Mount Acatenango

During the first days of walking around Antigua I found a tour operator that offered, what seemed an amazing trip. Hiking up an inactive volcano, which is 3976m high, camping at 3900m and sumitting again for sunrise. The vulcano is called Acatenango and has a slightly smaller, but very active volcano right next to it, so that one can see an active volcano with lots of lava and smoke from the above at night. That just sounded amazing and I signed up for the trip. I was told that the trip was tough because of the altitude but not technically demanding. That all sounded good to me.

On Friday afternoon we had a pretrip meeting at the tour operators place. The group seemed really cool. All outdoors people from all over the world. A group of 7 tourists and one american guide. We distributed food and camping equipment to all the bags and went through the exact timing for the next day. It was gonna be 8 hours of hiking, then setting camp, dinner and sumitting for sunset and the stars. Awesome. After the meeting I met up with an canadian guy from the group for dinner and some drinks. I had a huge portion of nachos, trying to carbo-load for ther next day.

When I got up at 5 o`clock the next moring to get ready for the hike, I was feeling quite nauseous. I blamed the nachos for it and thought that it would blow over soon. We left with the mini-bus to get to the mountain at 6.30 and got there at 8.00. On the way we had to pick up two armed policemen, that would ccompany us throughout the hike. That was a safety measure that only this operator uses, as there have been incidents on the mountain before. When we started the hike, I was still feeling quite nauseous, but decided that that lumb of fat in my stomach would have to be digested soon. The first hour of the hike I felt ok, but the next two hours I was degenerating fast. People were starting to take weight off my bag, but I just got worse. I started shivering, while hiking, got blury vision and my legs were just jelly. At a stop I talked to the guide and asked whether we could make a plan to get me down the mountain. The shuttle to pick me up was not the issue but how I would get down was the problem, because I would need police protection and the two policemen were not allowed to split up. After about 10phone calls and a lot of discussioon the plan was made that the group would head on without protection and the policemen would walk me up to a point, where the danger would be minimal and then return upwards to join up with the group again. Of course this involved some hard cash, but I was feeling so bad by then, I would have paid as much as I had. Yet I did feel bit bad letting the group hike up without protection. Nevertheless, the policemen escorted me down the mountain for a about 30 min and then next 40min I walked on my own. There was one scary moment when a guy carring about 50kg of wood, a machettie and a huge axe started appoaching me fast from the top. But then he turned out to be the kindest person. I told him that I was feeling sick and so he accompanied me all the way to the place, where the shuttle would pick me up. Three minutes after I got to the pickup point, the manager from the tour operator and his girlfriend came in a car to pick me up. We got to the tour operators place, which also has a hostel 1 hour later and I went to lie down in bed immediately. I was feeling real rough. Fever, pain, weakness and the like.

About 20min later there was a phone call to the tour operators. The word was, that there was an attack. I was immediately starting to feel very bad. After many phone calls, lots of police and lots of excitedment, the story unfolded as follows:

About 1 hour after the two policemen had dropped me off, they were attacked in the woods. One of them was shot in the head, the other one seemed to be able to escape. The one that escaped called the police station and told them what happened and that the reason they were attacked was so that the banditos could seperate the group from the police and that the banditos were now after the group. The police called the tour operator, who then immideately called the guide of the group. The group was ordered to go and hide out in the bushes until further instruction. The tour operators manager worked out a plan with the police how they could get them out. Sending police up was not an option, as that would expose the group to more danger as the police would lead the banditos to the group. Finally it was decided that the group should take a path, that was not much taken, but the ghuide knew and that route would lead them down the mountain a completely different way. The group started running on that path, giving updates every 15 min. After about 2 hours of lots of tension, we got the word that they met the police and were on their way home. We were all tremendously relieved.

I welcomed back the group about an hour later and apologised to everyone that I had put them into so much danger. They were just saying that they were happy to see me alive and that maybe I had saved their lives, as the banditos might have come after the whole group, if the policemen and I hadn`t gone down.

It still does give me some issues to think that someone had to die, because he was protecting me. By getting security guards, am I saying that my live is worth more then theirs?
Should I have acted differently?

Well, by getting policemen to protect you, one should expect that they are trained to see danger and act acordingly. So one is not trading lives really, but saying that no one will get hurt with policemen around. But that does not seem to be the case here...

Should I not have gone on the hike? I was feeling nauseous and was completly convinced that it was from the food the night before. Yet, if was put in the same situation again now, knowing what dangers there really are on the mountain, I would not do it again. Given the situation and my knowledge at the time though I think my decision was fair, as I have started on hikes often before not feeling 100% and by the end I had not regretted it.

Well, as you can see, I have been thinking...

Today, one day after the incident I`m still not feeling great. My stomach doen`t like me, I have a fever and I just feel crap. But I am feeling much better that yesterday already.

A few nice words to end off. The 3 hours of hiking up were very nice, we were going through farmland, cloud forest and were about to reach the alpine forest before getting into the volcanic rock zone. Sad, that tours like this though such amazing places can be spoiled by stupid acts of violence.