Day 50 - Marko Round The World

Day 50 12/15/2021

Odometer 29, 520 —– 0 Miles (6830 Miles Total)

Antigua, Guatemala

The bus was supposed to pick me up at the office where I booked the tour at 8-8:30am. I packed my stuff up at 6am and went out looking for breakfast. The tour company was going to let me leave my stuff at their office overnight with the bike so I didn’t have to pay for a hostel. Score! I got some breakfast which came with a complimentary coffee and when I asked for milk they charged me 4 Q’s which is about .75 cents. Rolling my eyes here. Some places are weird.

I got to the office way too early and organized all my stuff in my backpack. The tour company packs us lunch and breakfast that we had to carry. They also gave us three liters of water and I brought another liter myself. They said it was going to be freezing up top and very windy so I was hoping my clothes would suffice. I didn’t want to rent any of theirs. I locked the bike up in their office and hopped on the bus when it got to us. I started walking back a few isles and found one next to a girl. She makes eye contact and yells HEY! I give her a funny look and sit down next to her. I’m looking at her and she’s like you don’t remember me huh? I said no I don’t. She said she knows me but doesn’t know where we met. I said Flores? Bingo. She was the girl I met at the hostel bar a week ago with the girl Maja from Israel. What a small world. I couldn’t believe it. I’m loving seeing people I met a few days or weeks ago on my travels it’s such a fun feeling. We took the bus a few minutes away to get all the gear they had for us. All I took from them was gloves and I prayed I would be warm in all my clothes. They already had tents set up on top for us with sleeping bags and all the good stuff.

Everyone had such huge bags and here I was with my little Patagonia backpack and my DSLR. I was super anxious to start this hike since I haven’t been on one in a while and I was freaking out a bit about my knee on the way back down.

So the tour was to hike up Volcano Acatenango and if the weather was good and we got up there soon enough we could pay the guides an extra $200 Q’s to take us to Fuego. 6 Hours of hiking to base camp with another 3 hour round trip hike to Fuego… it sounded tough. I love it, sign me up. The next morning we would hike up to the top of Volcano Acatenango and get some sunrise shots with Fuego erupting. Sounds pretty magical.

We made it to the camp in 4 or 5 hours I can’t remember. I tracked the hike on my Garmin but I forgot to hit start after a few breaks we took for the group so it was off. It was quite the scenery. It was pretty warm at the bottom with insane views of mountains in the distance and slowly it all got wet and turned into a thick jungle. The dirt was wet the whole way up and slippery. There was thick fog pretty much the whole way up. The jungle slowly turned into a pine forest with the elevation. We started our hike at 7500′ I believe and the basecamp was at 11,890′. We all rolled into basecamp and there were three people from the last trip waiting up there because they couldn’t see anything with the clouds. They really wanted to see the volcano erupting. We all got pointed to our tents and I shared mine with Loren that I sat next to on the bus. We all went out to the campfire which wasn’t a relief at all from the cold. They barely put any wood on the fire and it was so smokey we were all nearly crying from the amount of smoke in our lungs and eyes. Every picture of us at the fire was with our eyes closed. The guides made us a few cups of thick Guatemalan hot chocolate which they put a little cinnamon in it and shit it was the best hot chocolate I ever had in my life. We all hung out there chatting, getting smoked out for about 1-2 hours. I thought I heard thunder every now and then but it turned out to be Fuego erupting. I didnt even think about the noise it would make. It was so loud and terrifying.

Suddenly the clouds started to get very thin and we could see Fuego in the distance with a thick layer of clouds around it. A few minutes later all the clouds burned off with everyone cheering and yelling with joy! We got to watch the sunset with Fuego erupting about every 15-20 minutes. We saw some HUGE explosions and the thunder from it miles away was frightening. I need to google how volcanoes work because it’s just insane. As it got very dark out and everyone took hundreds of pictures of the sunset the guides offered to take people to Fuego. It was completely dark and now they wanted to go? I ran right over throwing my money in their hands. I was still wearing my shorts from the climb up so I ran right to my tent and threw my Smartwool thermals on with another shirt under my jacket. I got my camera ready with the tripod, water, rescue beacon, extra socks and I ran right back to the fire. Two other guys wanted to go. Jasper and Adam that I met last night.

