Pacaya Volcano

Posted on March 18, 2013 by George

Today we took a quick tour up the Pacaya Volcano. Pacaya is about an hour and a half drive south from Antigua and is one of 3 active volcanoes in Guatemala. From the top of Pacaya we could see Fuego (active as well), Acatenango and Agua. The three volcanoes are situated in a circle around Antigua. Fuego has been casting big plumes of smoke almost every day and had a big night lava eruption our first week in Antigua. Impressive!

A shuttle came to pick us up from our apartment at 6am. After an hour and a half driving we made it to a small mountain village on the outskirts of Pacaya. We were about to hike 5miles up the volcano. The trails were made of fine crushed volcano rocks and lots and lots of volcano dust. The locals in the parking lot were insistent trying to sell a ‘taxi’ service (horse ride) up the mountain for Q100 (about $12 USD). At first everybody in our group declined the taxi ride. Nevertheless two kids on horses followed us up to mountain. I guess they knew what usually happens … So, 10 minutes in the hike one of the girls gave up and hopped on a horse. Next was … Teresa :). Well, in her defense, the second kid was walking right behind her for 35 minutes and asking her more or less every 20 seconds “Taxi?”, “Chika, taxi… ” …. I think T eventually hopped on the horse just to get him to stop bugging her :).

We made it close but not all the way up the volcano (did not climb to the crater since it is dangerous). By the way there was a huge plume of smoke that shot up in the sky while we were right under the volcano. At the end of the trip we crossed a 2 year old lava flow to a place where superheated gasses were coming from the ground. It took only a second for a bunch of dry sticks to get on fire after our guide tossed them under the rocks at that spot. We finished the day with roasting marshmallows on the hot gasses before heading back.

Antigua, Guatemala

Posted on March 7, 2013 by George

Today makes two weeks since we arrived in Antigua. Both Teresa and I are totally loving our experience here. We are taking Spanish classes in the mornings and the afternoons are a mix of homework and activities around town. We rented a small flat at the end of town with a small kitchen and a kick ass rooftop deck with a view of all three volcanoes around. One of the volcanoes is active and regularly puts a show spewing lava and smoke high in the sky.

Here are a few pictures from Antigua for a taste of what are our days like. I will be adding more posts for Antigua since there is so much stuff around here. The town is absolutely beautiful.

Family and friends have been asking to put pictures on the site from our last month and a half of travel. We will be doing that in the next week or so. I will be adding posts with older dates to keep events in order so look for new posts prior to this one. We hit some really cool places to make it down to Antigua so stay tuned.

Tequila, Mexico

Posted on January 20, 2013 by George

Well, turns out there is a place called Tequila and tequila comes from there … Who would have guessed …So, naturally we went to visit. Tequila, Mexico is a small town about 100km from Guadalajara. The town is a bit of a tourist trap. Everything in this town is about making, selling and drinking tequila. We did a tour of the Jose Cuervo factory. It was quite interesting to see the process and see how they use blue agave to make the drink. Tequila tasting was good tambien :).

Oh, yeah … and since we were crunched on time we took a Spanish tour around the factory since we had to wait longer for English. The Spanish classes came a little late …

Another interesting experience on the way to Tequila was the annual Guadalajara motorcycle drive. We passed a good 10,000 motorcyclists … Needless to say I was scared out of my mind not to hit anybody since these guys were riding everywhere. I was going < 20 mph.

Puerto Vallarta

Posted on January 18, 2013 by George

The next morning we woke up by the broken squeaking sounds of an army trumpet. It turned out we slept right next to a army/navy base in San Blas. The sound of the trumpet was the call for all the `armigos` to go exercising in the morning. Teresa and I were still really anxious to get going so the early awakening was welcome. We quickly grabbed a coffee and parted ways with our new friends from Japan, France and Utah and headed to Puerto Vallarta.

I did not have any expectations about Puerto Vallarta. I had heard a lot from friends about the resort but still the only thing I remembered was that there wasn’t enough wind for kiting. After a few wrong turns (thanks to quite a few incorrect traffic signs …) and a few hours of driving we made it to the resort. It took us some time to find a campsite.

Hot showers with good water pressure … Yes! Time to wash the ferry ride off …

We spent the next morning exploring downtown. It is a beautiful, moderate sized, yet not crowded resort. Judging by the number of clubs in the downtown area it is probably not the same during spring break. The resort has a long pedestrian only street by the water. It reminded me a bit of Varna. There was lots of interesting art around town. Also there were a few abandoned large hotels in the middle of the resort. We later found out that those buildings were damaged in a large earthquake in 1995. The same earthquake took down the top of the Roman Catholic Church (wikipedia). You can see the new artistic top of the church in the pictures below.