I’m surprised more people aren’t walking around Antigua like they’ve shat themselves quite frankly, given that climbing up Volcán Acatenango is a very popular activity. We got back this morning and I’m pretty sure the jelly my legs have been reduced to will be replaced with six different kinds of pain tomorrow. Who’s bloody idea was this?! (Mine. It was my idea). Was it worth it? Yes it fucking was! We weren’t even sure if we were going to do the hike on account of the fact people literally (literally!!) half our age were saying it was the hardest thing they’d ever done. Should we do it? Should we not bother? Should we look into a jeep to the top? What’s that? US$500? Nevermind then. We oscillated between these three options for five months before thinking fuck it. Hashtag YOLO and all that. We got it booked.

We decided to go with a new, smaller company rather than one of the big boys. We were nervous, I’m not going to lie, walking up hills hasn’t been a forte since I got a bit poorly last year and Tarrant’s feet and ankles still hadn’t really recovered from our three month hike. We’d also spent significant quantities of time in hammocks applying various alcoholic beverages to our faceholes over the last, well, year really so our fitness levels were laughable at best. We were picked up from outside our hotel, there were four other people in the van who we mumbled pre-caffinated hellos to, and off we fucked in the vague direction of the volcano.

Acate Local Adventures don’t have an office in Antigua so we were driven about an hour to Aldea La Soledad, about 2200 m.a.s.l. where they have a house conveniently located right by the trailhead. That’s good then. We could start walking as soon as they’d plied us with breakfast and given us warm shit to wear. We met our guide, Hermano, then that was it then. No more fucking around. Let’s get up this hill. The trail doesn’t fuck around either, it’s got no interest in breaking you in gently. It begins with a severe incline and just continues to be a severe incline for six hours. Well, four to six hours apparently but it seemed that all six of us were six hour humans so that worked out well.

We were walking for an hour and a half before we even got to the entrance but there were plenty of breaks to be fair, and it was a lovely, shuffling pace. I still had to stop a lot outside of the scheduled breaks to catch my breath and reevaluate what I was doing with my life but so far I wasn’t hating it. At the registration hut we were given a form to fill out, Hermano paid us in and we were given a fetching bright red wristband which more or less matched the colour my face had gone.

It had been a chilly morning despite the sunshine and as we ascended the clouds moved in which was sort of bittersweet. On one hand, can you imagine doing this in full sun? Fuck that shit. This temperature was much more manageable. On the other hand, too much cloud would mean we’d be walking up this hill just to get a really good view of said cloud and pretty much fuck all else. We plodded onwards and upwards for just over an hour before we sat down for lunch. Ooh now that was getting a bit cold. I zipped the legs onto my extremely fashionable zip-off trousers and chucked a long sleeve on.

Fed and hydrated, we carried on, stopping at the many shelters they’ve built along the way for a little sit down. Boards gave us snippets of information about the area and told us exactly what altitude we’d managed to slog our way to. That’s what gets you too, it’s not just the relentless incline, every step you take the air gets thinner. The clouds really moved in the higher we got, sweeping through the trees so it felt like we were walking through a mysterious forest on the way to rescue a princess from a dragon or some shit. Honestly mate, at this stage you can just fucking keep her.

Yeah okay, I think I was hating it now. My legs felt like they were made of lead, every step had to be dragged from my tortured soul, I kept having to stop just to take a minute to try not to cry, and to cap it all off you couldn’t see shit beyond the trees so we were basically putting ourselves through this for no reason. I’d pretty much engaged full on sulk mode. Not everyone was having the same problem as me, clearly. One bloke from another group was completely capable of full, high-volume conversion as he walked. Like, how?? I’m communicating in grunts and gasps and he’s regaling anyone who’ll listen about the finer points of northern England. Does he have a third lung just for talking or something? Absolute fucking mutant.

One last sit down at the first campsite which I think is where those maniacs carrying their own camping shit can stay then Hermano told us the last forty minutes were Guatemalan flat. Little bit up, little bit down. Shitting hell, it was cold now. Like, bitterly cold. Windproof layer and gloves kind of cold. That last bit had to be wrenched out of me though and it was probably a good thing that we were in a cloud and I couldn’t see whatever drop was to the right of me or I’d probably have sat down and refused to move until someone sent me a helicopter. When I saw the last steep hill we had to climb up to get to our base camp I nearly refused in favour of a nervous breakdown but tantrums aren’t going to get you a hot cup of noodles by a fire now are they? No. I womaned the fuck up and dragged myself to the camp at 3600 m.a.s.l.

The dormant Acatenango is one of a set of twin volcanos, the other being the very, very active El Fuego and that’s why you put yourself through this shit, so you can sit on one volcano and watch the other one erupt. Unfortunately right now this minute we couldn’t see shit. Well, bugger. We contented ourselves with glimpses of the slope of El Fuego and the odd plumes of ash drifting through the cloud but ultimately we knew this was a risk, doing this at this time of year. Dear gods it was cold too. Hermano made us all a hot cup of noodles which really did help warm us up from the inside and he went off to make up our beds for us.

