Livingston... First few days

Ok, I thought Id just try getting in a quick update before I leave for Livingston.
On Thursday I hiked Vulcan Pacaya with a few other guys, there were only five of us and the rest of the bus was filled with another group, this meant an hour and a half on a bus with 7... Ex-Israeli army. They insisted on singing military songs the whole way there (we can’t understand hebru so guess they were military songs, if not then Israeli music is crap), I had the head phones in but someone said that some of the songs heavily featured the word Arab.
Anyway, when we got there we were immediately accosted by children waving sticks saying "you buy stick mr? Mr... You buy stick for 5 quetzal".
We met our guide and began to walk upwards. I finally gave in to the stick wielding children and bought one off a little boy for 2Q. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a normal stick, they were pretty long and robust so you could use them to help you on the steeper parts. I know that Ali had a picture in her head of a group of children waving twigs around.
As it turns out it was quite helpful on some of the steeper parts, maybe not as helpful as it would have been to have my hands free but helpful none the less. We were walking up through dense forest which after walking for about 45 minutes just ended suddenly and opened up into an empty landscape. The ground sloped up on the left and down on the right and was completely baron. It comprised mainly of black sand with the occasional black rocky outcrop, after struggling across the uneven and shifting terrain for a while we reached the top of one of the outcrops and the guide shouted "Miren, miren fuego" we looked where he was pointing and saw some rocks moving on the side of a peak about 300m away. The ground was rippling for a bit then a few orange rocks emerged and tumbled down the slope, these were followed by a few more and after the hill side was spattered with glowing cinders, lava began to pour out of the hole left by the rocks. We moved on and the land slowly transformed from a black desert with occasional rocks, to a craggy mountain side with occasional bouts of sandiness. When we got within 50m of the flow we had to start climbing across really rough stone which, from the shape, was obviously cooled lava from relatively recent eruptions. The rocks were extremely brittle and I saw a few of the Israeli guys put a foot wrong and fall as the rock broke under them, serves them right for singing the whole way. Luckily they had learnt their lessons by the time we got closer to the lava, so don’t worry no one got melted to death. We got pretty close but it was uncomfortable to stand closer than about 5m away and even that was damn hot. As we got closer we began to notice occasional holes in the rocks through which you could see an orange glow, or even flowing lava. I stood watching the flow while the others roasted marshmallows over the flow, I didn’t have any due to the whole vegetarian thing but after explaining this to the guide he took my stick off me and went over to the flow, he dipped it in and took it back out with a wad of cooling lava on the end, he quickly turned the stick so that none came off and it eventually solidified enough to stay on. He brought it back open then held it up to his mouth, I guess he was implying it was the veggie alternative. "He then mentioned that it was 2000 degrees centigrade.
We stood round watching for longer and all of a sudden I heard a cracking sound, you could hear quieter cracking sounds constantly, but this was loud. I looked down and there were cracks in the, what was a solid rock I was standing on. The cracks were glowing orange and the stone around them began to turn white, it got very hot very quickly and I jumped over to the nearest non luminous rock.
I left out the part where the heavens opened and it started to throw it down. I rained extremely heavily but luckily with it being so hot we dried off a few minutes after the rain started. It was strange, the rain would evaporate as soon as it hit the ground causing a kind of sauna effect. Also the rain couldn’t even touch most of the lava, it bounced of the cooler black bits but it vaporised before it even got to the orange and red parts. Sometimes the wind was so hot it was hard to cope with, the wind was blowing directly across the lava, meaning it got superheated just before reaching us.
The sun began to go down and our guide recommended we head off because the volcano is dangerous to descend at night.
The way down was far easier as there were less upward slopes, however the sun had gone down when we were half way down the sun had fully set so it was dark. I have pretty good night sight so I could see where I was going fine, I decided not to use the torch because you can only see a tiny area in front of you then. This strategy was working fine, unfortunately a large number of the Israeli guys, being military types who wanted to show off, had put on their high powered head torches straight away, which was fine until they got interested in what was going on behind them, every 5 seconds they would turn round and shine an LED lamp right in my face. I kept one eye closed so, when they lost interest and stopped looking round so much, I could still see, not quite as well though.
When we reached the bottom the kids were back energetically shouting "stick for me", it seems that the 2Q was only a rental fee. They persisted so much that I gave up and handed it over to some little girl, like I wanted to keep some scorched up stick anyway.
There was a bar at the bottom selling drinks, crisps and sweets. When the kids were sure there were no more sticks to be had they went and stowed the somewhere then began to pretend rummaging through bins to con sweets out of people.
Anyway, in case you haven’t guessed, I didn’t finish writing this in time and am therefore sat in the volunteer dormitory type thing at Ak’Tenamit as I write this. The trip across Guatemala was pretty crappy for several reasons but let’s not concentrate on that right now because it would take to long to do that much complaining.
Before I get onto the whole description of my arrival thing, just in case you're wondering about the severe lack of new photos, it's cos apparently 2 zip lock bags, a camera case and a water proof hold are not enough apparently to protect a camera from water. I have had my camera drying out for over a week now but it's still not working so I'll have to head over to Puerto barrios at some point to have it send back via UPS.
Anyway I arrived at the place last night but unfortunately they weren’t expecting me. I had emailed the woman who is the volunteer organiser a while back asking if it was possible for an extra week in Antigua to do more Spanish classes. I got no reply so didn’t risk it, but apparently she assumed I would take it so didn’t reply. Also she wasn’t at the site, she was in Antigua of all places so she wasn’t here to "organise me".
So I’m here with no bed, I’m having to use her room while she is in the city because they haven’t "made" mine yet. I do have a job now however but it's really hard cos the people here speak so much more quietly than people in Antigua, and there accent is different. The foods good though, last night was beans and tortillas, this morning was beans and tortillas, for lunch we had a nice change of rice... Beans and tortillas, and now I’m off for some beans and tortillas.
I'll update you again soon

Later

P.S this post has been delayed again due to the serious lack of electricity at the project, and that internet cafes don’t seem to like me using my PDA, Ill put details in the next post.