So Close To Glory!
We climbed a volcano!
Nearly!
It’s a medium length story, here….
We hopped a shuttle to Antigua, looking forward to a little break and opting for the comfortable method over the cheap. Shuttles definitely cost more than the chicken buses, but sometimes you really want to be guaranteed a seat, no matter how small and would rather not spend the next 3 hours squeezed together, eyeballing your luggage in case of sticky fingers and sweating profusely.

Antigua is a very fancy place, all cobbled streets and colonial architecture. It’s the second or third attempt at a colonial capital city in….
So, I was going to get all historical and factual and the like, catastrophe in 1773, but I don’t think that’s why you lovely people are reading this. If it is, sorry, it’s not really that kind of blog. The main thing is, Antigua is surrounded by volcanoes, so we wanted to scale one.

Acatenango seemed the most enjoyable option as it involved a gruelling climb, an overnight stay at basecamp and then a dawn scramble up scree to the summit, in the hope that the weather will be clear enough to see it’s active neighbour, Fuego, erupting only a few miles distant.
We packed our bags, which quickly evolved into some mild confusion as to what to bring. Like all good explorers, we had to carry everything we would need to survive but clearly didn’t really want to lug too much unnecessary stuff up the side of a mountain for five hours. So, sensible survivable minimalism. Long pants? Probably. I couldn’t remember the last time I had worn trousers but still, it seems like a good idea. Long sleeve. jacket and rain gear. Check. Extra hoodie? Nah, how cold can it be? This part may have been mistake….
It turns out, very, very cold indeed.
We’ve got clothes packed and we’re thinking “this is going to be fine”, bags aren’t too heavy….
Ahh, wait, we probably need extra snacks. Okay, so a few oranges (Kasia wasn’t overly fond of this choice as an oranges weight to calorie ratio wasn’t flattering), a few avocados (much better), some nuts and biscuits for a quick, salty or sugary boost and a couple of pot noodles as we had been informed by a couple of friends that these would provide invaluable comfort at base camp.
Bags are still laughably light compared to our usual backpacks so everything looks pretty rosy still.
Hmmm. Need to bring all the water we will need for hydration and for cooking, recommended amount is 4.5 litres per person…
Okay, water is heavy. We decide to err on the side of thirsty due to the climb and get 10 litres, despite certain misgivings. Kasia is beginning to panic slightly so I take about 6.5/7 litres and she takes the rest. Bags are starting to feel a little bit heavy and we have to carry them up a mountain. Fine, no problem, we’re tough.
Now, we’re camping at the top of this volcano, so presumably we will need camping equipment? But the tour provides it all, so we’re not sure what is the plan exactly. I mean, if they have a base camp which they use regularly, surely they would leave some equipment there? Let’s not worry, sleeping bags are light and, well, I don’t want to think about the other thing.
We get collected on bright sunny morning at 9 and we’re off, tiny van jammed to the rafters with slightly anxious looking tourists, all our rucksacks thrown nonchalantly on the roof and tethered to nothing.
(This is a common feature in Central America, rucksacks are hurled on to the luggage rack at the top and we all expect gravity to do its job, which thus far, it has. The system seems oddly sound.)
We arrive at the tour office and disembark to a side street and we are each given a bag of food. Oooh, exciting. Quick inventory check, two sandwiches, two bananas, two boiled eggs, a pot noodle and a yoghurt. Fine, looks tasty enough. We’re climbing a mountain and hadn’t expected Salmon en Croute with Potatoe Dauphinosse. Perfect afternoon trekking snacks. Then we are each handed the largest sleeping bag I have ever seen and a yoga mat. This sleeping bag looks like three wrapped up duvets with some hidden treats in the middle. Shit. Okay, it’s not ridiculously heavy but getting them into our bags proves challenging and leaves almost zero room for the water or my snacks. My Snacks! Don’t panic. After some sweating and scowling things are packed, bag looks huge but still, this is fine. It’s mostly clothes, just the water that weighs a ton and we’ll be drinking that all the way and thus lightening the load.

Hop on a second bus, the ubiquitous American school bus repurposed, meet our guide Marcel and we’re off to the starting point…
…Starting point is a stunning vista on the side of the volcano. Guatemala is beautiful generally but they’ve definitely chosen a a good spot to get ones adventure juices flowing. We are instructed that we need to hire a walking stick from one of the many local kids scurrying about. It is vital apparently. I’m dubious as to it’s necessity but it’s only 5Q, about 50p, so might as well look like wizards while we climb. It is here our guide starts taking large green bags off the bus and asks whether we want a four or six person tent….
Oh. Nuts.
This is going to be interesting.
I figure that a four person tent has to weigh less so we quickly convene with a Dutch couple with whom we’d been chatting and decide to share the load. The tent comes in two parts, the tent itself and a gigantic tarp, so me and the Dutch chap will take turns. I volunteer to take the heavier one on the way up for some reason and we repack, cinch straps tight, smile nervously at one another and we’re off!
Slowly.
Really slowly.

