For reasons unknown to both of us, every live volcano seems to have a village at the bottom. We're genuinely at a loss to understand why people choose to live within spit-shot of hot molten lava.

We took a tour of the Pacaya volcano, a live volcano nearby.

It took about two hours to hike 2km uphill to the top of the volcano after our tour bus took us as far as it could. It was a spectacular sight.

We never thought we'd get so close to hot molten lava spilling out of a volcano, literally close enough to toast a marshmallow.

No doubt, gondolas, safety barriers, and planked pathways would be the norm back home, along with recorded reminders that repeat ad nauseum "for your own safety..."

Now as you can imagine, there's nothing quite like taking a long, hot shower after a sweaty uphill climb two hours up and two hours back, all the time covered volcanic ash and dust. Fortunately for us, our hotel room was equipped with only the best shower in all of Guatemala. We don't know how to translate the Spanish name, but we called it "Mighty Drip".

Today we made our way by bus to Panajachel in Lake Atitlan. Corey managed to bargain a good deal for us in a very nice hotel (though now that we think of it, we didn't check to see just how Mighty its drip is). We're going to chill here for a couple of days, darting back and forth across the lake by boat, and coming back into town to settle in the evenings.

written by  Corey and Melissa on February 25, 2009 from Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
from the travel blog: Margarita y Discoteca
tagged Volcano and MightyDrip
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wow, so cool, I love the molten rock shot, you were so close!!

Me and Stephanie are in Melissa withdrawl.

stay safe, and I'll keep checking back.

any 4th floor action?

D

written by  Daina on February 26, 2009

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