I’ve gone cage diving with Great White sharks, ballooning at the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, walked with lions in South Africa, and gone jogging in Death Valley California during a balmy 55C/131F morning. All exhilarating adventures that provided an adrenalin rush and a story to tell. But of all the more or less precarious things I’ve done so far, climbing up and down from the ridge of  “Volcan de Pacaya” was definitely among the most treacherous.

I remember it being unbelievably steep and that there were no marked paths or signs after ascending from the tiny village below the mountain. But it wasn’t so much the walking on hot, edgy, razor-sharp lava rocks or, jumping over narrow streams of lava, which was not easy for a novice volcano climber like me. Instead, it was the gentle rumblings from within the volcano’s opening just a few hundred meters above that gave me the heebie-jeebies. What if there was an eruption while we were up there?