Yesterday I climbed a volcano! Who'd have ever thought that I would do something as active as climb a mountain of my own volition? Not me, thats for sure. But I figured that I'm surrounded by volcanos right now and if I didn't see one up close I'd regret it. I almost regretted it anyways actually, the first 15 minutes of the climb was so incredibly steep. Arturo, our guide, was awesome though. There were 5 of us and him, and we hiked about an hour and a half through a rain foresty area up to the edge of a bowl filled with lava, and the cone of the volcano looming above us. I thought that was good enough and it was worth the sweating to get up there to see it, then Arturo says "hey, lets go down closer!" So we did, we all slid down the rocky incline to the bottom where most of the surface was hardened lava that we could walk on, but parts of it were also slow-moving rivers of lava that we poked sticks into. It was too cool! Well not literally, heat waves were making the other side of the bowl shimmer and it was HOT just standing there. On the way down the mountain again Arturo and I got to talking, since he only spoke a little bit of English, and none of the other people on the hike spoke any spanish at all it was natural that we should start talking. And we didnt'shut up the whole way down. My first real Guatemalan friend! Woo! Oh, on a completely different note, I explored the ruins of a convent here in Antigua the other day. If you've ever played the computer game MYST, that's exactly how it felt in there. You hardly ever ran into other people, and there were all kinds of little nooks and crannies to be checked out. I felt like I should have been looking for clues and taking notes. Even the bird calls that are still strange to me seemed like they would be leading me to something.... :) Tomorrow I'm off to Panajachel, on el Lago Atitlan. Later--->Natalie