It was so crazy to walk inside the earth, and it felt good to get out of the cold.

After the fun and games at the top we descended down the volcano, mission complete.

(Actually, this is in the light.)

(This was in the dark, on the way down . . . )