Volcan Acatenango

I climbed Acatenango yesterday.

It's a pretty great story, this is the abbreviated version.

We left Cedescri at 2:30 AM (that is to say, in the middle of the night). At this point there were six of us in a pickup--the kind with a backseat, but it was cramped. We drove to Chimaltenango to pick up yet one more person, so now there were seven of us, because it was way too cold to put someone in the back. Four volunteers and three guatemalans. It took us a couple hours and a couple "stop and ask that guy walking by the side of the road at 4 AM how to get there", because although one of the guatemalans had been there before, we still weren't terribly sure.

So finally we get to the aldea at the trailhead, park the truck, and have to disconnect the battery because the alarm tends to go off randomly, and would have drained the battery if we hadn't done something. There were big bolts holding the wires to the terminals, which were of course a pain to get off (add to the list of things to always have with me: monkey wrench, WD-40).

So we get started, eventually, and come across a farmer walking to the cornfields which go a good way up the side of the mountain, who tells us that we are on the wrong trail. SO, we cut across some newly-planted cornfields, and half an hour later we're finally on the right trail.

Before we get to the bosque (cloud forest!), one of the guys with us, who's Mayan and for whom mountains are sacred, makes a prayer to let us get up the mountain and back safely. He crosses himself--but apparently the Mayans had the cross before the catholics got here: for them it's north, south, east, west, and then center--and then pours a bit of kusha (alcohol) on the ground, and then we can go.

The trail didn't really mess around. there were some switchbacks at the beginning, and we passed through a jungly cloud forest, then into a pine forest, then into a place where all the trees were dead, then into ash. That was the first peak. We rested and ate some there, then most of us continued to the second, highest peak. When we got there, at first we could see Fuego, which is an active volcano right "next door", but soon the clouds covered it up.

Up there Eduijes made another prayer and sprinkled us with some perfume of some kind, and thanked Nicolas for organizing everything...it was really quite neat, although most of the prayer was in one of the Maya dialects, I forgot to ask which one. And then we went down.

It was really awesome up at the top, like being on the moon! Just lots of black pebbles and ash. We were all pretty covered in black dust by the time we came back.

So that was our day. Started at 2 AM, ended at 9:30, with 10 or 12 solid hours of hiking, so needless to say we were all pretty exhausted by the end.

So today we came into Antigua for the best brunch buffet in the world and stuffed ourselves full of deliciousness. It's errands day, and then back to San Lucas tonight.

I'm turning 21 on Tuesday, so I'm going to make a cake, and Katheryn (volunteer, from Canada) invited me to a big birthday party in Quetzaltenango next weekend for people who have birthdays in March, so that'll be fun. And I'll get to see where I'll be working in a few weeks. Kathryn's actually visited Proecos and says it's pretty cool, and has good food, so I'm psyched about that.

So, that's the news from here.