Day 51

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

Antigua, Guatemala

A miserable night for sure it was. The alarm clocks went off at 3:45am to hike to the top of Acatenango to see the sunrise. When we heard it was too cloudy for the hike I was so relieved I wouldn’t be missing it. I laid right back down in bed feeling like death from last night’s shenanigans. Loren got out of her sleeping bag at about 6:30 to get some food and everyone was eating. I probably looked like I was dead. My feet were hanging out of the tent door, I was laying on my sleeping bag fully clothed looking like I was unconscious. The guides came over to me after me laying there for an hour offering breakfast and I declined. The third time Gerson came by and asked me if I was ok. I told him I had a headache. He popped out a white round pill and gave it to me. 45 minutes later we were all packing up to leave and start heading down. It was still cold and cloudy. I was thrilled to get back down to a lower elevation. I don’t know what killed me up there but I’m assuming it was the dehydration and lack of food. I’d be surprised if it was the altitude because I’ve spent so much time up there at work and been on mountains hiking a lot before I never got that. I’m praying it wasn’t the altitude but I’ll find out when I get to Peru and Chile when I have to sleep on mountains at 15,000- 16,000′.

We all started to climb down. I changed into my shorts and t-shirt since it was getting warm from walking. The guides said it was a 2.5 hour walk down. I was just waiting for my knee to start throbbing with sharp pain once we got done with the traverse and started to descend. We started a steep descent and minute by minute nothing hurt yet. I couldn’t believe it. I drank a bunch of water and started to be myself again. I felt alive. I was warm, my head stopped hurting and I wasn’t nauseous anymore. I was very happy. We had a nice walk down in the wet dirt which no one slipped on. We got down to the break area where we bought some orange juice and snacks. We took a group photo and waited for the bus to come. Once we heard the bus was coming we finished the 15 minute walk down. I saw one of the guides carrying a bunch of gear so I walked up behind him and grabbed a few bags out of his hands and started walking. He told me to give it back to him and I said nope I have two free hands so this is mine now. Obviously with hand gestures and smiles because I still can’t speak Spanish. He was pretty happy. We got down and I took my picture with Gerson.

We all jumped on the bus thrilled to be back to reality and warm. We went back to the supply house and dropped off all the gear we rented and got some smoothies from the tour company. We all jumped on the bus and headed back to Antigua to get dropped off at our hostels. I grabbed my bike from the office, loaded it up and rode down a few blocks to my new hostel. I checked in, dropped off some laundry and ran out for some food since I haven’t eaten much lately. Loren that I met on the bus mentioned there was a salsa class at Las Palmas at 7:15 so a few of us were planning on going there. God damn it I need to let my body rest but I need to work on my dancing skills which are non existent. I got a nice big lunch and worked on the blog for a bit. I got myself a nice 1 hour long massage right after eating lunch. I washed my Linen shirt in the sink at the hostel hoping it would dry in 2 hours for the dancing. I went out looking for another battery to buy for my Canon camera because it started to die on the mountain and I didnt want to deal with low battery issues on another big picture perfect moment but I couldn’t find any stores with Canon original batteries.

I went back to the hostel and went up on the roof. I didn’t even know but you can clearly see Fuego so close from the roof and there were some wild cloud formations around it. I took a few pictures and boom it erupted! What a nice surprise! I threw on my bathing suit shorts since that’s all I had left along with my linen shirt and off I went to Las Palmas to embarrass myself.  I caught Jasper on the walk, Loren showed up a minute later, along with a few more people from the tour and some other people from the salsa class the night before. 2 Pisco sours later and I loosened up for sure. We were crushing the class having a great time. Francesco the Italian who loves his phone was recording everyone the whole time and not working on his salsa! We all danced for about 45 minutes and we had a blast.

We got hungry so a few of us left to get some food. We stopped at a pizza place the girls wanted to get food at since they had a special. 1 Pizza with 5 beers. Perfect since there’s 5 of us and two of us didn’t drink beer so someone got extra beers. Francesco and I got into an argument about pizza. He’s from Naples where pizza was invented. I told him when he comes back to New York in the summer I’m taking him to the best pizza joint ever. Paulie Gees in Greenpoint. He put up a good fight and was very skeptical but I showed him some pictures and I could see the wheels spinning in his head. We all headed back to the salsa club. The girl I met at the tea place two nights ago was there and I said hi. She said I owed her a dance. This girl was tearing it up and she didn’t know how bad I was about to embarrass us both. Luckily for me she wasn’t there when I got back. Ximena is from Peru and we met her at the last salsa class and she was at this one as well. She grabbed me and pulled me into the dance floor. If any of my ex girlfriends saw this happen these girls would have murdered her on the spot. The amount of fights I’ve gotten into with them because I didn’t want to dance with them was one too many. And now here I am. I gotta say I blended in pretty well with the crowd, she taught me some spinning moves, I didn’t stop on her feet. She even lied to me and told me I had rhythm and didn’t believe it was my first time doing this. Hah

She boosted me up. I’m gonna try to add salsa classes to my list and do 2 a week for the rest of my trip along with Spanish lessons. Maybe at the end of this trip ill be able to dance and speak some Spanish. We had a great night and danced for a while. Everyone had a blast. It was getting late and the bars and everything was closing down so we all said our goodbyes, split up and went to bed. It was a nice group and I’m bummed that most of them were leaving in the morning. I got back to my hostel, climbed up to my bunk bed about 15′ high and passed out so fast.

Sunset with Fuego and some wild clouds i got to see from the hostel im at.

Some more

We took a break on the way down from the hike. I made a new friend and he was my pillow. This puppy hiked up and down with us.

Me starting to feel like im alive again on the hike down!

Us walking down from Acatenango.

Starting the walk back down in the morning.