Volcano Santa Marta

Well someone had the good idea that getting up at 12:30 am to hike to the top of the 2nd highest peak in CA would be a the right thing to do. Normally this would be true as when clear the views take in a whole chain of volcano system, even looking down onto Volcan Santaguito. This is in the top 10 most active volcanoes in the world and erupts every 30 mins on average. However once we finally made it up and out, 15 mins to the start of the hike and started trekking things started to go wrong.

First thing was the guide didnt notice that the token Jap in the group fell behind. We had been told that there would be two guides and all assumed that he was the 2nd one due to giant size of his pack. This was not true. The poor guy started struggling right away and by the 2nd rest stop he was no where to be seen. The guide noticed about 2 hours later and started frantically looking for him! He turned up on the way down and had been sitting at the start of the trek all night. Bit unfortunate but he should have called to alert someone in the group that he was struggling.

Second was the weather. lashing it down and very foggy. hard 4 hour climb up with a stop for 45 min in the middle while the guide looked for the Jap. hannah almost didnt make it as 2/3 of the way up here legs gave way and took a bit of gentle boy bullying to get her up. Gareth, the most unprepared boy in the world. decided that even though he didnt have a waterproof or most other gear he was still going to get up a 3772m peak in ther rainy season. He was beginning to go into mild hypothermia near the top so hannah and i managed to get him into the rest of our dry gear. Luckily it stopped raining at the top but it could have been quite nasty. Pretty cold for us all at the top but rather that than have to try to carry him down.

The view at the top was very Scottish in feeling, that is you could see about 10m and the wind was howling. Even with the stops and delays we managed to get up before dawn and had to sit there for 45min waiting/hoping to see the sun. No such luck. So started the trudge back down.

Very dissapointed but been up enough hills to learn that you take your chance. Especially in the rainy season! The hike was hard which i quite enjoyed. Now off to some hot spring to bath our tired limbs.

Off back to Atlian tomorrow then Antigua in preperation of coming home....Yayyy

Chris