Alrighty, this one's going to be a short snippet with inspiration from Anthony Bourdain's book "A Cook's Tour." Even though I was in the most beautiful lake on earth I couldn't help but keep reading this mans book. And because of this, I'm going to try writing this blog in a similar fashion to how he did. So, without further ado, here goes:
A cigarette and some shared scotch.
Vat 69 was the name of the 45 Quetzal (~$5) scotch I picked up in the biggest supermarket in Antigua. That, along with a few other essentials; 4 litres of water, fiber one bars (a heinous mistake), and some sour gummy worms. We we're preparing for what would soon be known as the hike to fuego or in my loosely translated, not even related translation: "The hike from hell." This shit sucked man.
Soon enough, our group of 25 loaded up into a packed, strangely damp smelling van and headed out of Antigua to the trailhead of the infamous Acetanango hike. This 6hr, ~4 mile, 2k foot elevation gain hike was in my head going to be light work, i've hiked dozens of times before how much harder can this be? So, with the confidence of an idiot I started the journey with a shared cigarette between me and my new friend, KP (a british man from Manchester). And so it began...
After about 3 hours was when I knew I fucked up. My asthma from elementary school came back kicking asking me why in the hell would I think smoking a cigarette then hiking 2000ft up at already 14K feet in altitude was a great idea. Thankfully, one of the nice belgians we were hiking with also had an inhaler and gave me a much needed hit. With the renewed energy about halfway through i rucked up what was remaining of the snacks/water I brought earlier and continued the ascent.
After what felt like years (5-6hrs) we finally made it to the top where I pulled out that much needed $5 scotch and passed it around to my fellow survivors, that and another shared cigarette... why not? Time for sleep....
BOOM! Fuck! Something in Spanish! "Ah what the fuck, I was just dozing off." Turns out it was rainy season in Guatemala and the Spanish girls we were hiking with learned that quickly. As we all packed into our cabin like sardines, I had maybe 2 feet wide and 6 feet long of space to get what can't be counted as sleep. Besides the point, turns out the cabin wasn't too well built and my next door sleeping mates got drenched by the torrent of rain. Luckily, we had an extra bed and scooted over to now what was about 1.5ft of space each /: Again, off to sleep.
"Hola chicos" was equivalent to angels voices as I shot up out of bed finally after tossing and turning all night, knowing that this meant it was time to summit the peak. At 4AM in the morning we were woken up to witness a beautiful sunrise... to our luck of course it was too cloudy to see anything. Peep the pics below. Either way, I was just glad to get out of that hell hole of a sardine can.