The second weekend of being here in Xela we decided to climb the local volcano known as Santa Maria. We woke up at 4:30 am to prepare for the hike. Santa Maria fortunately is no longer active however, Santiaguito (the volcano behind Santa Maria) is alive and well erupting daily with ash and rock. We got a taxi out to the base of the volcano and so the story begins. Dustin has climbed Santa Maria numerous times however, that was four years ago and the terrain has changed slightly. We got ourselves a little bit lost but with the help of some locals (who climb the volcano in jelly sandles with babies and wood strapped to their back in no time flat) we eventually made it to the correct path. The climb took us about 3 hours with the aforementioned native guatemalans passing us at annoyingly fast speeds. The altitude was hard to adjust to but we made it to the top. What a beautiful sight and well worth the hours of muddy, steep climbing. I would like to say that we descended and went on to have a productive day however, the fact is that we arrived home, ate, and fell smooth asleep.
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