After staring at the Volcanoes Fuego and Acatenango from a hot tub in Antigua, Guatemala for a few days, we went up to climb dormant Acatenango for some views of actively erupting Fuego. The hike to base camp was a 6 hour, steep steep climb into the clouds, mist and rain. When we arrived at camp it was storming so we piled into a little cabin, tried to dry off and layer up to stay warm, and stayed in our little cocoons huddled together while the guides brought us food until we finally slept (or tried to).
At 4am we were supposed to wake up to summit Acatenango to watch the sunrise over Fuego but the weather was unsafe and the view would be unclear so we had to skip it, but at least we got a little more sleep in. At 6am the sky cleared a bit and we waited with wet, cold hands holding coffee for the perfect combination of cleared clouds and volcano-eruption-ash-plume. The best I got was 50/50. The hike down was beautiful and painful on the knees. Luckily we were able to see incredible scenery- as far as Lake Atitlan where were stayed last week, until we were back into a canopy of clouds. Overall, we climbed 4,000 feet to 12,355 feet. Quite the aventura.
