Pacaya Volcano

Before the festivities of Holy Week kicked off in earnest, we decided to take the hour bus ride over to Pacaya volcano - one of the apparently many live volcanoes in central america...

It all seemed like a good idea at the time - "let's climb a volcano" - it was only after half an hour of trudging up the side of this thing in the afternoon heat (Sarah was smart enough to hire a horse...) that I was rethinking the whole thing. Whilst the hike almost killed us - it was heaps of fun (though the freshly set lava was actually almost glass-like and really sharp so you couldn't lean on it without cutting yourself, and our shoes melted a bit from standing too long near the hot stuff). It was also a great chance to use the word "magma" a lot

Sitting on the lava field at sunset - absolutely beautiful[click to enlarge]

PACAYA VOLCANO (29 photos)

Here's a bunch of photos (too many to choose from) - you'll see at the end, that as we were about to start to climb back down, a nearby volcano - the aptly named "fuego" - erupted!! I shit you not, a huge plume of smoke shot miles into the air - it looked pretty cool (glad we were miles away from it though...)