Volcanic Vun

Sara

Ta-da!  My first blog for who knows how long.  Yesterday we all hiked up Volcan Pacaya.  On the drive there nobody really looked at the driver’s speedometer(I think) so we don’t no if he was speeding then.  I’ll write what I mean about that later.  As soon as you get out of the special white tourist van, all the little kids come up to you and say “Do you want stick? Is necesito for walk and poke lava.”  Another thing that they ask is “Hey, wanna buy horse. For ride on trail.”  Say no to them all, then try not to lose your guide while you leave the parking lot and get onto the trail.

The first hour of the hike is through a forest.  And then, all at once, you come out of the trees and see a big, black mountain in front of you.  P8220100 Bang.  And when you stand still all the stick-and-horse-sellers that are hiding behind their horses(that are for rent) sneak up behind you and ambush you with their sticks, horses, and buy stick or horse for volcan’s.  Eventually our guide stopped chatting with all of her friends and started to walk again.  When you walk on crumbled up lava rock it’s very easy to tell that it isn’t plain old ordinary dirt.  Walking through crumbled up lava rock is kind of like walking through dry sand.  It isn’t very packed down and if you go off the trail the gravel is very deep and you start to slide a bit. 

Once we got as high as we were going(the shoulder on the right side of the volcano), we started to feel the heat in the air.  Dad pointed out that in some places the air was shimmering a little bit from the heat waves.  We were all pretty sure that the heat was coming out through the cracks in the cold lava.  Later she told us that the lava was only THREE DAYS OLD!!!  P8220104 Hmmmmm…  Any way, we didn’t see the marshmallow roasting holes until it was time to.  First we stumbled to a place where we view the erupting of the volcano.  P8220154 The volcano doesn’t erupt from the top because it’s easier to go out the side. 

Now, it is time to roast marshmallows.  Our guide brought us back to the place where the air was shimmering, but she brought us farther away from the trail than Sean and I went.  If you read Mum’s blog before mine, you’ll know what her new worst-thing-ever is.  She hates walking on ice that is over water for fear of falling through.  So walking on three inch thick cold lava that is over top of hot lava is even worse.  It doesn’t help that there are holes that have lava in them in clear view.  I just have to rub it in. “Oh, look, there’s a red hot hole.  There’s another one.  And another.  Oh, look, we’re jumping over one right now!!!  Listen, when I stomp on the rock, it sounds hollow.”  When you roast the marshmallows over the red hot holes, you can’t stop turning the stick for very long or the marshmallows catch on fire.  It takes about one minute to roast four marshmallows at the same time.  Sean dropped his stick into the marshmallow roasting hole that we used and it didn’t have to to touch anything to catch on fire.

On the way back to Antigua, Mom, another girl from Calgary, and I were talking and Erica(the other girl from Calgary) asked how fast the driver was going.  Mom looked and said that the driver was going 120 kph.  The speed limit on the road we were on was 80 kph.  The road was very curvy and when he turned I slid a bit.  Later the speed limit changed to 40 kph so I checked his speedometer and it said that he was going 90 kph.  This driver also did a lot of swerving back and forth to get around other drivers that were going the proper speed.