The Blue Monkey Review

It was and I did. The climb up Pacaya took another hour and a half, and it costs some work. But, any equal amount of time on the Inca trail would have required much more work. Since I´d had several enjoyable hours the night before lying awake thinking about my dinner, I also had time to wonder how dangerous this trip might be. Every bit of travel information that I read before coming to Guatemala warned about crime. And, amazingly, one of the places where armed robberies have happened frequently is on the trails of volcano parks. Later in the day I asked one of the drivers about that and he said there had not been an assault for eight years in the Pacaya park. I can see why. We had our own armed escort. I finally had direct benefit from the proliferation of pump shotguns here.

You walk through mixed farm land and jungle. Local people grow corn and beans here, though on the way there I noticed quite a few coffee plantings. As you go farther, jungle takes over. This isn´t the same lush rainforest found in Peten, but thick enough, and both warm and humid. Finally, though, you walk suddenly beyond the treeline into an area dominated by the cone of the volcano.

We couldn´t hike up to the caldera because it was visibly cracking below and who knew when a big chunk would head down the mountain with hikers along for the ride. Pacaya is active, and currently putting out an impressive quota a lava. What we could see from our vantage was a field of lava, some already cooling, but some actively running yellow and red, and at times breaking into flame. This paid me back for all the lost sleep and crazy van ride. And I would have been proud to show the pictures from there as a special memory of that trip. But then I saw our guide literally running along the rim of the slope we stood on and heading over the edge.

The guide, José, did not seem to have the same duties as most guides, that is, informing you about flora, fauna, and geophysical activity. Instead, he often seemed like the one odd character in any medium sized group who keeps pushing the limits, trying to find the craziest things to do, trying to get everyone else into trouble. There´s always someone like that. Usually, though, it isn´t the leader. José´s job seemed to boil down to getting us out onto the lava field.

We probably spent about 40 minutes out on the lava lake. How dangerous was this? Hard to say. When lava cools it shrinks, of course, but seems to loose mass inside. So everywhere we walked had formed from a cooling liquid into a hollowed out solid. Every once in a while a foot went through the surface of the bed. And I don´t think I will surprise anyone by saying that lava is jagged. Think of a kulm bank (or slag heap) but with all the bits of slag attached. And new. And sharp. A couple of our guys did fall and came back up with some cuts. The footing, in addition to sometimes caving in under you, was also tricky because the lava lake did not cool off evenly. It was more like the choppy water that Peter had a chance, briefly, to walk on. Imagine roiled water with streams going eerywhich way, and large waves or swells in places, all frozen in place. Plus, when I say that the surface had cooled, that´s relative. You could touch most of the places where we walked. But there were also places where you could pour out water and make water vapor. The one real concern that I had was that my nylon pants might start melting. How close did we get to the actual lava flow? You can see the pictures.