Volcan Pacaya

It is rainy season now in Central America and every day has brought significant downpours. We thought we had established the pattern – the rains come in the afternoons, usually around 4pm. With this in mind, we chose to take one of the popular tours up an active volcano near to La Antigua which left at 6am in the morning. We chose the wrong day, this being the only morning that experienced non-stop torrential rain. We were not alone in our morning tour choice, there must have been well over a hundred other miserable looking people trudging up or down the mountainside. We weren’t badly equipped in full shower/waterproofs but we still ended up drenched by the end of it all. Not as badly as many travellers though who had set off in a trainers-hotpant-vest combo.

The views, we were told, were breathtaking, on the hour and a half walk or so to the crater, but for us they were submerged in cloud. We set off at a steady pace behind some lardy Americans. It turned out our group was coach-sized rather than mini-bus sized like all the others which held things up further as our guide tried in vain to set a pace for the group. We walked up through beautiful cloud forest before emerging on a fairly steep slope of volcanic scree. Unfortunately, it was too wet to get the camera out to take photos. After an amusing charge downhill in it, just to see if any tourists would break their legs, we had a steep uphill rocky climb for around half an hour in driving wind and rain to reach the volcanic crater. As we approached it we felt the heat and could see steam rising from the rocks. It got steadily hotter, to the point where part of Simon’s trainers melted off, as we neared the crater. We scrambled over torrents of set lava which had cracked in places to reveal glowing lava beneath - like looking into the brightest part of a fire. As usual and to generalise, the Latin American disregard for safety made the whole experience more fun. We had long since lost our guide and were left to our own devices to jump around on unsteady rocks/solid lava with molten lava beneath. We reached our high point- a section where there was a large flow of molten lava slowing slugging its way downhill. Simon threw a small rock at it and it was solid on top. It was quite incredible to see and definitely made the whole sodden experience completely worth it even if it is dry on every other morning.