Volcan Acatenango

So i'll just go through how my weekend went from start to finish:
7:00- Wake up, have breakfast at my homestay, check my bag that everything is packed.
8:00- Billy comes over and we head out to meet the other people were going with, Jacob, Evan, Lizzy an Lily
8:30- Everyone meets up and we head behind the market to try to find a bus to La Soledad (Solitude), the pueblo near the trailhead. Are first offer came from a guy with a pick up truck who offered to take us there for 300Q (~$35) but we had heard that there was a bus that went to San MIguel, a pueblo near Soledad. The truck driver said it was another 30 km but he didnt seem very trust worthy. We then found the Chicken Bus that was going to San Miguel and decided to take it, luckily it was not very crowded. The bus driver said that La Soledad was only another 3km past San Miguel.
9:20- We get to San Miguel, the bus costed 3Q (35 cents) and we asked around and the locals said if we walked down to the bridge there are usually pick up trucks going to La Soledad that you can hitch rides from. Some of the locals told us it was 6km, and some told us it was 13km, we didnt really know what to believe.
10:00- After getting to the bridge we tried to flag down maybe 10 or 15 trucks but none of them stopped. We were starting to get anxious and so Billy went down the road to try to find a number of a taxi. Right as he went down the road he stopped to talk to a truck driver and the driver offered to take us to La Soledad for 10Q each. We hopped into the back of his pick up truck, trying not to squash the vegetables he was taking to the pueblo and set off. 13km was probably around the most accurate estimate we got for the distance, and it was about a 20 or 30 minute ride on a gravel road in the back of the pick up
10:45- The truck driver stops and shows us where the trail head is for Acatenango, we pay him and thank him and he drives off.
11- We have started heading up the trail and we start to see the beginning of why they say Acatenango is so hard, the trail started on a sort of ravine between corn fields where we were walking through volcanic ash. Making every 2 steps we took slide half a step back. After maybe 30 minutes we saw a sign for turning of this path to go to the summit. We went there a walked through some more cornfields before passing a little straw hut on our right. This was when we started to go into the forest. After about 30 minutes more we came to the first of 5 "Descansos" (a rest stop kinda place). It was better than what we expected to be on the volcano, with a little wood shelter and some benches.
12- We kept on walking up and up through the forest. It was constant switch backs and I would say the slope never was less than around a 30 degree angle.
1:30- We stopped for lunch at one of the Descansos and kept on heading up. We met 2 people coming down who said it was around 2 or 3 hours more. I think it was around then that we started heading up into the clouds. We started to only be able to see about 30 ft. around us and thats when things started to get worse. It started getting a little windy and a few drops of rain fell. We got a little higher and no more rain fell, it started HAILING. Little bee bee size balls of hail started falling for around 20 minutes. After that it was windy with a few on and off drizzles.
4- With the conditions still not being that great we finally came out of the tree line. This, however, did not mean we were very close to the top. We still had about an hour or an hour and a half of steep hiking up switch backs up the ridge, in the clouds, with strong winds. It was pretty intense but we finally got to what we later found out to be the first false peak. We didnt really know at the time because we could only see around 5 or 10 feet around us. The false peak was all volcanic rock and gravel so we decided to just stop and set up camp because we didnt want to walk in circles on the rock because there was no real path.
5:30- Freezing, in the clouds, and in the rain we ran around trying to set up the tent and get our packs under the tarp. Before the weather me, billy, and jacob, had been planning on sleeping on or under a tarp we brang but it was a unanimous decision that we all should just pile into the tent that lily, lizzy, and evan brought. It was a 2 person tent that ended up having 6 people in it all night. It took us about 20 minutes to set up the tent and then we all piled in and shared are body warmth.
All Night- I think the most anyone slept during the night was 1 or 2 hours and it was a small smelly oddly warm tent. It was warm because of the people but if you sat up in the tent you would just get wafts of horrible smelling wet or damp clothes, sweaty bodies, and the general dirtiness that comes from a day of hard hiking.
5am- Me, BIlly, and Jacob ended up getting up around 5 to try to see the sunrise. It was clear around summit but there were still lots of clouds which made it not that great of a sunrise. It was really cool though because we were above a huge layer of clouds and were able to see the points of other volcanoes and mountains, like Agua. I have some pictures that I will post at the end.
6-Billy and Jacob decided to go to the real summit, about 150 meters higher, and about a 1 hours hike up the steep gravely sides. The rest of us decided to stay and rest a little bit more, we decided the view was not gona be that much better and we could kind of see that Fuego, the volcano behind the actual Summit (a very active volcano) was not really erupting. The went there and back in about 1.5 hours and we broke camp, ate breakfast, and readied ourselves for the descent.
8-We started going down which was very cool because it was clear so we could really see what we had done the day before. We were impressed by what we had accomplished. Going down went very quickly, we were able to jog/run down the switch backs kind of like a slalom. So parts that took us 1.5 hours before took us 30 minutes. The descent was very beautiful because it was so clear and we stopped in many places to see the view. It ended up taking us around 2.5 hours for us to get down the volcano, as opposed to the 6 hours it had taken to go up.
10:30- Earlier in the morning at the top of the volcano Jacob had talked to the guatemalans who were up there as well and they had said that there was a bus back to antigua at 11. So we walked down the road at the bottom of the trailheads and asked some locals about the bus. They said we just had to wait on the road we were on and a bus would come heading to Chimaltenango and if we got of at Parredos, there were buses every 5 minutes to Antigua.
11:15- The bus came a little late but we got on and it was very crowded, like the stereo typical chicken buses. I had to stand right near the driver because I couldnt even get down the aisle. The guy on the bus ripped us off and made us pay 7Q instead of 3Q which is what I had seen the locals pay. But even so, thats still less than a dollar. The chicken buses are ridiculous because they pick so many people up and theres a guy at the door that will just kind of shove the person on, and as soon as his feet are off the ground he jumps on and shouts "dale" and off the bus goes again. Then there were people who had big bags of vegetables or firewood and the guy at the door would jump off and take it and climb/throw the bag on the top of the bus. To do this he has to climb the back of the bus, and one time, the guy was on the back of the bus and he just shouted "dale" and the bus went and then when the bus slowed for a speed bump he just jumped off and ran back up to the door and got on. The bus didnt even have to stop. It is a surprisingly efficient method of travel. We got back to Antigua around 12:15 and I went back took a nice long shower and have been relaxing the rest of the day.

That pretty much sums up my trip to Acatenango, which to say the least was a real adventure. I'm not sure when i'll post next but here are some pictures.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=104809&id=516009306&l=525bb938ad
and the descent-http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=104827&id=516009306&l=0a9194382a