Close your eyes for just a moment, now picture yourself at the top of the world where when you open your eyes you can see forever. Now think about how you got up so high, did you ride one of the little ponies up the mountain, did you ride a bus, did you hike up the steep mountain side? If you are like many of us yesterday, you hiked for almost 2 hours up the side of the mountain, but in this case it was a volcano. Sure we could have rented a "taxi" as the locals called it - a little pony - for less than $10; however, we all believed we could do it easily on our own. After the first hour we were all wishing we would have rented the taxi, but by that point the taxis had stopped following. Our guide, Herman, kept pushing us all to hurry and saying we were walking very slow. When he finally allowed us to rest, he explained why the rush. We only had about a half hour before sunset and he wanted us to get to the lava flows before dark.
There was something magical about finally reaching the edge of the lava flows, suddenly everyone's energy level jumped and we all picked up the pace to hike across the lava flows. Of course the areas we were hiking across had hardened, but every now and then you would hear a crack under your feet, feel some heat from under you, and catch a cold breeze across your face. We hiked for another 30 minutes until we reached the latest area of lava flows, still hot and flowing. As we hiked we would occasionally stop and poke some small hole where you could see lava under you. Amongst all of the black lava rock you would see a little area of white, those areas of white were areas to be careful because it meant the lava was still hot there.
Now, imagine another scene. You are on top of the volcano; it's getting dark; the sunset is awesome with colors of orange, red, blue, and black; and the ground you're walking on moves underneath you and is the same color of the dark sky around you. Now picture this. You don't have a flash light. Luckily I had a small flash light, however, many people didn't, and one entire tour group didn't. I allowed most of the people to walk in front of me and my light showed the way, but the tour group behind us, well, they had to just follow where we were going.
One girl behind me, Ariel, went tumbling along the jagged edges of the hardened lava and ended up with many cuts on her arms, hands and legs. Everyone helped her get down off the lava to an area where she could walk by carrying her backpack, offering napkins for the blood, and water to help get her clean. A short while later, young Joe fell up to his thigh into a dried piece of lava, fortunately he wasn't hurt, just shocked from falling into something. We all finally reached the edge of the lava flows and to regular earth. The pace picked up after that since it was all down hill, however, you would hear someone sliding, falling or something along the way as you couldn't determine the depth of where you were walking on the path, not to mention the dirt pathway was often soft in places or had rocks that moved with you.
Everyone stopped along the path to enjoy the beautiful scenes of stars, of the city lights of Guatemala City, of the fireworks for the festival that day, and even to say hi to the many cows that now dotted the pathway.
By the time we reached the base where our bus was awaiting we were all exhausted from the experience and talked about the fact that no one would believe us or understand what it was really like to hike a volcano in the dark. All I can say is that it was an experience I won't quickly forget, especially since my legs are so sore today that I'm spending the day in bed to rest.
