Day 14 – Acatenango

Today after waking up early once again (theres no sleep on gadventures trips) we were driven to the expedition company’s headquaters where we took the equipment we were going to need for the following 2 days. after driving for about an hour outside of the city, we grabbed breakfast and started our ascent of Acatenango.

The ascent started 0-100 within the first 10 meters as we started walking on a 25% grade slope with volcanic ash, which would make you repeatedly slip, especially since I hadn’t thought of bringing my hiking boots on this trip, so I had to do it in old sneakers. Thankfully we had porters to carry the bulk of the weight. The first section of the mountain, was walking through local farmlands up to reach the cloud forest where we would be entering the Acatenango park. There we walked through the thick forest and up to a clearing where we had lunch.

Also these guides dont seem to grasp the concept of pole pole, it was a very quick ascent of the mountain!

Post lunch we continued through an area with mostly pine trees on our way to base camp, where we arrived after a 3-4h hike. Unfortunately though, when we arrived at base camp, the volcano was covered in clouds so we couldn’t see it, but we certainly could feel it, like a cannon going off every 20-30 mins. We waited there in base camp, hoping for the clouds to clear whilst we sat by a fire to keep warm (it was about 5 degrees outside) and roasted mini marshmallows I had bought when we did the ATM caves.

Luckily after dinner, the sky started clearing up and we were able to see the volcano erupt and the stars through the clouds. We then decided to go to sleep around 10:30 but the cabin was so small and cramped (4 people cabin for 8) that I couldn’t fall asleep, so around midnight / 1 am I decided to go out again and found a clear sky with a perfect view of the volcano and the stars and decided to take photos, whilst sitting next to the campfire to keep warm whilst I waited for the volcano to erupt to get some cool photos.