We have been going out for a few days with Antigua as our base camp.
The volcanoes around Antigua are relatively active. Among them, Fuego Volcano has been emitting heavy smoke, and more than 100 people died in the eruption last year. It takes two days to go back and forth to see it. We don’t have enough time, and we think it is relatively easy to go to the Pacaya Volcano.
Pacaya Volcano is a composite active volcano located in Guatemala, tens of kilometers east of Antigua. After a century of dormancy, it resumed continuous activity in 1965. The most recent eruptions occurred in 2010 and 2014. Two people were killed and many others were injured in landslides caused by the eruption.
We parked the car in Antigua.
Join a local tour group in Antigua, depart at 2:00 pm and return at 8:00 pm. The drive is more than an hour on one side.
After getting off the bus, you need to walk seven kilometers back and forth.
People with poor physical strength can ride horses, but no one in our group rides.
After the last volcanic eruption, lava flowed here. The guide jokingly said: Pacaya Volcano erupts every four years now, the last time was 2014, so it should be this year after all, everyone laughed out loud.
We climbed more than 500 meters to reach the viewing platform at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters. When we first went up, the viewing platform was covered with thick fog and we could not see anything. We were very disappointed.
Unexpectedly, after a while, the thick fog slowly dispersed.
In the clouds and mist, I saw a faint red line.
After a while, Pacaya Volcano revealed its true colors, which delighted us.
And accompanied by the sound of “boom boom”, blood-red volcanic lava slowly flowed down from the crater.
I remember that the last time I saw an active volcano was at the Nyiragongo Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. This is the second time I saw volcanic lava flowing down from the crater.
crater
The fiery karst is visible from directly above the crater
As the sky darkened, the karst became more apparent.
The crater is still erupting from time to time
It is precisely because of the many volcanoes in Antigua that the coffee produced here is one of the top coffees in the world.
Because Guatemala is located at a high altitude and surrounded by many volcanoes, these volcanic soils are beneficial to the growth of coffee beans.
We took a coffee tour here. I just didn’t expect that, except for us, there were no other tourists participating, and this group became a VIP group, serving only us. If a domestic travel agency had only a few tourists, it would have to be cancelled. And the three staff members are very enthusiastic, one is a staff member and driver, one is a translator, and the other is a guide.
The guide first explained in Spanish, then translated into English by the translator, and finally translated into Chinese by teammate Xia Jing. So a sentence has to go through three people before I can understand it.
The guide gave us a demonstration of planting coffee saplings
The coffee garden we visited has thousands of coffee trees, and the distance between each tree is 2 meters.
Coffee Trees Bloom First (Photos of Blossoms)
Then the result. Wait for the fruit to turn deep red before picking it.
Another variety of coffee tree has yellow fruit.
we picked a few
After peeling off, there are two seeds with a light and sweet taste.
The fruit needs to be dried after picking. Some are machine-dried for a few hours, while they are naturally dried for fifteen years. Dried coffee beans have a shell on the outer layer (Picture 1). After peeling off the shell (Picture 2), bake it in a container for eight minutes. When you hear the crackling sound, a paste aroma emerges. That’s about it. The roasted coffee beans are oily black (Figure 4) and ground into powder with a blender.
Bake for eight minutes
roasted coffee beans
grind to powder
Then soak it in 90-degree boiling water for a few minutes
After filtering out the grounds, a cup of fragrant coffee comes out. It tastes good after adding sugar.
Behind the coffee garden are other crops grown.
It’s also volcanic ash as soil
