The Moon and Back

On Wednesday, we got the opportunity to visit the biggest and most infamous volcano in the area, Volcano Pacaya. This volcano is very active and actually had a large eruption in May of this year. We had the extreme pleasure of having Nancy, our host sister, accompany us. She is sixteen and has never been to see this volcano that is only an hour from her house.

Pacaya is in a national park. You have to pay to get into this park. Very different from our national parks, people live there. In fact, a lot of people live on the side of this active volcano. I could not figure out why anyone would want to live on the side of an active volcano, but there were neighborhoods everywhere.
When we arrived there were little kids selling us walking sticks for a buck. We obliged and later were very glad we did. Although, as it turned out, we were only renting these sticks, the kids asked for them back after we came down! lol. thats okay, what were we going to do with them? Amongst the other sales ploys, there were taxi's available to fat americans who were not willing to make the hike on foot. Here is a picture of the taxi's.

Well, I thought it was just for fat Americans until I was huffing and puffing up this incredible steep volcano. We hiked up hill for about an hour straight. I was trying to act tough, but I was tired! The hike was a little treacherous too, because you walk on little pebbles/lava rock the whole time. The rocks are really slippery and sharp.
We finally hit a clearing and we could see the top of the volcano.

We finally got to feel some hot rocks. At the end of the day, there was not any rolling lava which was a bit of a disappointment, but we did get to see a hole that was really hot and had some red stuff in the bottom.

We had a lot fun hiking though. Some people were able to roast marshmallows on the rocks and even heat their grilled cheese on the rocks.

All in all it was a really cool experience. We had hoped to see more rolling lava but what we saw was definitely like being on another planet. It was a bit hazardous but wow what an adventure. well gotta go for now, but we will blog soon.