I asked the guide how long the hike is and he said 1:30. I asked him again how fast it would be with a fast climber and he replied with 1:15. I said let’s go buddy! Jasper was keeping up and Adam was gone behind us with the other guide since they were slower. We did a 1k’ descent on loose sand between trees. When we got to the bottom we stripped down since we were gonna be sweating. The clouds rolled in about this point. All this effort for nothing. I hoped the clouds would burn off again. We started uphill and we pushed and pushed really hard. I gave the guide and Jasper my water since they had none and we were all dying. We got to the top of the false summit which was as far as we were allowed to go and there were a bunch of people there waiting for eruptions. As soon as we showed up an eruption went off, you could hear the thunder and you could feel the mountain shaking like an earthquake. Humbling. It was probably 35 degrees with 70 mph winds and they were steady with gusts a bit stronger. We sat there for about 15 minutes and when the other group left the guides said let’s go up more. WHATTTT.

So we walked up another 5-10 minutes to the plateau where we could clearly see the volcano top. The winds were blowing so hard and we were freezing just sitting there not moving. We sat down on the edge of the plateau behind some bushes to block us from the wind and the waiting game started. The clouds were in and out for about 20 minutes and then suddenly it cleared! We waited and waited for an eruption. We were all right there just waiting for it to put on a good show but not too big so we wouldn’t die. While we were waiting a group of 5-6 people went even farther than we did and as they were walking back one of them fell with the winds and got hurt we assume. They were on the ground for about 5 minutes. The sound of their clothes flapping in the wind was insane. It sounded like people were skydiving right next to us.

About 1 hour passed and nothing happened. I couldn’t believe it. This thing explodes every 20 minutes and now nothing with us right here. As we were about to leave a small eruption went off and you could see lava flying out of the center running down the side of the volcano. Ill take it. We started the walk back. Me and Gerson split off from the group and literally ran down the hill. He was concerned about my knee because I told him about it when we left camp. I told him rapido!!! We took out our flashlights along with our headlamps and went full sprint 1000′ down Fuego. Gerson is in insane shape doing this everyday for his job and he was having a fucking blast with me running down this thing full speed. He said no one has ever done this with him in as long as he’s been doing tours. He was so pumped up and it put a smile on my face. We didn’t even eat it once which was awesome. We got to the bottom of the descent and stripped down for the climb. I think for the first time in Gersons life he was about to collapse. You could just see the way he was climbing that he was exhausted and had nothing left to give. Hell, I felt the same way. This guy was 46 and he was ripping. I couldn’t start slacking off. I loved every second of it. It was windy as hell and raining on and off. Our shoes and socks were filled with dirt sand and rocks from the descent and ascent.

We got to base camp and I collapsed on a log next to the campfire. Everyone already ate dinner so the other guides were getting dinner ready for us now. It took me a few minutes to catch my breath and I walked to my tent to get my pasta. They were going to be covered with meat sauce. We did all of this at 12k feet. I’ve never pushed myself at this altitude that hard before. Especially on limited sleep and limited food with the wrong clothing. I drank a cup of red wine, hot chocolate, shoved my pasta down my throat with my bread and the smoke was destroying my face from the campfire. Loren was still awake as mostly everyone else went to bed already while we were on the hike. Gerson told her that was the fastest time anyones ever got to Fuego from Base Camp. We set a god damn record by a long shot. We cut the normal time down more than half! We’re idiots. We’re paying for it now. Gerson said he wanted to take a picture with me and post it in the office with my new nickname “rapidos” Haha I loved it! But I am dead now. The other guides started asking me a ton of questions which I didn’t understand. I just told them i’m from New York, my names Marko but they can call me Rapidos! They were all laughing! It was nice to impress these guys that do this for a living. These little things make me happy. Pushing myself to my limits and challenging people as an athlete themselves we are both faster and pushing it. I didn’t want to beat the guy, I just wanted to push him which in return would push me. We would both hit limits we might have never hit before. I love when people are faster than me. It’s such good motivation to be faster, stronger and push harder.

I crawled my way back to bed, shivering and freezing cold. My body shuts down when I push it that hard. I start to get hot and cold sweats and I literally won’t stop shaking for hours. It started as soon as I got to bed. I don’t even think I was cold, I was just in shock from that hard push. I taught everyone at camp the trick about camping in the cold. Take their bottle of water, boil the water, let it cool off a bit and then put it back in the bottle. An hour before you go to bed you throw the bottle in the bottom of your sleeping bag so when you crawl into bed it’ll be nice and warm. Your feet which usually get cold in a sleeping bag will be nice and toasty. It’s like having a little dog at the bottom of your bag. Loren took my advice and did that trick so she was nice and cozy. I went to bed and I was so uncomfortable I didn’t sleep a minute the whole night. I said i’m not doing the sunrise hike to the top of the volcano we were camping on. I pushed myself too hard today and it was pretty extreme with not much food in me. Time to put the ego aside and step away from the next hike planned. Nothing to prove. I need to take care of my body and thank it for where it has taken me today.

On my walk to getting breakfast before the hike started. Now I know where they get the fresh milk from at the cafes.