You quickly realise small, even steps are your only chance. I understand all the footage of proper mountaineers now. Tiny, dogged steps, hunched a bit with a giant pack. The slope is slippery. The walking stick helps actually. Ten minutes in and we’re drenched, legs aching and everyone is starting to look like they’ve just realised that this was a horrible idea. Some haunted eyes. About 30/40 minutes later and we reach a grassy plateau overlooking the valley. Everyone collapses (Except a Norwegian couple in matching outfits who still look fresh and spritely somehow) and the relief is palpable. We recover surprisingly quickly though and strangely, we’re eager to get going again. It’s pretty punishing but if we attack it in increments like this, we can definitely do this. Five hours? Pfft. I could do this all day!


Three stops later and you start to slow down further. The group is quite spread out. All the small breaks I have been taking to catch my breath are getting longer and the intervals between them are getting shorter. The terrain has changed immensely from mountainous farmland to chilly, foggy cloud forest and finally, to the pine clad upper reaches where every so often, the wind clears the clouds and you can see tiny Guatemalan villages miles below us. We are above the clouds.
It is awesome.

The second last leg proves the hardest. Steep paths and I need stops every fifteen steps. We make it to the last rest stop before base camp and there is almost a glorious view but then the weather closes in pretty vigorously. A final break and a last (sort of) leisurely stroll around the top of the mountain to base camp. We made it and, much to my surprise, apparently in pretty good time, about four and a half hours.
Basecamp is cold, steep and inhospitable but has been terraced by enterprising locals so we set about getting the camp set up. The fog has closed in so there’s not a lot to see, but you can hear Fuego making ominous noises in the distance. We get the tent erected with a little help from the guide as we set it up and then stood around staring at the tarp. It turns out you need to set the base up, then throw the tarp over, put some rocks on the corners, then attach the fly sheet over the top of the whole ingenious mess. It ain’t pretty but it works right? Actually no. Partly because the zip on the door is broken and partly because of the weather. More on that momentarily.


Dinner is a pot noodle followed by a cup of steaming hot chocolate. It’s minimal but after the creeping cold, anything warm feels pretty amazing and standing around the fire helps a little. The increasing wind seems to be stealing all our heat though so after a hasty nibble, we curl up in our sleeping bags fully dressed and pile a couple of our bags in front of the hole in the door. It turns out to be pretty cosy and over the course of the next couple of hours, some jackets are removed.

Until we all start to feel the dripping and slapping of soggy tent.
The weather has closed in really badly and the wind has blown one of our tent poles nearly flat (It was held together with gaff tape). As a result, the whipping of our tarp has caused it to slowly wiggle itself free of the flysheet and we are no longer protected. Rain is coming in, a lot of rain. Torches, grumbling, but there’s nothing to be done but get out and fix it. We get it sorted pretty quickly mind you and the impressive thickness of my sleeping bag has kept all the moisture on the outside.
Bonus.
Unfortunately, we were woken two hours later by our guide at the allotted 4am, screaming into the wind that we had to abort the summit trip, three or four hundred metres from the top, and that we should all remain in our tents until the sun came up. So we went back to sleep (a bit, a tarp flapping in gale force winds is pretty loud) and woke a few hours later to a windy, foggy dawn. Fortunately the sideways rain had let up a touch.

So we nearly, nearly, climbed a volcano. It was definitely close.

While the guides managed to get the fire going (which was impressive) so we could have coffee and pot noodles before our descent, the clouds cleared occasionally, giving us a stunning panorama of the earth below. Fuego never quite emerged from the murk but we could see it belching darker clouds into the fog and hear its rumbles all the same. Not precisely what we had hoped for, but quality fun all the same. Real adventures.

We packed up the tents, donned our now much lighter backpacks and headed back down the mountain.
Which, (sneaky bastard) turned out to be nearly harder than going up.
It was a lot faster certainly, but the constant, downhill pounding turned my thighs to jelly. I’ve never felt anything like it. By the third hour I could only do this kind of bouncy jog thing because I couldn’t walk properly, and I kept falling over cause my legs weren’t strong enough to save me from slips and slides. It was pretty hilarious. Better yet, we were all smiling and laughing through the agony which, to the people who were passing us on the way up, sweating and despairing that they had just paid for this torture, must have looked as though we were a bunch of smug elite runners chortling our way back to the bottom after a leisurely jog up the volcano. Good times. It made the pain all the more funny.
We emerged (nearly) victorious. Starving, dirty and barely able to walk. We both spent the next couple of days groaning like the elderly whenever we encountered stairs or had to get out of a chair.
Totally worth it.

