Acatenango

Volcan de Acatenango. Wow. 3976m. 21.11.2009. This was an experience I’m not going to forget for sure!

From the top of Acatenango it’s about 300m to Fuego (3763m, impossible to climb because it erupts like every 10-20 minutes.)

The climb was easier than I expected, I’ve never been at this altitude before, but it felt pretty good. After an hour on the top I still had a resting-pulse of ~114, so I guess the altitude affected me somewhat (yes, science stuff: heartbeats, red bloodcells, oxygentransport, levels of oxygen in the air, etc. Awesome!). Thanks mum&dad for dragging me up mountains before I could walk 😉

The view, oh my god! For every meter we climbed the view got better and better. At the north we had a spectacular view of volcan de Atitlan, and the Santiaguito (?) (another of the 3 active volcanoes in Guatemala) and we could see all the way to the border of México.

Turning south we had volcan de Agua and Pacaya (Pacaya is also active, that’s where all the tourists go to see, but not touch, the lava), and we could actually see all the way to the border of El Salvador.

Turning west it was cloudy and unfortunaely we couldn’t see the ocean. Turning east it was cloudy at first, but it cleared and we could see Antigua, Guatemala city and beyond.

Acatenango isn’t defined as active, it has 4 inactive craters but it also has some hot-spots where steam is constantly pouring out.

Getting a guide to Acatenango wasn’t as easy as to Pacaya, almost all of the agencies only offers tours to Pacaya, because there’s more robbers and bad-guys at Acatenango and Agua. However, with the help of the tourist information we found a guy on a motorcycle (..) that accepted to take us up. Some reccommended to bring security, because a few months ago another group of tourists got robbed and their guards got shot. But both the guide and ourselves thought it’s better to just get robbed. For minimizing the risk of meeting any bad-guys we left Antigua at 4:00 in the morning, took the shortest route up and the longest route down. All we met was some happy locals on the top, and we got safe and sound home. Also, by starting the climb so early we got a really nice sunrise!

If you’re ever in the area and wants to climb a volcan I can highly reccomend the guide, Julio Rolando Menchu from “Ico’s volcano expeditions”. He’s a really friendly guy that knows his volcanoes and actually cares about the environment.

Pictures up at Flickr.