Today at around 3:45 we started getting ready to summit Acatenango, ready for our departure time at 4 am. We put on our gear and left base camp, going through the volcanic ash terrain, again with an extremely high slope, which meant that for every 2 steps we took, we went back one as we would constantly be slipping down. we climbed the remaining 300 meters of altitude in about an hour and a half, and reached the summit just before sunrise, having hiked for about an hour to get there.
At the summit, we waited in the cold for the sun to rise about the sea of clouds that had begun forming in the valley, whilst seeing explosions from the volcano nearby and feeling them in our bones. After a beautiful sunrise, we turned around and headed back down, thankfully the way down was easier because you could run down the hill whilst jumping in the volcanic ash which made the descent much faster! it was about the same descent as from the summit of kilimanjaro. in the lower part of the path we had to slow down as we had to go through these sort of mini canyons in the ash between the pine trees.
At base camp, we got our breakfast and after packing our stuff started our descent back to civilisation, unfortunately, we couldn’t down as easily as from the summit as there wasn’t enough ash on the ground, which made it worst because it would make you constantly slip. The way down to the city took us 2hours, 2 hours my knees hated, especially since we were carying extra weight down, and the shoes didnt help.
Thankfully my knees didnt fall off, although i might need knee replacement surgery at this point. We arrived at the street where we were picked up by a van to bring us back to the city, where we all fought over who would take showers first to get rid of all the grime we had accumulated over the last 2 days.
Next we hoped on a bus to go to our next destination, Panajachel. we stopped for lunch at a place that offered a fondue type dish but guatemalan style, with smoked sausage in it, it obvioulsy wasnt as good as real founde but it was nice.
When we arrived in Panajachel, after dropping our stuff we were picked up by a convoy of Rickshaws who raced from the hotel to the restaurant we were going to, and we won even though our driver cheated and burnt a red light.
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