Around the World in 5 Days

well, i feel like i've been gone from antigua for quite a while now. saturday i was gone all day on a trek up the side of a 12,000 ft. volcano, and then at 4:00am monday morning i left town with my host family for a three-day vacation. first, the volcano...
volcán de agua stands to the south of antigua, a looming reminder of the several times this town has been ravaged by earthquakes and eruptions. and it is beautiful. unlike volcán de pacaya, agua is not currently active. it has been dormant for a long time, and climbing it i found little evidence that this mountain was really a volcano at all. the terrain at the bottom of the mountain is almost jungle-like, with dense trees and brush. along the way you see fields where the people are growing corn and such. and higher up are more trees, lots of grass, and lots of rocks, but not the typical volcanic rocks full of holes, just regular rocks. there was no evidence of volcanic activity that i could see... that is, until we reached the crater. this part of agua was much different than pacaya as well. pacaya, though active, has a fairly small crater - smaller than i expected anyway. and in pacaya's crater there are two spouts that spew gases, molten rocks, and the occasional lava. at the top of volcán de agua, however, is a HUGE crater. the rim of the crater reaches some 200 feet up forming a wall on 3 sides of the massive sunken hole that once was the portal between this world and the mysteries of the fiery depths. but now when one reaches the top of volcán de agua, one finds no lava or sulfurous gases. instead, you find a small cottage for campers and a soccer field, complete with two goals. and on top of the rim are several large radio antennas and housing for the maintenance people who service the antennas. it was really cloudy all day long, so our view was limited, but nonetheless incredible. i made the climb with 5 of my new friends - rafael, lauri, taleese, laura, and bjorn. our guide was an older man from santa maria de jesus, the town at the the bottom of agua. it took us 5 hours to summit, and 3:45 to descend - so about 9 hours of hiking in total. it was a lot of fun and a good challenge, too. i'm glad i got to do it, but i think i may have now had my fill of volcano-climbing for a while.

and now the trip with the family... i don't know if i have time to tell all about it right now, but it was three very relaxing days in one of the most beautiful places i've ever been. this was a trip for most of the extended family, so there were 16 of us, including tj and myself. (tj is my korean housemate and fellow student) so there were 16 of us crammed into a 15-passenger van, which wouldn't have been that crowded considering most guatemaltecos are not large people. but we had to remove the back seat in order to have room for all our stuff, so there were 16 of us crammed into 4 rows of a 15-passenger van... for a 7-hour drive. it sounds worse than it actually was. nobody was complaining really, even though it was pretty hot. and the time passed quickly. around noon we reached a small town where we stopped to buy live fish that we ate for dinner that night. we actually netted the fish out of a kiddie pool beside the tank where they were raised. then, from that town, we left the van and boarded a boat for a 30-minute ride across lake izabal to the house where we stayed for the 3 days. lake izabal is pretty incredible. it is a large fresh-water lake that feeds into rio dulce, which feeds into the caribbean sea on the north-east coast of guatemala. our house was right on the beach, and we spent hours just lounging around on the deck and playing in the water. the water in lake izabal is fairly clear and the perfect temperature. and i could walk out about 200 yards and still have my head above the water. and like i said, it is fresh water, so you don't have that salty grime on your body when you get out of the water.
on tuesday we took a two-hour boat ride all the way across the lake, out rio dulce, to the caribbean sea, where we visited the town of livingston, home to the garifuna people... i felt like i was in jamaica or some other caribbean island. and man was it hot! we also stopped at el castillo de san felipe, a fortress built by the spanish in 1595 to protect trade ships from the pirates that pillaged the area so often. the whole day we were surrounded by natural beauty. on the banks of rio dulce, jungle-covered cliffs rise 100 or more feet from the water's edge. it was a pretty incredible 3 days. we stayed at the house until 2:30 wednesday afternoon, and didn't get home until 11:30 last night. it was very relaxing, but i came back pretty exhausted. but i have a 3-day weekend to catch up on my homework and to rest.