Day 18 - Volcano Pacaya

Our bus to Volcano Pacaya left at 6AM. Unfortunately, sleeping the night before was less than optimal. Actually, it was the perfect storm of suck. Being Saturday night in a tourist town, the bars and nightclubs were jumping, especially the rock concert that was next door to our hotel. The music was so loud that I couldn't even drown it out with my headphones in! They stopped playing around 1:30AM and in true form the baby in the room next to us started crying about 15 minutes later. The baby cried for a solid hour. Then the roosters started crowing at 4AM. All in all, we ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep.

The bus to the Volcano took about 45 minutes. Pacaya is now a national park and it's helped make the trek up to the top more safe. The first 300 meters of the ascent were brutal. Thankfully, it leveled out a bit and wasn't too bad the rest of the way. There were several stop-off points with beautiful vistas. One of the best views was of the Volcano Agua, which is inactive. You can't get to the peak of Pacaya anymore due to an eruption which destroyed part of the cone, but they allow you to get within 300 meters of it. We also were able to walk out onto an old lava flow. At several points on the lava flow you could feel heat through your shoes! We also saw one small place with red-hot lava.

We returned to Antigua for lunch and then boarded our bus to Lake Atitilan. Atitlan is in Western Guatemala. It's about 2 hours of bus ride through the heart of the mountains. We're staying in the town Panajachel. It's a touristy town with big markets and lots of interesting restaurants. For dinner we ate at a Uruguayan resturant. Norma mentioned that they are particularly good with grilled beef and pork, so I got a sandwhich of grilled beef with chimichurri sauce. It was excellent! Afterwards, we retired back to the hotel room and watched the olympics. Holy cow, the 400m relay race was amazing! Go team USA!

(Lastly, I'm posting one of the pictures I took in Antigua. There are lots of dogs, many strays and some owned in latin america. This particular dog was holding watch outside of our hotel and was part of the hotel family.)