Thanksgiving and Pacaya

Sorry I didn't get a post up last night. I woke up Thanksgiving morning with tummy trouble and felt awful again last night. We spent Thanksgiving hanging around the house and playing. I had a couple of hours of feeling good and then would go take a nap. We did pull out the parachute for a while and played with it outside. Here is a shot of us having fun with it.


Jenny made a fantastic dinner, but I could only eat a little. You know I am not feeling well when I turn down her double layer pumpkin pie (which is usually the highlight of my Thanksgiving meal). Here is a picture of her with the turkey.

It was an early night for all of us because we knew we would be getting up early to hike Pacaya today if I was feeling better.

This moring I woke up feeling better, so we were up at 5am to catch the 6am shuttle to Pacaya. Being Guatemala, the 6am shuttle picked us up at 6:25. It is about an hour drive to Pacaya. When we got there, we bought a horse for Christopher and Caroline to ride. Luis wanted nothing to do with the horses. Here is a picture of the view when walking up the mountain next to Pacaya. After about a 30 minute walk the scene transforms from a tree lined road to lava flow desolation. Here is what you walk cross to approach Pacaya. After crossing the cooled lava, you had to go on foot the rest of he way becase it was too steep for the horses. In addition, the wind was blowing hard and getting small lava bits and ash in our eyes. That is where it got really tough. About three quarters of the way up from there, Caroline was so terrified that she and Jenny stopped. Christopher was ahead of us so Luis and I continued up. After a tough climb we came to the hot lava. Here is a picture of the hot lava. The trip down was less demanding, but treacherous. It is like walking on sand at a 35 degree incline, any step can cause you to go sliding down on your rump (which I did several times). Luis, on the other hand, thought that was fun and wanted to go faster. Here is a picture of all five of us.

The kids fell asleep on the bus ride back and we spent the rest of the day quietly at the house. We ordered pizza for the kids and I made up for not having an appetite last night by eating a bunch of leftovers, including the double layer pumpkin pie I had missed the night before. With the early start today, we are turning in early again tonight.