Tuesday morning it was déjà vu, with early wake up, packing, loading up the van (different van, driver and guide- this time guy named Ed Church from the UK)…even same place for breakfast. The van had seat belts and everyone strapped in, and we were away.

The van eventually arrived at the base of the volcano (road in was bad, wished I'd taken travel sick tablets), we got ourselves sorted out and packed up, and started up the first part. The first part is all shale and loose gravel and was bloody difficult to walk up. And it was hot, steamy, humid and the packs were heavy. I'm going to just skim over much of the first few hours saying only that it was probably as hard, if not harder, than parts of the Inca Trail (mostly 'cause of the weight of the packs, the constant, constant uphill, the humidity, altitude and the pace). Most of the group were racing ahead, poor little old me had discovered that my 'pace'- especially uphill- was slightly slower than a dead snail, so I was often at the back playing catch up. It took us a few hours before reaching our lunch stop and I didn't enjoy, well to be brutally honest, I didn't enjoy most of it. One fun thing was at the lunch stop a guide from the only other volcano company in Antigua came running up the track- he'd been called by his boss who'd heard we were there, and had been given orders to follow us (they had a group going up also) & tell us we weren't allowed to use the camping site, as their company were the ones who'd built it so were therefore the only ones who could use it. Ed pulled the "Rack off of course we're using it, it's big enough for all of us. And I'm just the guide, if your boss has a problem, tell him to call my boss" deal. Eventually they agreed to politely disagree and that the other group would get to choose their tent-pitching spots first. Apparently in the past three months that Ed had been taking groups up he'd never ran into the other company who were seemingly going through a quiet spell.

After lunch the going was easier, flatter and the campsite only a couple of hours away (we'd already been going for close to 6 hours by then). We'd been hearing what we thought was thunder and were gapping it as fast as we could to try and get to camp and set up before the heavens opened. Ha, turns out the 'thunder' was in fact the volcano Fuego (2km from Acatenango which we were climbing) erupting, as it had been since May. Nothing dangerous (as it were) just bits of stones, lava and gases-- and only a little bit.

We arrived at the campsite, worked out with the other guide where they and we would camp, and set to work. It was bitterly cold so everyone was wrapped up as warm as they could be, and soon a fire was lit and the marshmallows made an appearance. As dusk fell you could see Fuego going off- it was almost constant, Ed said he'd never been up there when it was that active and we had an awesome show that night with the red, orange and yellow fire kicking up. Spectacular. And, still in keeping with our tradition, the camera batteries both died.

The night in the tent with one other couple passed painfully- it was still fricking freezing and the ground was hard as dirt (hahaha). Eventually though I think everyone managed to get a few hours sleep here and there. Just after dawn we all woke up, got dressed in all warm layers, grabbed our water bottles and started up the steepest part. We were aiming to get to the summit of Acatenango where the view would be gorgeous. It was harder than the previous day and several times I was on the point of giving up and going back to camp. My very darling Nick bullied me into continuing, asking if I really actually did want to turn back then after all we'd been through to actually get there. Have to say it almost didn't work as I really didn't give a s*** right then but he kept me going and eventually we arrived at the crater. Being that it was daylight we couldn't really see Fuego's lava and whatnot but could still hear everything. One of the guys had brought a couple of cans of beer with them so we celebrated our achievement with a nice cold(ish) bevvie before heading back down.

Our packs were a little lighter going down with less food& water in them and we made good timing- what had taken almost 8 hours the day before we done in perhaps 2.5.

So, we climbed the volcano. Did I enjoy it? No. Would I do it again? Hell no. Was it worth it? Maybe.