Our last stop, Antigua again!

Difficult to believe our time is all but up here for this visit to Guatemala! Our first day here of our last three in Guatemala, our Estonian friend Kate arrived so she would be close to Guatemala City and the airport for her departure early the next day. We had a great time showing her around a bit of Antigua, eating and playing cards.

On our second day, we had to say good bye to Kate. That afternoon we had scheduled a walk up to an active volcanoe that is located between Antigua and Guatemala City. What an experience that was, to see molten rock oozing up out of the side of the mountain! The surface would cool some before enough accumulating enough to calve off and become a boulder cascading down the mountain side. Many of the up to 4' diameter red hot boulders would shatter into fiery smaller pieces before coming to a rest and glow their orange red color. A few retained their size, lodging up against ridges of previously sloughed off boulders. If you looked closely at the boulders and fragments as they came to rest, you could see the molten lava sag and settle for just a few seconds until cooled enough to retain their shape. There were also the sounds associated with these red hot rocks tumbling and shattering, not quite the sound of breaking glass (too tinny) and not quite the sound of styrofoam shapes being thrown against each other, but perhaps a mix. We sat for an hour watching, hearing and feeling this process, close enough to catch the radiant heat from the 1200 F surface. One set of fellows even ran up to rock that came to rest and lit their cigarettes from the red surface. However, we could tell they fried their fingers!

We had signed up for the evening entrance to this mountain park. At dusk we had to start our trek back. We spent many minutes turned around looking back at that lava flow as we departed. The best way to describe that scene is to imagine a downhill ski resort mountain out in Colorado with no trees, black snow and all of the ski runs an orange red color. Magnificent! From that distance we also saw many more of the other calving points on the mountainside, and watched those boulders cascade down the mountain, shattering into more orange fireworks displays.

Tias summed up the experience best, ¨what a fitting end to our Guatemalan adventure!"