In 1943 a farmer here in the small town of San Juan was tending to his crop like
normal farmers do, and then in between his corn, a 2 meter crack opened up when
he was working. Shortly after... plumes of sulfur smelling
smoke started erupting out of this crack. He ran to town and told everybody what
happened. Later that night, that crack opened and started spewing tons and tons
of sulfurous ash, and buried the town.
Fast forward 60 years and the town looks like this.
Completely covered in volcanic rock. All that's left, is the Church of San Juan...
just the tower, and everything else it's buried
under meters and meters of jagged black stone. This is the story of Volcan Paricutin
and the city of swallowed.
Take a peek here, is Volcan Paricutin, and this all used to be the city of San Juan
Here's the church tower, and at one point people used to sit in here and
worship this altar. All of this was a city, now it is all buried under this
jagged black volcanic rock. It is unbelievable.
Someone showed me a photo of this church at a party here couple months ago
in Mexico, and I could not believe it was real. It looked like something out of a
medieval video game or a movie set... but people used to live here.
This used to be a town, not even that long ago. 60 years ago people were living
here, they had no idea the hell that was going to rain down on their small little town
So here we are walking through the lava field,
there's a crack and actually what's incredible is that the church's altar is
still right here. Oh my god. Wow. You can see you can see how high the
lava actually went. Josh is down there at the bottom, you can see look, it's higher
than me right now. Up here way higher. It goes all the
way down deep deep deep deep deep and there's Josh.This is crazy man I can't...
I can't believe this place - I don't know I'm speechless Speechless as well
This town of Sun Juan had 5,000 people, and you think when a volcano explodes
and eats a whole town that people would die, but nobody died. Isn't that kind of
weird? The eruption itself was very very strange. So it was a crack in the ground,
we talked about that already, and smoke and plumes came out but no fire for two
years only tons and tons and tons of ash. The entire city was covered in ash and it
gave people lots of time to evacuate. After those two years the fire started.
And the lava wave erupted out of the actual volcano but was only moving about 4 feet,
about a meter an hour... for 8 years. so even if you're slow runner...
even to your turtle, or a grasshopper, you can outrun one meter an hour. So it gave
plenty of time for people to get out of the city itself
but it was slowly over the course of eight years swallowed by a giant wall of burning hot lava.
You can see pieces and shards of the church still scattered on
top of the rocks. Here you can see the main entrance to the church and here are the two
towers. Well, one tower, the other one has fallen. This town was established in 16
something-something, so a long time ago, and this is one of the Spanish churches
here that the conquistadors made. This tower was knocked down, not by the volcano itself
but the aftershocks after the eruption. Apparently the earthquakes were
so strong, people were getting knocked off their feet, and that destroyed a lot
of the old architecture. Most of the houses were wood, they can handle
earthquakes just fine... the lava not so much. So the church withstood
the lava, mostly, well some of it. The houses.... when houses versus lava....
doesn't work very well so that's why there's only this building left. This is the only
stone building left in the city. Earthquakes rattled it to its core and
the rest burned because it was made of wood from the lava wave that was coming,
slowly, but it was still coming.
Oh man! It looks like there's a basement.
This is incredible how high this wall of lava was
There is definitely a hole through the basement
Dude! It's really deep!
Look at that! - What is that??
A doorway to another room?
Let me turn up the camera settings here. Alright. Wow. So, it's like an altar?
Cody said it was a room, Cody didn't have a flashlight apparently. - Yeah you're right, that's why he couldn't see this.
This is incredible
We were looking at the church and someone had signed their name on the side of one of the towers,
so that means you can get up. We've got a guide here we rented and he said yes it's possible to get up
and so we're going to find the place to hopefully get on one of the towers
How insane is that! The drone footage is going to be nuts.
What do you think Cody? - Cody you're like right there man.
I saw that the rock is broken right here so instead of climbing
up and over it, you just climb straight up. So I think this might be the way right here.
You think you can do it Mike? - I might need boost.
- That's what I was thinking, I could probably do it if I had a boost, too.
Dude, I know. My legs are shaking.
So Cody and I are traveling light. I just brought my cell phone and my drone.
Cody's got just his camera. We left our backpacks, because this building was
built in 1600 something. It is almost 500 years old and it is
crumbling, and there's no sign saying don't climb, but we chose to. But even us
adventurous types were a little bit jittery about it. If you come here please, I don't want that on my hands. Be safe ok?
Mike thank you for those drone shots. You did amazing work!
This puts the peg and the very toughest drone shoot I have done in my life. We are on super sketchy
collapsed roofs of churches it's going to rain soon, the battery was dead but
we got some super sick stuff man. - Look at you're like sitting on the edge of the thing!
- Don't even remind me! - Alright let's get down it's about to rain
- I did it! - Ankles good? - Ankles were good!
oh you're so much better than I am - He's got the long limbs - You're good dude - We did it!
Very very very dangerous
The adventure's not over yet ladies and gentlemen!
We are halfway up Volcan Paracutin, walking on basically fish gravel
We're almost at the volcanic crater. From the top we'll be able to see the entirety of Mexico!
oh no....
I fell over
This is what destroyed the city of San Juan
They say it's dormant but there's still a lot of heat underground
The amount of steam coming off of this mountain is quite incredible
I put the camera on the ground, and immediately it completely steams up. There's so much steam coming off the
ground right now. This is the little glass dome to guard the gimbal com... Ahh!
It's so hot! 'veI got to get my electronics off the ground it is this extremely hot
I just burnt my knee.
Hey Yo guys! We just finished an...
So......
The battery died on the microphone. We recorded the super dope outro, the three
of us, and it did not work. That's not important, what is important is that I
can make another one now, and then you check out Josh and Cody two awesome
dudes who do exploring videos. It was our second time Mexico we did some other
cool things in Mexico City and we decided to go to the Volcano Church.
It was definitely worth to visit! My room is complete mess, we just got back from
Spain recording some really crazy stuff there I made a video about a baby jumping festival
Have you seen that yet? It was absolutely insane.
So if you haven't, make sure to check that out too.
One of the most fun parts about the volcano was going back down,
So I'll leave you with that clip at the very end.
Experiences over Possessions.
Kick the Grind
I'll catch you guys next video. Peace!