Irish couple escape from volcano as Guatemalan hiking trip becomes unforgettable adventure

An Irish couple has told of escaping an erupting volcano after their Guatemalan mountain trek turned into an emergency evacuation. Fiona Leahy (32) and James O’Connor (34) were at a hikers’ camp just 2km away from the crater of the Fuego volcano when the late-night drama began. “The sound was like the loudest thunder you’ve ever heard, times 10,” O’Connor said of the roar that filled the air as the volcano erupted. “The cabins were shaking.”The pair watched with a group of 30 other hikers as fountains of lava shot 300m into the air before cascading down the mountainside. READ MORE“There were huge clouds of black smoke. That was the biggest danger – if it moved in our direction and we had to breathe that,” said Leahy. “If the lava started a forest fire – as has happened before on the mountain – it would be even more dangerous.” Their guide told them they had to leave but it was too dangerous in the dark and they should wait for first light. “He told us to get some sleep. It had been a long trip up the mountain and it was at a high altitude so it was exhausting but of course nobody went to sleep,” O’Connor said. “It was an incredible spectacle to watch and quite exciting but also very scary.”The eruption of the Fuego volcano in Guatemala, as captured by Fiona Leahy and James O'Connor on their hiking holiday At 3am, it became clear they could wait and watch no longer and their guide issued the order to evacuate. For Leahy, a “hobby hiker” whose torch battery had run out, the five-hour descent with a roaring volcano behind and complete darkness ahead was a real test of nerves. Halfway down, they got phone service and Leahy made an urgent call to her uncle, Stephen McNutt, who happens to be a professor of volcano seismology at the University of South Florida. “It came in handy. Not everyone has a volcanologist on speed dial,” she said. “I asked him if he knew what was happening and were we going to be okay. “He was able to check his resources and came back and said it looked like mild explosions, which was pretty funny to us. He said: ‘Enjoy the show!’” McNutt’s assessment that they looked to be out of harm’s way was reassuring but it was only when they were fully off the mountain, 30 hours after they first began their trek, that they allowed relief to sweep over them. “Once we made it down and nobody was hurt, it’s a great story. Up to that point, it’s scary,” O’Connor said. Fuego has been restless since a deadly eruption in 2018 killed more than 200 people and left another 200 missing.But it remains popular with adventurous hikers in the Sierra Madre mountain range who approach it from its twin peak, Acatenango, itself a dormant volcano. Leahy, who is originally from California and works for a travel company, and O’Connor, a software engineer, live between New York and Dún Laoghaire and planned the trip to celebrate O’Connor’s 34th birthday before coming back to Ireland for the autumn. “We’re a luxury travel company so backpacking is the polar opposite of what we do,” Leahy laughed.[ ‘There’s no water any more’: How palm oil plantations drained a Guatemalan rainforest communityOpens in new window ]She said the experience would not put her off attempting something similar in future but she would not take it lightly either. “I think about what happened in New Zealand,” she said of the 2019 White Island eruption that killed 24 hikers. “We have a great story at the end of it but I’m very aware that adventure travel carries risks so you have to be sensible about it too.”