tiny t and the VOLCANO (Antigua)

I was so sleep deprived this morning I don't even really remember what I wrote about!

I got to Antigua early this morning and checked into my hostel (Hostel Five) for about seven bucks per night, which is pretty expensive in my standards!  Sharing a room with six bunk beds in it, but we have our own bathroom - hence the steep seven bucks per night charge! ;) 

 It's nice enough, clean, quiet, decent location, and the female owner is SUPER sweet and helpful with everything.  I slept for an hour or two this morning and then set out on foot to see the beautiful city of Antigua! :) 

I love walking, it's so much easier to see everything on foot. I looked at a little map of Antigua I grabbed at the airport and saw that my hostel was close to the edge of town where you could walk up to this big cross that overlooks everything (the city), so that's where I headed.  End of the street, turn right, end of the next street, take a left...I turned around to see if anyone was following me (because I'm SAFE like that!) and noticed a girl with blonde hair who looked about my age not far behind me.  I ended up taking a wrong turn, well actually I went straight when I should have turned, but either way, by the time I figured out where I wanted to go to get out of town and up that hill, she was in front of me, so now I was following her!  It was obvious we were both going to the same spot, there isn't anything else up there besides Cerro de la Cruz. 

So when we got to the top, she was taking pictures and so was I, so I asked her if she would take a picture of me...

Aahh - and that was the start of a beautiful relationship!  Haha... :)  Her name is Irene Lund, she's 25 and from Norway.  Quit her job and is traveling through Central and South America for almost a year.  We are so similar it's scary.  Two peas in a pod and we hit it off right away! :) YAY!  I swear I have to be the luckiest traveler alive, I ALWAYS meet the coolest people right away. So anyways, off we went, hung out the rest of the morning.  She has been here in Antigua about a week so she knew the area a little more than me.  Since it is Saturday, market day, we decided to head to the city market, after a couple of stops to take pictures in the central park and some churches...

This place is SO catholic it's scary!  None of the cars have seat belts and there isn't a speed limit or rules of the road really, but by golly EVERY single car has a crucifix hanging from the mirror and a Jesus sticker on the back! :)  There are like 8 or 9 beautiful old churches in this little town...and it is a LITTLE town.  I mean you can walk from one side to the other in like 15 minutes I bet.  So anyways, city market, big mistake.  I don't know why I keep going to these markets!  We were immediately swarmed by hundreds - or maybe thousands - of locals who came there to buy and sell EVERYTHING:  live chickens, baby chicks, dead skinned chickens, weird fruit, normal fruit with flies all over it, every single vegetable you can imagine, flowers, toilet paper, belts, shoes, you name it, they are walking around carrying a bag of it on there head YELLING at the top of there lungs the prices. 

It was NUTS!  And it was SO hot and so loud, just a sensory overload and we were both literally about to have a panic attack!  We started asking 'donde es salida' where is the exit to everyone and if they gave us the time of day, they all pointed in different directions.  Haha...  yea, we got lost in the city market!  Probably took us 30 minutes to get out of there!  We found a nice little cafe and had a sandwhich and fruit smoothie for lunch..really good!  THEN it was time for me to take off for PACAYA VOLCANO!  Oddly enough, Irene had just hiked it yesterday, and said it was awesome, which got me even more excited! :)  I left around 1, took a bus about half way up the mountain, and I don't just mean up, I mean STRAIGHT up for a LONG time.  Bumpy little road, if you even want to call it a road.  Once we got to the spot where they couldn't drive anymore, the van was instantly swarmed by little boys trying to sell hiking sticks.

They were so cute I wanted to give them money for nothing, but I didn't.  Also, there were lots of guys on horses asking if we wanted to take a taxi (ie the horse) to the top.  They actually followed us about half way up asking "taxi taxi" about every 5 minutes. 

But thank goodness for that car ride, bumpy and scary as it might have been, because that 3 hour hike was probably the hardest hike I've ever done!  I don't remember how far we hiked, but I'm pretty sure it was 800km vertical.  Straight up, for a long time. My legs haven't ever burned so bad!  It will be a miracle if I can get out of bed tomorrow.  At about 2 and a half hours in, I was thinking 'this damn sure better be freaking sweet and totally worth this pain!'  

