Hi everyone, Well we survived our volcano climb... just!! The tour started with a 1.5 hour shuttle bus ride to the base of Pacaya, and then about 1.5 hours of hiking through mountainous terrain to make it the the base of the volcano. From the base of the volcano, we could see all the way to Guatemala City, and beyond... just stunning. Then the real fun began. The sides of the volcano are covered in molten rock and loose ash, which we had to climb at about a 45 degree angle to reach the mouth of the volcano. It seemed that for every step forward, we'd slide 1 metre backwards, so it was definitely a hard slog making it to the top. About half way up the sid eof the volcano, the wind picked up and it became apparent that we were hiking amongst the clouds, as all we could see above, below , infront and behind was white!!. The temperature dropped to about 0 degrees also, and we had to fight against the wind to stop from keeling over. After aboutr an hour of this we finally reached the top. unfortunately, as the summit was covered in cloud, all we could see was white. Luckily for about two seconds a big gust of wind came and we were able to see into the mouth of the volcaone, at the steam and lava. It was pretty cool. The hike down took only about 5 minutes as we basically just slide through the ash all the way down.... it was fun!! We had to change host families today as our first house ran out of hot water, and cold showers are no fun! Our new family is great, Sara, Juan and Ruth, the room is beautiful and the food - delicious. For lunch today was spaghetti bolognese.... my favourite!!! Definitely better than spinach soup!! Better go, school is about to start again. Our spanish is really coming along... we can actually understand about 70% of what people say so thats a big improvement!! Nadeane & Dean