by
Ken McCormick
Just about every little hole-in-the-wall
travel agency in Antigua has a sign in the doorway urging visitors to
"climb Volcan de Pacaya, Guatemala’s most active volcano." It doesn’t matter which travel agency you
sign with, they all book you on the same trip; a mini-van that runs out to the
mountain every day, and a guide who meets you at the end of the road in the
village of San Francisco and takes you to the top. The only difference is the price charged. Some agents, I am told, charge up to $15 for
the trip. Following the advice of the
guidebook, I found one offering the trip for $5.
Since crime against tourists on the trail to
the top has been a problem, many ads refer to an armed escort. All this refers to is a six-man army patrol
that has been established on the mountain to discourage bandits. The only real escort is the guide, who
carries a machete.
I joined eight or nine international
twentysomething backpackers - the usual type Antigua tourist - on a Saturday
afternoon ascent of the 8,000-foot volcano.
Pacaya is about an hour’s drive from Antigua, and is actually closer to
Guatemala City. The road up to San
Francisco is a steep dirt track that winds through a couple of little villages
on the way up the slopes. The road is
awash in runoff from sinks in people’s yards that are used for washing dishes
and for laundry when water is available.
As we wound around a sharp curve, one boy of about 8 to 10 years of age
who happened to be strolling along the road took the idea into his head to leap
as high into the air as he could and to spit as hard as he could through the
open side window of the van, flipping his head to the side as he did so in
order to impart more velocity to the spittle.
If he had a target, it was the blonde woman sitting just inside the
window, but the trajectory of the spittle spewed most of it across my forearm.
At the roadhead in San Francisco, we were
greeted by some filthy kids and an alternately grunting and squealing pig who
had apparently learned that tourists sometimes give handouts to pigs. After a few minutes, a young boy came up
with a switch and drove the pig behind a house, apparently just to demonstrate
his mastery of the situation. A few
scrawny dogs a little like greyhounds also came over looking for a handout. One pathetic puppy of about six months to a
year had a stunted body, a sad head too large for its body, every bone in its
body standing out in sharp distinction, and an oozing sore on its back. I gave it a couple of my cookies which it
received with gratitude. I was afraid
the sugary cookies might do it more harm than good, and I didn’t know what was
the better thing to do, so I compromised and just gave it two of the six. I later fed the rest to another, healthier
dog who followed us all the way to the rim of the volcano.
It´s about a two-mile climb from the end of
the road to the rim, but it looked a lot farther the first time I caught sight
of the smoking summit of the volcano off in the distance. The trail is quite well-established, and is
frequented by such locals as Boy Scout troops from Guatemala City. One scout coming back down the mountain
proudly showed me the big clumps of lava he had brought as souvenirs from the
summit. They were multicolored and
rather interesting-looking specimens.
The trail runs through some pretty woods along
the lower slopes until it breaks onto a bare, windswept ridge of lava rock more
than halfway to the summit. The lava
rock here is too new to be able to support more than a few low weeds, and the
smoke from the crater makes the hold of plant life even more precarious. The ridge runs along the edge of a long bowl
of solidified lava from the most recent overflow many years ago. It reaches the base of the lava cone in a
barren moonscape dramatized by the great cloud of sulfuric smoke pouring from
the summit overhead and by the clouds often blowing across the face of the
mountain in a high wind that tears at the clothing and makes jackets and pant legs
rattle like luffing sails in a storm.
The final ascent is through a steep, deep,
seemingly bottomless pile of tiny lava pebbles. Your foot sinks right into the shifting mass up to the ankle, and
you slide back down one step for every two steps upwards, little avalanches of
pebbles flowing from each footstep.
Near the rim, the ground levels out somewhat, and the rocks become
larger and much more solid. Wisps of
smoke seep from the ground, and if you scrape an inch or so off the surface,
the rocks beneath are hot.
At the rim, the view of any lava below is
hidden by the vast clouds of smoke emerging from the crater. The smoke pouring up the side of the crater
to emerge into the atmosphere and to sometimes envelop us in a thick cloud,
reducing visibility to a few feet, looked like something from Dore’s
illustrations of Dante’s Inferno. My
Spanish teacher, Pablo, says he’s been on the rim of the crater after dark, and
he says you can sometimes then see a red glow through the smoke, with an
occasional blip of brighter red splashing upwards and arcing back down into the
deeper pool.
Coming down the side of the cone, there is
little alternative to almost running, as every step sinks in to bury the foot
and ankle in a sliding mass of lava pebbles, and every step slides down the
distance of two or three steps.
Alternatively, you can just leave your feet immersed in the sea of
pebbles and slide down the mountainside by rapidly shuffling the feet forwards
far enough to lose traction. If you
happen to fall backwards, you can’t go more than a few inches before your hand
pushes you back upright, as the sides are so steep that the mountainside is
just at your back. This was exhilarating,
if somewhat painful, as the deep accumulation of pebbles inside the shoe was
just about like going in stocking feet on the sharp little pieces of lava.
Reaching
the woods again, we received what the guide called an "advertencia"
of the approaching rainy season in the form of a thunder storm which dampened
our descent back to San Francisco. I
was glad I had brought along a rain jacket.
The travel agency had provided a rented flashlight, too, for we finished
the descent in the dark, illuminated only by the flashlights and an occasional
flash of lightning. The San Francisco
kids were waiting for us at the bottom, trying to sell us snacks and lukewarm
sodas.