Antigua, day two

Monday 30th July 2012

I woke up at around 3:30am this morning and was wide awake from then on - oh dear. I got up at 5am to be ready for 6, including packing up all my stuff so that I could switch rooms; I'm sharing with Natasha from now on until practically the end of the trip. We all got into a mini bus not long after 6am, and after picking up a few others it stopped at a coffee shop so we could get drinks for breakfast. Cinammon tea, yum. It went nicely with the oatmeal and raisin cookies that Ernesto had got us.


After having breakfast we got onto a different bus - a yellow American school bus - and it took us an hour and a half (ish) to drive to the bottom of Volcan Pacaya. We then spent more than an hour and a half climbing up it. The path was cobbled to start off with but as we climbed higher it turned to ash, like black sand. Men with horses followed us the whole way up, trying to entice us into riding instead of hiking up. They called the horses "natural taxis" and when we asked one of them what their horse was called he replied, "Toyota." Haha. There were plenty of rest stops along the way and we got views of Volcan de Agua and the surrounding valleys on the way up. It was really beautiful. At first there were trees and plants on the way up, as if we were walking through woods, but as we climbed higher the landscape became sparse until eventually it was just an expanse of black sand with rocks dotted about.

You can't go all the way to the top - apparently it's too hot. Sometimes, when the volcano's been active, you can see lava and you have to be careful where you walk because the soles of your shoes can melt, especially if they're flimsy. I think someone said the volcano last erupted two years ago, so there wasn't any lava. Where we stopped there were holes in the rocks like small caves, and you could feel warm air coming out. The guides gave everyone sticks and marshmallows to toast. We had time for photos and a bit of a rest and then went back down the way we had come.

I managed to sleep on the bus journey back to the hotel, despite the cobbles. We went straight out for lunch to a place where you could choose one main and two side orders from a huge selection of different dishes. For some reason, as a vegetarian they said that I could choose FIVE side orders to go with my main, corn tamales. I think they were afraid I would starve without meat! I only took three sides in the end, as the portions were enormous - mini mountains of different sorts of mixed vegetables. I didn't even eat the tamales in the end, there was so much. We definitely needed a good feed after all that hiking.

On the way back to the hotel Ernesto took us to the Choco Museo - a chocolate museum. We got to try cacao beans, which are used to make chocolate - chocolate in its purest form, and very bitter. Natasha and I had cinammon chocolate drinks where you had to mix cacao beans, cinnamon, chocolate sauce and warm milk yourself. Gorgeous. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and went our separate ways for the afternoon. I headed straight out again with the intention of seeing a few parts of Antigua I hadn't been to yet. Instead I went to Bagel Barn first, had a gorgeous strawberry smoothie and proceeded to waste an hour or so on free wifi. By the time I'd done it was just past 5pm, and I realised that most of the museums and things shut at 5. Oops. I wandered round a few shops and then went back to the hotel a bit early before meeting everyone to go out for tea.

Ernesto took us to a place called the Rainbow Cafe this evenin, and I had Israeli falafal with houmous and warm pitta bread. YUM. Quite tired from the early morning start, we all went straight back to the hotel afterwards. Trekking up an active volcano takes it out of you!