Pedro versus the Volcano

I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with a mission. Today, I was going to climb Santa Maria volcano, a dormant behemoth that sticks 3,772 meters (12,375 feet) into the sky near Xela.

I went with a group organized by the language school I live above, so our group was nationally diverse: Irwin, the Guatemalan owner of the school; Miguel, one of the school's teachers; Erick, a Guatemalan friend of theirs; Nirmalie and Judith, two Dutch Spanish students whom I had met the night before; and me. We met downstairs on the street at 5:30, got in a mini-bus that we had hired for the drive, and headed to the outer limits of Xela.

We arrived at 6 a.m. at a field at the base of the volcano. As Miguel told us, there were three parts of the hike. First was a relatively small incline, followed by a medium incline, and then followed by a final steep ascent to the summit. Each part would probably take us an hour each, he said. Guatemalan soldiers, on the other hand, can scale the entire volcano in 30 minutes and be down it in 10.

I hadn't realized how big of a trek this was going to be, or else I might have prepared better. I had good boots on, but I had assumed that there would be open stores in the morning where I could buy a few bottles of water; no such open stores existed, and I was clearly going to struggle for energy with just my breakfast of yogurt with mango and a bag of mixed nuts I had brought with me. I was going to have to tough it out, and maybe get by with a little help from my friends.

We finished the first third of the hike in an hour, and sat around for a few minutes in a field. I asked Erick if I could drink a little of the can of vegetable juice he brought, and he offered me the half that he hadn't already drank. I usually don't like vegetable juice, but I made an exception this time.

We started up the second third of the climb, and Miguel and Erick blazed ahead on their own, while Irwin and I stayed back with Nirmalie and Judith. Holland is one of the flattest countries in the world, and while Judith might have had a little experience climbing, Nirmalie had never been on a mountain. We took frequent rest stops as we hiked for the second hour, because the girls were getting winded easily.

At 8 a.m., after two hours, we started the third and final portion, and my lack of food and water started to catch up with me. I stopped to eat some of the nuts I had brought, and Irwin gave me some imitation Gatorade. This early in the morning is a bad time to feel exhausted, but I was already getting there.

Forty minutes later, I was struggling, and I fell behind the rest of the group. I had to rest every 10 minutes or so, and I was being passed by school kids and middle-aged indigenous ladies in cheap shoes. I kept going, and caught up to Judith and Nirmalie, who were sitting on the side of the path, drinking water and breaking out their sandwiches.

"I'm not going to go any further," Nirmalie said in Spanish. "I have pain in my leg and I have a condition with my nose." There was no way I was going to let part of the group not reach the summit, especially when we had already hiked nearly three hours and had so little left to go.

"No," I said, "you'll go to the top. But let's rest for a while, and then we'll talk about getting up there."

The three of us sat together, making brief conversations with the people passing us. Hiking in Guatemala is a very polite event; you say hello to everyone you see, and everyone says hello back. Anything less would be uncivilized. Eventually, Judith went on ahead, leaving me with Nirmalie, who was terrified of going any further.

After a few more minutes, I coaxed her to start hiking again. And so we went, in two-minute and three-minute spurts, up the volcano. I was far past exhaustion, and Nirmalie seemed to be in a worse state than me. At around 9:30, we arrived at the home stretch, a rocky, treeless final 150 feet. When we finally got to the summit it was like walking into my favorite bar; I recognized everyone there, because I had greeted them as they had passed us climbing up.

We found the rest of our group sitting on the far side of the summit, and sat down with them. I ate the rest of the nuts I had brought, and Miguel poured some water into an extra bottle, from which I drank slowly to avoid cramps.

Within minutes of us sitting down, there was a loud noise, and a huge column of smoke and dust began to rise. The smaller volcano next to us, Santiaguito, had just erupted. I knew that the volcano was active, but I didn't realize it would be active with me looking at it. Everyone crowded toward one side of the volcano to see Santiaguito, and I got up to join them. Seconds later, I heard, "Peter, your bag!" My leather bag, which luckily had been zipped closed, was rolling down a steep slope. I noted where it stopped, about 100 feet below, and told myself I'd get it later, after I had seen the eruption. Everyone in the group took pictures of us in front of the tower of dust, except for me, since my camera was in my bag, 100 feet below. A few minutes later, I hiked to get my bag and came back up.

Earlier in the morning, Erick had asked me if I was a Christian, which I had said I was. It turns out this was a primer for a much longer conversation that we were going to have at the summit. It was by far the most abstract conversation I've ever had in Spanish, as our talk ranged from the legality of marijuana to the morality of alcohol, from the existence of heaven and hell to how good of a basis the Bible is to live your life upon. He told me with certitude that while praying, he had been in the presence of Jesus, and he had also had Satan come to him multiple times and choke him, but that he had pushed Satan away by declaring his love for Jesus. He gave me detailed descriptions of hell, because his friend's soul had once traveled there and come back. He believes in Jesus, he told me, because of these "supernatural experiences" that let him know that God and Jesus are real.

I came from a different point of view, and I said that many Americans and Europeans are currently questioning organized religion. "There are many people in the U.S. who say that they are religious, but they say nothing when our government tortures," I said. "When our government attacks Iraq and Afghanistan, these religious people say nothing and the churches say nothing. This is the reason why I am disillusioned, and this is a reason why many people in America and Europe will say that they are spiritual, but that they don't have a religion."

It was a fantastic conversation, and I got Erick's phone number so that we could meet up again.

After about an hour and a half of relaxing at the summit, we began making our way down. Going down a steep mountain is a different type of challenge than climbing one, but with a walking stick that I had fashioned out of a branch earlier in the day, I wasn't worried. Judith and Nirmalie, however, had never gone down a mountain before, and were very uncertain of the process. Erick went down first, and didn't wait up for us. Judith, slightly nervous, held Irwin's hand for at least the first third of the trip as he guided her down. Nirmalie had Miguel for her hand-holding guide, but was still so scared that for the top third of the mountain, she slid down slowly on her butt. I was the last in line, and I enjoyed the slow pace and the conversation as we made our way down. Being in the back also allowed me to talk to people who were passing us as they came down, sometimes offering an explanation to them as they watched Nirmalie sliding: "She's from Holland; it's her first time on a mountain."

After a long hike, we got to the rest area where we had first stopped for the day. Less than an hour remained before we'd be at the bottom. I started to worry that I was getting seriously dehydrated, so after we had rested for a few minutes, I took off at a fast pace, knowing that the sooner I got to the town at the bottom of the volcano, the sooner I could find a store.

I was dead tired as I sped down the final third of the volcano, and was amazed by the number of people heading in the opposite direction. Lots of Guatemalans, it seems, hike up the volcano in the afternoon with a sleeping bag and camp under the stars at night. I felt different hiking on my own, and people reacted to me differently than when I was with the rest of my Guatemalan and Dutch group. People seemed surprised to see me, a gringo, walking down their volcano alone, and several greeted me in English as I passed them.

After about 40 minutes, I arrived at the bottom of the volcano, and walked into the first store I could find. I bought three bottles of water and three bottles of Gatorade, and drank one of the Gatorades; the rest were for the group when they caught up. Five minutes later, the rest of the group came, and they all smiled when I greeted them with, "Are you thirsty?" and opened up my bag full of refreshments.

After another 10 minutes, we made our way to the bus station, piled into a chicken bus, and made our way home. When I got back to my apartment at 3:30, I took a shower and headed straight to bed. A few hours later, I woke up, ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (the first thing I had eaten since the nuts at 10:30 in the morning) and went back to bed again shortly after. I slept extremely well.