Skiing on Pacaya Volcano

My favorite adventure of our trip thus far has been our hike up the Pacaya Volcano. Immediately upon our arrival at the base of the trail, some local boys brought us giant walking sticks (for a small fee) and we met our guide, Fredy, a super fun and friendly fellow who made jokes all the way up and back down. The views got better and better as we climbed the volcano — the landscape, abundant with farmland, hills, and volcanos, was beautiful. We were sad to learn from Fredy that Pacaya had exploded around a decade ago and as a result had decimated much of the land in its vicinity. Once we got high enough, we could see the devastation — lava rock was covering a good portion of the valley. I think we were all surprised at how quickly we climbed to the top after seeing the somewhat-intimidating peak from below — it took only an hour! Our time at the summit was by far the coolest part of the whole experience. Since Pacaya is an active volcano, certain spots in the rocky ground get very hot; in fact, it was so hot that we were able to toast marshmallows and re-heat pizza! With each new marshmallow I heated, I was astounded all over again that I could toast it to golden-brown perfection in a little hole in some rock. I suppose that that “some rock” was on an active volcano, so that would explain it. Along with all of the rock was tons of ash — enough, actually, to cover a whole hillside that Fredy told us we could “ski” down. We had so much fun traversing the ashy hill and sliding down! On the way back down the volcano, we had another totally unexpected adventure: Fredy taught us how to catch butterflies! It’s surprisingly easy: all you have to do is slowly move up on the butterfly from behind and quickly nab its wings. We had fun with our new trick all the way down. I would highly recommend visiting Pacaya and asking for Fredy as a guide!