Tajumulco

We have returned safely from our biggest adventure yet - climbing the highest mountain in Central America. An extinct volcano called Tajumulco, at 4220m.

Our adventure started at 4.30 on Saturday morning, when we met with the other trekkers at Casa Argentina, a youth hostel nearby that also houses Quetzaltrekkers - the trekking organisation I´ve mentioned here before. At about 5am, our pickup arrived. On hearing the word pick up, I pictured a minibus of some description, to take all 15 of us to our destination. I was wrong. An open backed pick up truck arrived, and 15 of us, plus 15 overloaded backpacks were stuffed in the back. It´s yet another of those things that would be utterly illegal in the UK, yet you see here all the time. It was freezing cold, but fortunately I was in the centre of the huddle of people, hanging on for dear life, and listening to the sound of the exhaust system dragging along the cobbled streets.

20 minutes later we were spat out at Minerva bus station. My guidebook says that this isn´t a place to hang around at night, and it wasn´t much better at half five in the morning either. There were groups of people standing around fires made out of litter, much like you see on american post-apocalyptic television programmes, However, these people were our bus drivers (apart from the one with the pump action shot gun - I don´t know who he was).

At about 6 we climbed onto the chicken bus (luggage on the roof) and set off for the mountains. We stopped to change to another chicken bus about an hour and a half later, and then began to climb in earnest. This bus was even older than most of the others, and chugged along at about 10mph for the entire 2 hour journey, spewing out enormous clouds of black smoke as it did so. After about an hour and a half, the road ended, and was replaced by a rough dirt track, with pot holes that had the bus kiltering from side to side. The driver carried on regardless, whilst subjecting his passengers to bizarre 1920´s accordion music at full volume. A bizarre spectacle. Finally we dismounted, feeling rather nauseous for several reasons.

We started to climb at about 11am, and I was horrified at how bad I was. Either I have become extrordinarily unfit, or the altitude was having a terrible effect on me. I could only climb about 20 paces before having to stop and let my heart return to normal, and to stop panting. So it was for the 6 hour climb and scramble to our base camp, with a worsening headache and a growing unease that I might not be able to complete this.

We set up camp (3800m), and the trekking guides kindly cooked our meal, whilst I slumped by the fire, feeling increasingly ill - continually checking with others at what point altitude sickness becomes dangerous (it{s when you start coughing up pink bloody frothy stuff from your lungs, if anyone´s interested!). Credit also to the people who managed to get a fire going with only about 1% oxygen in the air! Fortunately I wasn´t alone - about half of the group had some symptoms of altitude sickness.

Without my backpack, I was able to drag myself up a lower peak (4000m) to watch the sun set. Apparently it´s a good plan to go up to a higher altitude to the one you intend to sleep at, in order to acclimatise better. We watched the sun set over a sea of clouds a long, long way below us.

I climbed into my 2 sleeping bags and every item of clothing I own at about 8pm, with the bright light of the moon shining through the tent. We slept fitfully, some of us shivvering in our too-thin sleeping bags (but not T and I!) until 4am, when our guides woke us up. The plan was to climb Tajumulco in the dark and get to the top in time for the sunrise. I I have never climbed a mountain in the dark before, and this was a pretty tough climb. I had acclimatised overnight, and didn´t have a headache anymore, which was wonderful! Still, the thin air meant that it was a pretty slow going affair. It struck me that had I been climbing the mountain in the daylight, I may have been quite scared by being able to see the cliffs to my right hand side, or the difficulty of the climb ahead. The illumination of only the ground immediately in front of me by my torch meant that all I could think about was exactly what was going on at that particular moment. It wasn´t really possible to worry about what was ahead.

There´s a lesson for life in there somewhere.

We all managed to heave ourselves up onto the top of the mountain by 6am, and gathered on the east side to watch the sun rise. I realised once again why it is that people climb mountians. There is something so completely indescribable about the beauty and the magic. We watched the sun rise over the santa maria mountain range, turned north to look to the mountains of Mexico, and just as we were about to descend, we saw the active volcano Santaguita erupt an enormous cloud of ash high into the sky!

We descended by walking around the arrete rim of the crater, which was really exciting, and then in no time at all we were back at our base camp for a fabulous breakfast.

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A lovely man at this internet cafe has downloaded my photos from the camera to a CD, I´m just one step (finding a computer with a CD ROM drive) away from uploading some photos!