Climbing Acatenango was the single most hardest thing I have EVER had to do! This volcano is out of control! First we drove an hour from Antigua to get to the base of the volcano. Friday night we had a lot of rain which pretty much means landslides in Guatemala. On our way to the volcano we road of some REALLY small roads there was not even meant for cars because they were so narrow. Also, at one point we had to stop because there were people clearing the roads from a landslide. They weren't letting people go through because the roads were blocked. Our guide got out of the car and paid the guy to let us through. HA. Once we started to climb I was regretting my decision to go up. We had packs with our food and tents in them. There are about three different levels to the volcano. The first one being vegetation, the second jungle and the third one pine trees. It was awesome to hike from one level to the next as it seemed like we were in a completly different areas/country at each one. It also hard because of the amount of oxygen we didn't have! Once we got to about half way it started to rain and it was about lunch time. We ate lunch and by that time we decided to just camp there and climb the rest in the morning. Our tents had lots of little holes and places where water seeped in. We also didn't have bottom tarps to put under out tents to we pretty much had water coming in from the top and the bottom. lol. I slept in a tent with my good friend Miriam, who is from tennessee. We had some good laughs and out of control giggles as we tried to patch our holes with plastic bags. In the middle of the night we woke up because it seemed like we were having Agatha 2 coming back for another visit. Luckily we managed to patch all the holes so we didn't have any water problems in the middle of the night...but because the rain, the thunder and the lightening was so intense we didn't get any sleep. Instead we imagined escape roots off of the volcano, talked about what our friends in Antigua might be doing, and talked about why the heck we decided to climb a volcano during rainy season. lol. Our guides said that we would get up at 3:45 in the morning to keep going up the volcano. At 4:00 am we got a knock on our tent telling us to go back to bed because the rain was so bad and that it was not safe to keep climbing. Once we climbed all the way down the next morning we drove back to Antigua and went straight to a hotel that had a hot tub and a jacuzzi. It was wonderful to just sit and enjoy doing nothing. I am still so sore from climbing a VERY high at altitude.

Today I went to a bull "fight". We took a bus to San Antonio and waited in the pouring rain for a bull fight. To try and describe it, imagine a 10 foot high, not very stable wooden fence covered in people! Around this fence were lots and lots of people too. After one hour the bulls finally came out and there were people standing on the inside of the fence waiting to get hit or knocked over by the bull. The majority of the people had way too much to drink and were falling all over the place. It was entertaining to watch piles of people rush to the side of the fence every time the bull came near them! I'm was really surprised that the fence didn't fall over because there were so many people of it and people jumping on it once the bull came near them. Going to the bull fight it was also my first time riding a chicken bus. HA. There were so many people in the bus! It was out of control! At least 4 people to each bench and then stakes of people standing in the aisle.