And it was.  Freaking sweet doesn't even begin to describe it!!  I wish I could upload pictures now and send it, because I promise you, you won't believe it! :)  Pacaya has been somewhat inactive for awhile now, but decided to fire up just last week, purely for my arrival, I'm sure of it! ;)  We couldn't hike all the way to the top because of the lava, but I was okay with that.  I got about 2 feet away from a flow of lava flowing down. I honestly can't even describe it.  It was 2,000 degrees!  Yes, I said TWO THOUSAND degrees!!  I have the coolest pic ever.  Turns out it only takes about 6 seconds by the lava to melt your shoes, burn your face and arm, BUT ROAST A MARSHMALLOW!!  Yep, I roasted a marshmallow in the lava and have the awesome pic to prove it!! Haha :) 

Definitely up there on my list of top 5 coolest things I've done!  We were actually above the clouds - or in them - so a lot of the pics are hazy.  And we were supposed to stay until dark to see the lava actually glowing at night, but a storm was rolling in so we had to leave.  My guide was kind of freaking out.  Apparently thunder and lightning and active volcanoes don't really mix?  You can still see the bright orange lava anyways, and I took a video of it sliding down the mountain.  JUST SO FREAKING COOL!!!! :)  Okay, so we hiked back down, a different route than the way we came up (oh and when I say we there were about 10 of who went up with my guide).  I LOVE hikes, and this one was just AMAZING!  Hiking through a jungle means snapping bout 300 pics. :)  And of course I was the first one, right on the guides heals, because I can't stand to not be in the front of everything. :)  Every time he heard the camera snapped he turned around and laughed at me...about ya know, 300 times. :) 

About the guide, turns out I paid $12 to have some guy walk me up a volcano and talk to me in Spanish the WHOLE time.  WTF!  Thankfully there was some other dude from Mexico who could translate most of the stuff.  I wonder about myself sometimes. ;)  So when we got back down the mountain, there were lots of little kids (who live in these unbelievable shanty towns) jumping rope.  I took some pics of them, they were so cute I just couldn't help it. Then I handed my camera off to a guy and went over and asked if I could play with them, in my best Spanish :) They all kind of froze, but the two girls with the rope shook there head yes, so in I went!  I haven't jumped rope in so long - it was SO fun and they thought it was the coolest! :)  Have a really cool pic of me in the air jumping rope with the sweet little kids.:) 

Okay I don't know if you've ever heard thunder in a canyon or a mountain or volcano or whatever, but it was the strangest sound ever.  You could just hear it rumbling in the distance the whole way down.  Finally, we saw a huge, bright flash of lightning not too far in front of us and then the loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard.  It sounded like someone set of 50 M80's all around us!  We all froze - and the thunder just rolled all the way through the mountains.  It was pretty cool - until it almost instantly started POURING on us, so in the bus we went and headed back to Antigua.  And that's where I am now. Actually I'm at a McDonalds because they have free internet - and I wanted some chicken mcnuggets.  But just for the record, this isn't just any McDonalds, it is HANDS DOWN the nicest McDonalds I've ever been, to. I  mean this place is FANCY.  All decorated with southwest tiles and flowers everywhere, a couple flat screens showing the Mets vs Yankees game. There is a little outdoors terrace with picnic tables and a fountain.  Seriously.  This is like some nice little Italian restaurant you would go on a date too!  Don't worry; I of course have plenty of pics of it to show you. :)

(That is the volcano I hiked in the background)

So I REALLY need to head back to my hostel and get some sleep - I'm still exhausted!  Irene and I are meeting at 6am and hopping on a bus (NOT a chicken bus - heard way too many scary and bad stories about them) to Chimaltenango, where we will get off and find another bus to Chichicastenango (3 hours-ish total I think), where on Sundays they have Central America's largest and oldest market.  Probably going to be a shit-show and we'll want out as soon as we get in, just like the city market here, but we're going anyways!  Irene's spanish is a little better than mine since she's been here 5 months, but neither one of us speak it well at all.  Should be interesting. :)  THEN we are going to Panajachel which is a village on Lake Atitlan, not far from Chichi - jsut 45 minutes or so I think.. It is supposed to be beautiful; Mel Gibson has a house on that lake.  Not sure what we are going to do, but there are little cultural villages all around the lake we will probably visit, and stay there somewhere for the night, then head back to Antigua on Monday.  I still want to try and make it to Santa Ana, El Salvador on Monday or Tuesday to see my friend at the orphanage, but that is still in the works.  So that is the plan for now, and I doubt I'll have internet tomorrow, but who knows. I'll write more when I can! :)  Wish us luck traveling through Guatemala!! :)


Bye for now!


-TK