As I was finishing up my final few days at the Mountain School, my friend Brittany mentioned to me that she was going to be climbing the Volcano Tajumulco the week after we finished up at the school. This volcano had already been on my radar as it is the highest in Central America - and I really do like to climb high things! So I signed up with the company called Quetzaltrekkers - a bunch of expat guides run this company and all the money goes to support a local school which sounded pretty worthwhile to me. They seemed like a pretty professional outfit, we even had a pre-hike meeting the night before to give out gear and food to share. We were a group of 10 hikers and 3 guides - just about everyone was pretty inexperienced but looked fit enough. We had a torrential downpour of rain right at the end of the briefing, the streets were flooded and my shoes were saturated from the water - not a good start. I was hoping that this wasn't an ill omen for the following day...

Tuesday 5am - we left the office in a minivan bound for the town of San Marcos where we would have breakfast - desayuno tipico, which consists of scrambled eggs, refried beans (frijoles), platinos (not sweet bananas fried) and tortillas. Que rico! After breakfast, another hour in the bus and we were at the base of the Volcano from where we would make our ascent. The going was pretty straightforward, much easier than the Acetenango climb, unfortunately we couldn't see too much due to the cloud over the peak at that time of day, but still the scenery was pretty nice. We made it to base camp in great time - one of the fastest groups ever they told us! The guides were in charge of putting up our tent - this is important. It looked like it was in a pretty good position too - and right as they had finished putting it up it began to rain! Like really rain - hail and everything! We ate lunch inside our tent and then did the only thing we could in the crazy rain - get a little afternoon nap. I was a little concerned about the quality of the tent, there were some tiny leaks even while we were eating lunch. Turned out that my worries were founded; I woke from my nap an hour later to the sensation of being on a water bed - the tent had leaked and was in the process of being washed away in a river! At this point the guides proved that they were pretty useless and I had to make the call to walk back down the volcano as too many people had wet sleeping bags in our tent. Hence we walked 2.5 hours back down the volcano to a hotel to sleep for the night. Three of us and one guide walked back down - one of the guys was really affected by the altitude; he was vomiting on the way down! We got some beautiful views of the town and surrounding villages as we descended below the clouds at sunset.

After a lovely dinner and a comfortable - and more importantly dry nights sleep - we were up at 3am to re-hike up to base camp and the top of the volcano. We weren't planning to make it up there for sunrise, I just wanted to be at the summit before it clouded over and we couldn't see anything. We made better time without all our heavy gear, and we watched the sunrise about halfway up - beautiful views out over the surrounding country side! We were at base camp at 7am - right as the rest of the group headed down from the sunrise! It took us a bit more time to get to the summit as Brittany was struggling with the altitude but we made it up there and there was still plenty to see as the clouds started to come over. It was amazing to be up above the clouds once again! Such a great feeling - makes all the pain worth it! Brittany was really struggling with the altitude and the rest of the group was waiting for us to descend the mountain so we didn't spend too long at the top but had time for a quick breakfast at base camp before heading back down the volcano by a different route. It was a brilliant trip - and I'm glad that I made the call to evacuate the mountain because we got some extra walking and different views in - plus a comfortable night sleep!

After getting back to the office at 4pm, I had to hustle for the football final - Xela was playing in the final and Tito had managed to buy me a ticket! I got in no problems by 5:30 pm, the stadium was full and it was still three hours until game time! The other students had been in the stadium since 2:30pm - poor things! It was an amazing experience seeing the fireworks going off and the flares, with the crowds singing their chants. Xela was up 1-0 which was fun, but they died in the ass and ultimately it was a draw which was a bit of a bummer. At the end of the game my phone was stolen which was even more of a bummer! But still it had been a pretty amazing few days.....