"It won't erupt," guides told former Dannevirke man Donald Snook as he snapped photos of Fuego volcano in Guatemala last month.
Snook, a conservationist who now lives in Auckland, was on a six-country expedition through Central America when he went "birding" on an adjacent volcano.
![The Fuego volcano in Guatemala just a couple of weeks before erupting, sending molten ash and lava down its slopes.](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/BCAJ3VC2V24QZZK4PSREA2QXTI.jpg?auth=acbccd96c0be4d494705a9866e1a7c6a193bd451c4fc385c208e84f1e42b3cda&width=16&height=11&quality=70&smart=true)
"I took this photo of Fuego from another mountain one morning when we were photographing birds," he said.
"It was strange as there was a huge boom after we saw this. Our bird guide, along with our armed security guard because of robbers on the mountain, wilder people we called them, were unfazed.