We’d be staying in these little cabins on decent, thick mattresses with sleeping bags and blankets. We went to sort our shit out and put more clothes on against the bastard freezing cold and when we emerged from our cabin, closely resembling the Michelin Man after a few too many pies, all wrapped up in every damn layer we owned, well bugger me backwards if it hadn’t completely cleared.

There it was, El Fuego in all its smoke belching glory. What a beast! We’d been hearing it as we’d gotten closer, it sounded like thunder, but now here it was. It doesn’t erupt constantly but when it goes it really does go and it’s probably one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my life. You can clearly see the sheer explosive power of it as it hurls shit into the air and the ash cloud just grows and drifts off. We didn’t know how long we’d have this view for so we pretty much just fixed eyes on it for hours.

So you have the option to climb Fuego too if you’re a total masochistic bastard but none of our group fancied tacking an extra four hours onto our day. You can see people doing it though and I’m sure it’s an epic rush, being on a volcano as it erupts, but I honestly couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything other than sitting down after the ascent we’d just done, plus getting up Fuego means descending a little bit of Acatenango and bollocks to that. I literally just walked up it, I’m not walking down the fucker again until they make me.

The real show though, that starts when it gets dark because that’s when you can see the lava. Yeah so you know how I just said watching Fuego erupt was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my life? Fuego erupting at night is ten times better. The longest we had to wait between eruptions was only like thirty or forty minutes and the longer we waited the better the eruption as it ejected hot, red lava into the sky which then streamed down the side of the mountain. This was so, so worth every aching muscle. We were so glad we finally decided to do this.

The evening was spent huddled round a fire and marvelling every time Fuego exploded until the cold and the exhaustion caught up with us and we retreated to the cabin, which actually had a perspex front so we could sit up in bed and still watch the volcano. Best night ever? Definitely comes close. I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the best night’s sleep though and pretty much all I could think about was how cold my toes were. Add to that the rumblings of Fuego and the fact my brain decided we were all going to die in an earthquake and yeah, didn’t sleep much at all so when 3.50am rolled around and Hermano woke us up for the sunrise summit not a single molecule of me was keen. FOMO though isn’t it. Let’s have a bash. To be honest I was surprised my legs even worked.

Nope. No. Absolutely not. The wind had been brutal too, it was so fucking cold, it was really steep and not a very nice surface to walk on. We are not mountaineers, we do not collect summits. We’d come here to see Fuego go apeshit and we’d seen it. Neither of us had any desire to walk up another bastard hill, and subsequently back down it, before the unavoidable epic descent that lay ahead of us. Fuck it. We went back to watch Fuego spew lava a couple more times then went back to bed and I regret nothing. The three that went up got some lovely photos but they said it was really difficult and really fucking cold.

Well, we walked up this fucker so now we’ve got to walk down it again. It wasn’t an eventful walk down but it was by no means easy. It was loads quicker of course and we had way less breaks but that constant downhill, well that’s a whole different brand of pain. My legs absolutely did not want to leg anymore. Tarrant’s knees very much had opinions on all of this. It’s slippery too, but not in a muddy way. You know those surfaces with the tiny gravelly shit that just wants to see you fail? That shit. It doesn’t help that walking downhill is one of the many, many things that scares the crap out of me so it was an emotional four hours before we finally hobbled to the house we’d started at and collapsed into chairs where we were handed a beer. Even Gallo tasted good after the morning we’d had.

Tell you what though, we couldn’t have gotten better weather if we’d actually had a say in it. Lovely, overcast and cold for the climb up, zero rain, completely clear for the eruption show and great weather for the descent. We napped so hard when we got back to the hotel in Antigua, then we went to McDonald’s and I’m not even sorry. Cheap by Antigua standards, familiar comfort food, and they have the touchscreens to order so my poor, fried brain didn’t have to do The Spanish. All in all, despite the impending hobbling that the next three days will entail, that was utterly fucking worth it. Not just a highlight of this trip but, for me, an all-time highlight.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Volcán Acatenango, Chimaltenango, Guatemala

Stayed at: Acate Local Adventures base camp, Volcán Acatenango

Useful shit to know…

• There are loads of companies to do this with. The better known ones take huge groups up, like 30 people at a time.
• You’re looking at between Q250 and Q500 per person but I don’t think the lower priced outfits are brilliant.
• We opted to go with Acate Local Adventures, they were recommended by someone who went with them.
• They’re a very small operation, they’ve been around for eight months at the time of writing, but they know what they’re doing.
• You can WhatsApp Renee in English or Spanish on +50233262454.
• Their campsite has an excellent, unobstructed view of El Fuego, obviously weather permitting.
• We paid Q450 per person.
• Our guide, Hermano was brilliant. He didn’t speak a lot of English but this wasn’t a problem.