It's hot!

Yesterday was a relaxing day with a lot of sightseeing all around the city. Me and a brit that lives in my room decided to explore Antigua together, lot of small churches that are cared for the same way as little childrens. We went up to ¨Cerro de la Cruz¨, the hill with a cross overlooking the town.

The guidebook stated that this was a dangerous place despite the tranqulity of Antigua. The locals and our observations told a different story, more tourist police officers than tourists. Since a still felt a bit jetlagged it became an early evening. Today was a early start. Two hours driving to get to the bottom of the mountain. I got the worst seat in the entire bus with two iron bars making sure that I didn´t fall asleep.

When we finally arived at the base camp there was still an hour hike uphill in front of us. The hiking was fine though since a had a good night sleep, it was good weather and I shared my intrest in snakes with a dutch Alexander Skarsgård look alike. He was equally intressed in the small creatures so the hike was a joyful experience. After an hour we met what could be desribed as a wall of black rock. If you took a closer look you could spot the orange core. The wall looked like a big charcoal grill with black rocks constantly falling off it.

Our guide Hervin proved it to be hot by pressing sticks into the core and let them catch fire. From here we took a 15 minutes hike up the volcano to se the acual side crater. A big lava river poured down on one side an dividing the emerald green landscape in two, just like a knife cuts through butter.

A journey to the top of the main crater was sadly impossible because of the sulfurous gases and beacause of the recent raised activity of the volcano which would lead to a evacuation of the village of San Fransisco in a weeks time.

To end the experience we got to try to walk over a stagnated part of the lava river. Even though it hadn´t moved in a week and it was black, the shoes felt warm afterwards. Surronding the volcano was a lush green landscape, depending on the high nutrition value of lava soil. Back in Antigua I decided that this is gonna be my last afternoon here, I´m getting really excited for the northern part of the country.