Santa Maria Volcano

The day starts at 4:30am, Andy cheerfully announces that is time to get up, I grown. Half an hour later we are at the pick up point to leave for the base of Santa Maria. After a short car ride we start the assent up the volcano in the dark.

Not long ago we had climbed volcano Pacaya which overall all I had found quite easy going, I realised that this one was twice as far but I didn't know the half of it...

The base of the volcano is at an altitude of about 2500m which is about the same as the altitude at the top of volcano Pacaya (for comparison the top of Snowdon in Wales is 1085m). This affects you more that you would imagine. So what followed must be the hardest piece of physical exercise I have ever done. The main reason for this, is that the altitude, just walking up a short way would cause me to have to breath heavily and my heart rate to go very high, though if we stopped for just a minute it would return very quickly to normal.

Once we reached the top, at a attitude of 3772m, some three and half hours later we were greeted with a view down onto another volcano, Santiaguito, and a view down onto the clouds. However the view was slightly disappointing because the reason we had set off so early was to avoid the mist that comes at about midday, however the view was quite misty from first light so we couldn't see as far. Though after a short while Santiaguito started to erupt at first we could just hear it and then we could clearly see the smoke rising through the mass of clouds.

The descent wasn't hard physically but was tricky as my feet would often slip on sand and mud, I would then have to catch my balance or grab onto some thing such as a tree root, branch or a particularly strong plant.

When we arrived at the bottom we were so tired all we could really do for the rest of day was sleep and eat.

Update See my brother´s account of the same day

Guatemalan buses

The buses here in guatemala are a bit of adventure. You start off not really knowing where the bus goes from unless you goto the bus depot, since there are no bus stops, times or route information. Buses tend to drive along the relavant route shouting out the destination as they go.

When you do find the bus you want you are confronted with a repainted US style school bus. If your lucky you´ll be able to take your bag inside, but some insist on putting your bag on the roof. This would be ok if it wasn´t for the habit of these bags to fall off around bends. When you get inside the seats seem to have been designed for at most three small children or two bigger ones and the isle is just big enough to fit walking sideways down the bus. Typically these buses, called chicken buses, fill up with 3 adults per seat so that the one on the end has about half a seat.

Soon after the bus sets off it will stop again and pick up a few more people until every one is so squashed they can hardly move. It is at this point someone will enter the bus having bought a job lot of nuts or some type of sweet and they will go down the bus giving some to people on the way down. Shortly after they come backup the bus asking for payment or they take their merchandise back again and get off to board another bus.

Once the bus gets out on the open road all hell breaks lose, slow lorries on some very windy roads just get in way. This gives rise for the driver to over take everything in sight including cars on blind bends typically tooting the horn to make up for the lack of being able to see where the driver is going.

All this said and done you tend to get there in one piece after spending less than a pound for a hour´s journey.

P.S. I´m adding my guatemala pictures to my guatemala set on flickr.

Amsterdam

I've just got back from a few days in amsterdam, see the pictures here.