Volcan Pacaya - My first volcano

So I've spent 3 days in Antigua, exploring the town and an overnight trip to Volcan Pacaya.  I wanted to go to Volcan Fuego as it is more active, but they weren't running any trips there til the weekend.

Antigua is a pretty little town.  Cobble stone streets, lots of cool little galleries, markets, antique and used book stores.  Kinda like Hobart if it had decent weather.  That and there's a fuck-off size volcano overlooking the town.

Actually there are about half a dozen volcanos, but I only had time to climb one.  So I did an overnight camping trip to Volcan Pacaya.  It was so good.  On the trip there was myself and two american girls.  Really nice chicks.  With us was our guide, two other guides who hadn't hiked that route on that mountain yet, a local guide and some old guy who looked about 70 - who was there for security. Overkill anyone?

Anyway, we did the drive up to the start point where we were bombarded by about a thousand
kids trying to sell us walking sticks for about 80 cents.  So after wading through needy children we set off.

The climb was pretty easy, all through dusty shoal which can be a pain with a pack as it's slippery, but we reached the camp area in about an hour.  Not a hard hike but enought for my sexy new hiking boots to give me some killer blisters.
 
From the camp we could see straight out over the volcano.  Pretty cool.  The volcano is live, with the last eruption being May last year, but you can't see any explosions or lava flowing, just smoke coming out the top.
 
After the guides set up our tent for us - see that's why you need 3 guides,
we went walking out on the old lava flows.  We took our marshmallows and found an open
crack that was warm and toasty and began to eat.  On the way up we ran into a couple coming down who had the best marshmallow stick I'd ever seen.  It was pretty much a tree of marshmallows, and the guy gave it to us as he went past.  Bless his cotton socks.

After having our fill of marshmallows we went back to camp for dinner, some wine and a few more marshmallows around the campfire. I love a good campfire.  And it was perfect campfire weather, cool not cold and no wind.  And the american girls and the guides were all pretty fun people.  I went to sleep with my jaw aching from laughing.  One of the girls farted in the tent our tent conversation turned into something that so made me feel like I was back home camping with Krichelle, Casey, etc. LOL for real.