It's been a while since my last volcano hike, so when Iana mentioned a potential day-hike of a nearby volcano I quickly agreed. Volcán Paracutín is a very interesting volcano, as it is only twice as old as I am. I actually remembered reading a book about it when I was younger - basically a farmer was plowing his field in 1943 when his plow disappeared into a hole in the ground. Soon ash / lava started spitting out, and over the course of a 9 year eruption, volcán paracutín was formed, demolishing two nearby towns. As I learned on my hike, miraculously none of the 5000 inhabitants were killed by the eruption because it was gradual enough that they had plenty of warning to escape.
After receiving some ridiculous misinformation from someone at the tourism office no less (he told us to go to the wrong town and that our 7 hour hike would take 2 hours), we figured out the correct plan and made our way to the appropriate bus stop. There we used our Sherlock-Holmes-like powers of deduction to detect a fellow tourist (Danielle) based on the following (extremely subtle) clues
1) she was the only other gringo at the bus stop
2) she seemed just as confused as we were about which bus to take
3) she was holding a "Lonely Planet: Mexico" guide
brilliant deduction, eh?
It turns out that Danielle was also trying to hike the mountain, so she joined us for the trip. We ended up taking a taxi there because it was so cheap: the three of us paid a total of 80 pesos ($6) for the 40 minute ride - you could barely get 10 blocks for that in DC! While in the taxid, our driver tried extremely hard to convince us to rent horses for the trek ("no, I think we just want to walk - I don't like horses." "Ok, but my friend will give you a really good deal - only 1000 pesos instead of 1300." etc etc).
Finally we convinced him we didn't want to rent horses, although he did get us to rent a guide. (A good thing, too - the paths weren't marked well at all, so we would have had a much harder time without a guide. Quick aside: our cab driver told us we could get a kid to guide us for much less than an adult, but that the adult would be better because he could tell us more of the history of the volcano etc. Our guide didn't talk much, and we had a bit of trouble communicating much with him, even in Spanish. When we finished the hike we ended up taking the same taxi back, and I asked the driver why our guide wasn't very communicative, and he told us that the guy was mentally handicapped. It kind of nullified his argument that an older guide would be more helpful / communicative, but for the sake of not risking being kicked out of the cab, I decided not to call him out on it.
The hike itself was tough work. The mountain was pretty far away, and we had to pick our way over a lava field, which was very slow goinng as you had to carefully place each foot. Once we got to the volcano the going got even tougher, as the loose rocks and sand resulted in us slipping back a step for every 2 we took. We finally made it to the top, quickly enjoyed the view, then got the heck out of there, as we could see lightning in the distance, and didn't really feel like being the absolutely tallest point for miles and miles.
After the difficult time we had getting up, we were very pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get down. Our guide took us to a very sandy trail (just by showing us this he was well worth the money), and we were basically able to jump/slide down the mountain. What took us 45 min or so to get up took about 8 to get down. We then hiked along for several miles until we got to the ruins of the San Juan church - basically the only thing left standing after the eruption. We then made it back to town, and Danielle made our day while letting us use her shower before zipping off to the bus stop to catch the night bus to Guanajuato. (Thanks again, Danielle!). I'm still not sick of volcanao climbing - can't wait until I get to Guatemala and climb a couple more!
pictures below, enjoy!
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me and Iana with the volcano in the distance. We had to cross the huge lava field behind us just to get to it. And we'd had to hike quite a ways just to get here. Of the 7 hours we spent hiking, I think only about an hour was actually on the mountain!
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fact: jumping down a mountain is much more fun than just hiking down
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the trail I left as I tore down the sandy slope
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at the base of the mountain after successfully summiting and descending
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me at the ruins of the San Juan church. This was the only building left standing - pretty cool
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