Friday night Rees cam out, as he was sick of staying at home. Went to a pub and there was another going away thing. Got a jug and Rees thought it would be rude if he didn’t help me out and poured himself his first beer for almost a week! After that Rees left and I ended up with a group that I knew most of the faces, including a German guy, Sebastin, who I had continually kept running into during the week, and he had ended up as side kick while Rees was out injured. Ended up putting a fair few jugs down, and I headed home a bit worried because Rees had been talking of another volcano climb the next day.
Saturday morning, the sun was shinning and I was feeling a bit worst for wear and sure enough, we headed off looking for a bus to the volcano. Luckly we had missed the morning bus and had to take the afternoon one, which gave me time to get some food and do a bit of recovering.
The volcano we were heading to was Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano 2 hrs from Antigua. The good thing about this one is that the bus drives you half way up the volcano. Still a fair hike up the volcano, the second half quite hard as you have to hike up through the steep volcanic ash. It was very misty, which spoiled the view, but created a very mystical atmosphere, at one stage towards the summit, I was a bit ahead of the group and we were heading up this ridge, and on both sides all you could see was cloud, was you followed this bridge that disappeared into the heavens, it felt like you were the only person in the world. At the top there wasn’t much to see due to the cloud. Looking into the volcano, no lava, just a sulphur smoke that made you choke if you breathed it in. If the mist cleared for a bit, you cloud see that you were above the clouds and across you could see that damn evil volcano Agua that we had endured the week before. The way down was quite cool, got taken down another way, which was really steep and consisted of fine volcanic ash (with a few huge rocks scattered around. Got to cane it down, racing Rees, jumping and sliding, almost worth walking to the top and doing it again. It was quite dark as we started the hike down, and there seemed it be a bit of confusion on the way, and we seemed to be missing some people. The last hour of the hike was in darkness and we stumbled our way down through the jungle track. Got back to the hotel about 9:30, tired, but it was independence eve and there were fire crackers going off everwhere, so I had a shower and headed out. Went down the main square where there was a cool Glockenspiel band. Had a couple of them, one was huge and had four people playing it. Super cool music. Went to the pub and there was an Irish guy we had met that day and three ozies he was travelling with. Few beers to help celerbrate the festivities. Ended up in some crappy night club. Left the boys to it and then headed home, to catch the last half an hour of Roy and HG on JJJ net broadcast, funny.