 A rich country with fascinating Mayan culture, the colorful colonial city of Antigua with its Spanish colonial buildings, cobblestone streets and notable architecture. There is so much beauty and culture in this country, but I am here specifically to cross a unique adventure off of my bucket list, hiking a volcano. But not any volcano, this is an actual active volcano. The land of volcanoes, this is what Guatemala is known for, it's home to 37 volcanoes with 3 of them being active, Pekaya, Fuego and Santiago, and hopefully today we get to witness an active eruption of Volcan Fuego on our trek up the famous Acatenango. Hiking Acatenango is a pretty popular activity in Guatemala for adventure travelers especially with its proximity to the city of Antigua, where you can find a bunch of companies to join for this adventure. We started the day with meeting at the company's office, there they offer us breakfast and gear rental. Every piece of gear that you can think about including shoes, jackets, backpacks, water bottles, trekking poles and more. After a briefing on what to expect during this 2 day hike, we were off to start our epic adventure. Acatenango is no joke, this is the strenuous hike that will certainly kick your butt. There are 3 challenges with this hike, elevation gain, high altitude sickness and water. This is the strenuous climb with an elevation gain of 5000 feet throughout this hike. It goes up and up with no reprieve, training beforehand for this climb will make your time on the mountain a whole lot more pleasant. Acatenango stands at an elevation of 13,045 feet. At this elevation, the human body can start experiencing symptoms of high altitude sickness. The higher we go up in elevation, the less oxygen there is in the air for our bodies to consume. So that can introduce symptoms like headaches, nausea, dizziness. The golden rule is to travel and acclimatize in Antigua at least 24 hours before your climb. Drinking enough water, avoiding alcohol consumption and smoking to avoid getting dehydrated and some painkillers can also come in handy. Hey buddy! There is no reliable water source on the volcano, you are required to pack at least 4 liters of water to drink on the way up, on the way down and for one dinner and one breakfast. This makes the weight of your backpack pretty heavy. So make sure to pack light and only take gear that you absolutely need. I can feel my heart beat in my throat, it's really steep, now forgiving. On this trek we hike through four different zones, farmlands, cloud forest, high alpine forest and the volcanic zone. We've been climbing for a while now through the foresty area. This reminds me a lot of the jungle forest up on Mount Kilimanjaro, it's so beautiful and lush green. The only difference is there aren't many animals that live and thrive in here because it's too cold on the mountain. So no monkeys as you would expect but instead a lot of birds and some wild turkey. We just stopped for our lunch break and boy it didn't flatten out the whole way up except for the last section to get to this area right here. I'm excited for lunch. Let me show you what we have. We've got some mashed potatoes and falafel and there's another container right here. This is probably some rice and beans and I don't know what this is. All of the meals are vegan so this is definitely not ground beef but probably a vegan version of ground beef. I am so pressured by time right now because if I want to go for the sunset hike I have to get to base camp at 4.30 and I am dragging my feet. My pace is really slow and this heavy backpack is not making it any easier but I'm just trying to push as much as I can. I really would love to go for the sunset hike so fingers crossed. It's gotten so foggy and still going up although this section of the trail kind of winds down and then you climb up a little bit a bit more manageable but the fog though it's rolling. Two camps finally took a while thank you. Right as we made our way to base camp the sky started clearing up and we were welcomed by incredible views of the volcano erupting right before our eyes. It's hard to describe the magnitude of the eruptions and the novelty of standing right there and watching an active volcano, watching smoke, the ash and the rocks tumbling down the mountain, it was epic. After taking all that in we started our sunset hike to get close to Volcan Fuego, the volcano of fire for an up close experience and views that will take your breath away. Good morning it's the second day on the mountain and it's very pleasant outside I'm still waiting for the mountain to clear up a little bit so that I can get a last sneak peek before we leave today we're going to start heading down and make it back to Antigua but before we do that I want to show you the accommodation for tonight which was probably the best camping or glamping I have done and I'm going to show you around camp as well. Let's go. Many tour operators on the mountain they carry the tents actually they have the hikers carry their tents and bedrolls sleeping bags and things like that with an option to hire porters. The company that I chose they have a different type of accommodation they have cabins on the mountain and you can choose between either a private cabin for up to two people or you can choose shared cabin I think their capacity is eight people at maximum and they are pretty comfortable they have thick bedrolls and they have a comfortable sleeping bed and it just made the experience a lot more pleasant I love the convenience that comes with being able to rent the trekking poles because if you are traveling you can't have the trekking poles in your carry-on you have to check your bag and that's not something that I wanted to do so this company was able to rent us not only trekking poles but they even rent jackets and gloves and scarves and shoes it's very convenient especially for people who are traveling or backpacking for a long period of time and you can't really just log your hiking gear all over the place I think that it was a good idea I honestly can't believe that we climbed all of this yesterday it is so steep