Pacaya Volcano - Guatemala

We had planned a sunset Volcano tour on our last night in Antigua and I wasn't sure if it sounded more romantic or adventure. On true Guatemalan time scale, it only took two and a half hours to get picked up and drive the short distance to the bottom of Pacaya Volcano.

After we booked, we heard several things about this tour.
1. The volcano had erupted a few months ago and killed someone. "But don't worry, there hasn’t been as much lava since."
2. There was a significant risk of being “Robbed, Raped, Kidnapped or Murdered,” while climbing the volcano. This was from the guide book, which advised to take security.
3. The guide will try to hurry you up the first steep bit, to try to convince you that you need to hire a horse.
Sure enough, all three came true. There wasn't much lava, we did need security and we were flogged up the hill. Our guide eventually greeted us in very slow Spanish. My basic understanding of Spanish gave me every 3 words or so. Just enough. He carried a pump action shotgun, which I happily saw wasn’t cocked, just loaded. (Guns scare me. I’m sure you’re much more likely to be shot accidentally then on purpose, especially when it's slung over your shoulder and you're on a horse!)

We started up the side of the volcano at a cracking pace. The ground was sand and ash which made plodding the only pace possible. Eventually most people got onto horses, but being the stubborn people we are, Ads and I plodded on. It was reminiscent of our Inca Trail pace on the first day. Before too long we were all alone. Our guide with the shotgun was nowhere to be seen and it was eerily quiet. I couldn't help but think of the many warnings of violent muggings. After all, this was central America and it was almost dark.
Thankfully the group waited for us and we continued along the dusty path. We reached the top of the first hill where the sandy ground gave way to a hard river of solid volcanic rock. The 15m wide river wound its way up the volcano to the peak.
A few months ago this volcano erupted killing a photographer and creating this massive river of now solid rock. It was surreal imagining this river as glowing red lava. It was blatant that the volcano was still active. The ground was ridiculously hot, we could actually toast marshmallows over the deep crevasses. I did so with glee!
When we reached the top we sat on the side of the volcano, under the smoking top and watched the sun set. This was the romantic bit. It was beautiful and surreal. The heat and the massive scale that was not only the volcano, but the remains of the lava river.
The stars came out as we descended. They’ve always made me feel the infinite nature of the universe but the volcano was something else. Millions of years ago this volcano would have been here, erupting as she pleases. The power, the heat and the huge scale of the frozen river, it was like sitting in the jaws of a lion. You hoped it was tame and having a good day.

At the base of the volcano kids begged for our food, torches, money and anything else we had. “Can I have Pringley?” a boy who was barely 7 begged Adam. “No.” “Only one?” “No.” ”How about 2 or 3?” We both laughed and I rolled my eyes. I wondered how many times the boy had said those lines. Whether they had lost meaning and were simply a script that he rolled out every night to the next lot of plump western tourists. I disliked being lumped in with the hoards of westerners that visited a country for a few days, went on the mandatory tours and stayed at western resorts, not bothering to look beneath the surface or learn the language. I wanted to wander through the slums, talk to the locals and find out what was important in their life. I suppose we did that to some extent in Nicaragua. But it was but a brief glimpse into an obviously well off family and the conversations had limited depth with the language barrier.

But what else could we do with our financial and time constrictions? Enrol in a charity work program, like the English schools in Costa Rica? Why should they learn English? So they can use comical lines to get an extra pringle out of tourists? I hated the overwhelming fact that tourism and travel is destroying local cultures. I wanted this boy’s Mother to tell him to ‘stop annoying the tourists, come home and eat your vegetables.’ I just hoped he had a Mother and vegetables at home.

My fading sight

I got my first set of prescription glasses this week. It made me ponder about our sense of the world around us and the aging process....

Our perception of the world around us and indeed of ourselves, is severely limited by our sensory receptors. If my sight fades to blurry, then my world is no longer as sharp as it was before. The joy that I get from reading is reduced, as is my patience with study. However, if a sense is altogether removed, the interpretation of our world is altered. Eg. If we cannot smell, the temptation of freshly baked bread ceases to exist.

Our exeroception, sight, taste, hearing, touch, smell, is our only contact with the world around us. Indeed the inanimate objects in our life only exist through our perception, as George Berkeley said, "to be is to be perceived.” If we cannot hear, a tree falling in the woods makes no sound. If we never perceive the tree in any way, does it even exist, let alone fall? If the interpretation of my senses tells me that a person is a hat, for all intents and purposes that person is a hat to me.

I suppose the same is true about the animate objects in my life. Take a sea anemone as an example. If I stand watching it, it goes about it’s life, oblivious to my presence. If I touch it, my sudden unexpected existence causes it to quickly withdraw. If it doesn't sense me, I do not exist.

On a higher level, Adams perception of me is built only on his interpretation of the stimuli from his senses. The majority of which are thankfully favorable. It has been said that our senses fade as we ourselves fade, to ease the aging process. Perhaps our eyes fade as the wrinkles deepen and our hearing fades as the stories repeat... If we are lucky, our memories replace the first hand sensory information. If our memory fades with our senses, does our world cease to exist?


http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Towards_a_New_Theory_of_Vision
Oliver Slacks, (1985) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Random Thoughts from Cos

Hi! Cos here!
I thought I'd finally contribute to writing a blog, however my writing is quite different to our travel blog ( www.adamandcorinne.blogspot.com ) so I thought I'd start my own!

It will be random extracts from my book (in progress) which is mainly about
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Cheers,
Cos