Antigua and Volcan Acetenango

The dreaded night bus from Flores to Antigua and I must admit, it was worse than normal. So what’s the worst thing that could happen on a long bus journey (apart from it crashing)? travel sickness, and poor Tristan was, but thankfully after a frantic search for a barf bag, he very daintily caught it all in a zip-loc plastic bag 🤢. The roads were incredibly windy and we were at the top of the bus which seemed to rock like a boat, so we braced for a 10hr fun fair ride!

We arrive in Antigua at about 6am and spend the day mooching around the town which is surrounded, and I mean surrounded, by volcanoes one of which is very active. The town resembles the Mexican mountain town of San Cristóbal with beautiful low level colonial buildings and quirky restaurants and bars. The town is beautiful to walk around however there is an almost unbearable level of pollution from traffic fumes making you nervous to take your next breath. The famous ‘Chicken buses’ are partly to do with this as despite being wonderful to look at, the thick black smoke they belch out every time they accelerate is unbelievable. I’m sure the incidence of respiratory disease must be so high here 😳.  

To escape this beautiful town for a few days, we book ourselves on to a 2 day hike up ‘Volcán de Acatenango’ one of the many huge volcanoes overlooking the active ‘Volcano Fuego’. Acatenango stands at 3976m, from which you start your climb from a little Mayan village at around 2000m. We were given basic supplies and provided with a shelter at the near top (Seb called it our sty)! The supplies were more basic than basic, as they informed us that they had a full selection of kids coats and we rock up, and of course they don’t have kids coats and so Tristan ends up in a beautiful ladies coat down to his ankles 😂. We did the trip as a group as we needed a guide and boy oh boy, I thought it was going to be a little tough, but geez this was seriously tough right from the very start. Of course, in true Guatemalan style, the only information was to wear sensible shoes and bring enough water and snacks, but we really had no idea re the toughness of the climb and also what the impact of the altitude would have on our ability to climb. Not only were we climbing very quickly, but we were walking on volcanic gravel that every time you took a step up, you slid down half of it! The landscape was beautiful, initially jungle followed by pine forest and finally volcanic rock, all of which made a very beautiful walk (down but not up!!). Let’s just say both myself and John(ny) struggled, but OMG, the boys were heroes. Seb just plodded away slowly without a moan, and Tristan plugged away (ran, stopped, moaned and repeat!!) all the way until we got to our 1st nights stay. We arrived at our very stylish ‘pig shelter’ and then watched the sun slowly go down over the next few hours over the beautiful volcanoes. It was extremely cold and again, no moans at all, ‘I want to watch Netflix in the pig sty’! We finally sit down on our wooden bench to dinner and after the long climb, we’ve earned it. With great anticipation, out comes our meal, the tiniest little pizza you’ve ever seen in your life! 😳 After all that exertion!!!! Tristan doesn’t  want to eat anything in fear of having to use the ‘toilet’ 😂. Usually the boys would have no problems in ‘squatting’ in a forest and have got very used to basic toileting, but in the camp, the area for toileting was rather public with a tissue sized piece of tarpaulin to cover both eyes to make you think no one could see you! 

The next morning, we receive an early morning wake up at 4AM to hike to the very top of Acetenango. We were told it was a quick 35 minute hike so we didn’t bother taking any supplies including water, and off we went. After about 45minutes of hiking up the most difficult terrain I’ve ever climbed (steep, volcanic dusty rock in the pitch black with not enough head torches to go around and Tristan in his dress of a coat!), we look up and see we’ve got another good hour of climbing. We had a comment from a very pleasant American guy who could no longer carry on, saying “OMGawwdddd you brought a 3 year old with you?” to which Tristan replied ‘no I’m 10, see you at the top sonny Jim’!! I can’t say that this was an easy climb for any of us and we nearly didn’t make it and in fear of breaking the kids John said, “let’s stop” but Seb quickly said “no, we’re doing this!” ad-a-boy and we certainly got our reward. The anticipation of the sun rise from behind the distant volcanoes and the amazing views and colours that painted the misty views from the top were unforgettable. We bounce down the deep ash slopes like moon walking back to the huts for a quick brekki then back to the bottom in quick 3hr push. We are literally brown filthos by the time we reach the bottom noses clogged with dust. 

We arrive back in Antigua, so tired but utterly buzzing after our experience. We weren’t lucky enough to see the volcano erupting from up-top, but we were lucky enough to see it from our hostel the following night. We were initially disappointed not to see the volcano erupting but this was probably a good thing, as the following night it massively erupted, so much so that the local village were evacuated as well as all those on the same hike asleep in the huts who were marched down at 1am! It was all over the papers and was on the BBC news! 

We spent the next few days chilling in Antigua and enjoying the town which included a festival to celebrate Holy Week. We also had a cheeky sit in Starbucks which happened to be the most beautiful cafe I’ve ever seen…. but still the stink of the Guatamela sewers whilst we are sipping our coffee!