Last Friday night was uneventful. We were in bed by five in the evening with earplugs inserted to drown out the fire crackers of weekend revelers as we tried to get a few hours of restless sleep before midnight. When the alarm went off we quickly dressed and were out in the silent and deserted streets of Xela. After a brisk walk through the always empty and erie late night streets we arrived at the gated office of the guide outfit. With a group of 20 other students they would be taking us up the side of Santa Maria, an extinct volcano about thirty minutes up one of the valleys near Xela, in the middle of the night.
The bus ride was bumpy and somewhat foreboding passing through the trash strewn outskirts of Xela. We disembarked at 12:30am under a nearly full moon onto a dirt road following our three guides, one of whom has hiked Santa Maria over 70 times in his life, a true Xela diehard. The road,which in the morning would be used by farmers and caballeros hearding goats and cows up the mountain to graze, meandered in and out of the woods as we approached the foot of the Volcano. We hiked by moonlight and flashlights bundled in all the fleece and wool we had with us, including the lovely long johns we purchased at Mercado Minerva earlier that week (remember?) for the next five hours...
With a group so large it was necessary to stop every thirty of forty minutes to allow the slower ones to catch up and ensure everyone was feeling ok. For kids like Sorch and I who grew up near the ocean 3772 meters is higher in altitude than either of us had ever climbed. The thinner air was very noticeable, especially if attempting to move any faster than our lead guide who slowly shuffled his feet up the dusty switchbacks.
The views on the way up were spectacular. The seriously cold and clear air showed a glimmering lights of Xela beneath us spread all over the valley floor. Everyone was suprised by the size of the city of around half a million people. The stops, which seemed frequent, served to freeze the perspiration we had accumulated but for those who hadn´t gotten much sleep they were necessary.
About an hour before sunrise we reached the summit rising above large pines trees that cover the Volcano. A rocky summit was barely visible in the dark, the moon having set by this time, but the lights of the country side spread out in all directions for dozens of miles. While setting up a makeshift camp on the grassy southern side of the volcano we were greeted by a spout of lava and a burst of dark ash reaching hundreds of meters into the air. Along with the predawn eruption we enjoyed the warmer air wafting up from the much lower but active Santiaguito volcano.
As the stars disapeared and the eastern horizon became visible behind a range of steep mountains the guides fired up a large pot of hot chocolate, a staple for anyone in the cold in Guatemala. With a sugar buzz from the rich cocoa we watched the break of day what might as well have been the top of the world. Just after dawn another plume of ash, this one much bigger than the first, exploded from little Santiaguito garnering ohhs and ahhs from all of us. The still air allowed the plume to mushroom thousands of feet into the air and slowly get spread out of the valley below.
The hike down was long and resulted in very sore calfs and hips but the warmth of day allowed everyone to strip off layers of clothing. The descent into a Guatemalan saturday morning was met with suprise as local Mayan family after family passed us with boquets of wildflowers and babies swaddled in blankets wrapped onto their mothers backs. The thin sandles, radios and heavy loads of food and water for the kids made our hiking boots and camel backs seem frivoulous. I had a hard time picturing some of the women my grandmother´s age treking up the volcano we had come down but full moon rituals rooted in Mayan beliefs were something they´ve done since they were the babies precariously carried up on their own mothers backs.
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