My whore amigo, Evan and Volcan Pacaya.

I woke up this Friday morning to the greatest surprise ever. My best friend, Evan (or mi mejor amigo in Spanish...or my whore amigo when pronounced the wrong way) surprised me by booking a last minute plane ticket to Guatemala for his Spring Break. He booked his flight at midnight and arrived in Guatemala City at noon. I was so shocked and so ecstatic all at once, I couldn´t get the smile off my face. I booked it to the city and picked him up. We didn´t waste any time and over the past couple of days have had some wonderful memories in this beautiful country that will last a lifetime. I´m thinking he loves it just as much as I do and it feels nice to have someone else who totally gets why I love it here.

For all of Silvia´s hospitality and providing a room last minute for Evan, we decided to help cook a typical Guatemalan meal for her. So, Saturday morning we spent the morning in the Antiguan market buying food and flowers. The meat market never ceases to amaze me. It is quite disgusting and walking through the fish market was the worst. I couldn´t stand the smell, so I started breathing through my mouth. That only made it worse because then I could taste the danky fish and my efforts to avoid the smell after that were merely holding my breath and breathing as little as possible. I´m sure my face was priceless. On the other hand, it was so cool to go through a market like the one here in Antigua. It´s very similar to the farmer´s markets I went to in San Francisco last summer, but there are ten times more people and more food. Is it weird to say it was beautiful? I mean beautiful isn´t the best way to describe meat carcasses, but that is the only word that comes to mind.




After our big feast of carne asada and guacamole, I decided the first event of our journey together should be to hike Volcan Pacaya at sunset. It is an active volcano about an hour away from Antigua and which I have one of the best memories of during my previous visits here. I really wanted Evan to experience the same rush and excitement I felt when I first hiked this volcano in 2008. It is an experience like no other and almost impossible to describe the mix of emotions you feel during the hike. You feel small when surrounded by mountains of lava rock and a never ending view of mountains and volcanos, and then you feel huge when you´re standing on the edge, taking in the scenery and the quietness and the sound of flowing lava. It´s peaceful, it´s exciting, it´s wicked.