Climbing Acatenango — camping with a view of the lava

The trail out of La Soledad does not ease you in. From the trailhead above Antigua, at around 2,400 metres, the path tilts upward through maize terraces and does not relent, climbing loose volcanic soil that gives half a step back for every one you take. You pass from farmland into cloud forest, the air cooling and thinning, and then onto the open cinder cone where the final hour is a slog through ash the colour of gunpowder. Most people take five or six hours to reach camp, and everyone arrives quieter than they started. The high camp sits on Acatenango's flank, near 3,600 metres, tents pegged to a ridge that faces directly across a saddle to Fuego. You settle in through the afternoon, watching cloud pour through the gap, and wait for dark. The temperature drops hard once the sun is gone; your breath fogs, and the ground surrenders its warmth almost at once. Then Fuego performs. Every twenty minutes or so, often sooner, the neighbouring cone clears its throat — a deep concussion you feel in the chest before you hear it — and throws a fountain of incandescent rock into the night. By day it reads as grey smoke. After dark it is a seam of orange spilling down the slope, close enough to make out the shape of each eruption, far enough to stay theatre rather than threat. You will lose track of how long you sit out in the cold, watching it. Those with the legs leave camp around four in the morning for the summit of Acatenango itself, near 3,976 metres, to stand above the cloud as the sky greys and Fuego smokes below. The descent is fast and punishing on the knees, dropping back through the forest to La Soledad by late morning. It is a hard two days, and the altitude is genuine, but few things on the list return so much for so modest an outlay.