We Are Not Just Riding Bikes!

We’re also hiking up some big-ass volcanoes. We took two days to rest our butts and instead trashed our legs but we had some great scenery up on Volcan Acatenango, 13,045 ft (3,976 m), near the city of Antigua. I admit, my biggest reason for hiking up this volcano was because we had friends of friends who’d posted some spectacular photos of the neighbouring peak, Volcan de Fuego at 12,346 ft (3,763 m) actually erupting a few days before we got there. Sadly, de Fuego was finished its tantrum and only some think smoke from its summit gave anything away of its earlier activity. We were still lucky to have clear skies and a great view from the top.

We did sleep overnight on the mountain at around 11,500 ft (3,505 m). As Dave and I had very little in the way of hiking gear, we borrowed a pack from our awesome hostel guy, Christian at Hostal Antigueno, then had to attach a tent (we went with a group of about 10) to my small day pack. Dave carried three sleeping bags and three mats in the borrowed pack (we were hiking with another rider, Ismail, we met a few days ago), and Ismail took the four litres of water and some other things in Dave’s day pack along with his own hydration pack. Needless to say, we were a bit of a yard sale and it made for tougher hiking having all that gear swinging about but we made it work.

We rose at 4:00 a.m. and hiked to the summit about an hour and a half away, then sat up there with a lot of other people, for about an hour before descending, packing our tents up and continuing down to the valley where the bus took us back to Antigua.

Very cool indeed! For more photos, visit our photo page here.