When I woke up this morning to go climb a volcano in El Salvador, I didn't expect I would do it with a West Bromwich Albion supporter and a Leeds United supporter, and I certainly didn't think I would enjoy a ride back towards San Salvador afterwards in an antiquated yellow American school bus, with half a bus load of Salvadoraño college students half my age flirting outrageously with me in front of their teachers. It's funny how some days turn out.
I set off from El Salvador's capital just after 6AM to climb the volcano. My preparations were scant. I was wearing trousers that were still wet from getting caught in the afternoon Central American rain the previous day. I didn't even know the name of the volcano I was going to climb. There are two volcanoes out in the Cerro Verde where I was going: Volcan Izalco and Volcan Santa Ana, but since I was doing my volcano hike on the cheap and not through an organised tour, an Internet search had indicated I would have to climb whichever one there were other people also wanting to climb that day.
As it was, that Volcano turned out to be Volcan Izalco. After about a two hour journey on various buses out from San Salvador, I begun to hike down through the jungle towards the volcano, along with two armed guards, a couple of local guides, a Baggies supporter called David from Birmingham, his friend Martin from Leeds and about 40 noisy students of the Escuela de Capacitación Adventista Salvadoreña.
It took about 3.5 hours from start to finish, and almost everyone made it to the top to look into the steaming crater, except some overweight ECAS students that dropped like flies early on, and the armed guards that only hiked down as far as the bottom of the Volcan to make sure none of us got robbed during the jungle descent. It certainly wasn't the hard climb that my Internet search had suggested. Some of the ECAS students were wearing flipflops.
- '¿De donde es usted?' one of the female students asked me soon after we started the hike. Where are you from?
- '¿Que paises esta visitando?' another of the female students asked me soon after. What countries are you visiting?
- '¿Que paises esta visitando?' another of the female students asked me soon after. What countries are you visiting?
- '¿Tienen mucho peso, tus zapatos?' another female student asked. Are your boots heavy?
A little, I thought to myself as we started to scurry up the side of the volcano over lava scree, but I would still rather be wearing my hiking boots than your flipflops.
It was good to meet a couple of Brits after a few weeks trying to avoid all English speakers like the plague in San Pedro. It was even better when one of the ECAS teachers asked if we wanted a lift back towards San Salvador when we had finished climbing the volcano; some of the students I had chatted to on the hike had seen Martin, David and I waiting for our bus and took pity on the extranjeros.
I was the only one that took them up on the offer, as Martin and David were going in the opposite direction, back to their hotel in Santa Ana. I was the only one that had an almost celebrity-like status on the yellow school bus back to San Salvador.
I was the only one that took them up on the offer, as Martin and David were going in the opposite direction, back to their hotel in Santa Ana. I was the only one that had an almost celebrity-like status on the yellow school bus back to San Salvador.
- '¿Puedes tomar un foto contigo?' one of the female students asked when we stopped at a vantage point over Lago Coatapelque. Followed by about five other students also wanting their photo taken with me, whilst the shyer students instead took surreptitious photos of me as their teacher took a photo of me.
