Tuesday October
5th was Volcano Day!! We woke up at 5am to hopped on some old school
“Blue Bird” bus, you know the kind that you used to take back in the day when
you went to elementary school, the ones with no leg room and very high seats so
you don’t fly over them in case of an accident. Interesting fact that I learned a few days ago that those very same
buses are made here in Guatemala and then sent to America for our children to
use only to get sent back here to Guatemala when they are of no use to us any
more…funny how things always go back to where they come from.
Anyways…we all hopped on the bus, all 60 some
of us and went off to the mountains which can be quite scary on a school bus
that was donated back because it was retired by Americans. It was probably only 40 some miles away but
because of road conditions and the roads being so curvy it took us about 1.5
hours and when we arrived or what we thought was arrival, it was only a place
for tourists to stop by and buy some marshmallows and/or some sticks to roast
some marshmallows over the lava and walking sticks. So of course, We Americans can’t resist to
get suckered into buying things that we could make ourselves and so I bought a
bag of marshmallows to share with the group and a stick was complementary with
the bag…what a deal.
So we loaded back up in the hot bus and headed
on a bit longer. When we finally arrived
we were greeted by children trying to sell us sticks and trying to sell us a
ride to the top of the volcano on horse back ride. Some of the people in our Squad took up the
offer and spent the 100 quetzalez, (the Guatemalan money, which was about 12
american dollars). I will have to admit
that the hike to the top was a bit grueling at a few points, we had hiked for
about an hour and 15 mins or so before we reached where we needed to go. Once we reached the location, which wasn’t
quite the top but certainly was a cool view, the guides let us go to explore
and showed us some areas to be cautious of an other areas where we could roast
our mallows over holes that didn’t have lava directly under it but certainly
were hot enough to roast the marshmallow in no time flat. After spending an
hour up on the volcano it was time to head back down and hop back on the bus
and head back. It was a glorious day of spending time together as a Squad
before we took off the next day for our new ministry locations.
