Molten Lava, Razorsharp Rocks, Gale-Force Winds, Noxious Gases and Freezing Temperatures!: The Best Experience of My Life!

New things are happening! So our little Three Musketeers adventure through Guatemala is taking new twists and turns. The laidback days in White People Ville USA, Antigua, Guatemala, have come to a thankful close, and yesterday we went out with a proverbial bang worth of such a figure of speech: an afternoon hike up a volcano and ACROSS LIVE LAVA FIELDS. I have never experienced anything like this.

Jammed against the large white Eastern European man in the front seat of a mini-bus, we swerve back and forth across the winding turns of the Guatemalan highlands. Tumbling out of the van, we are met with a sea of little Latino boys' faces asking "Wanna stick?" Just like that. In English. There were probably close to 30 of them. Pushing our way through them and gently refusing, until we took some lucky bloke up on the offer and paid to get a walking stick, we waded our way through a pack of horses ready to rent to rich and overweight tourists. But we are/were Peace Corps volunteers!, we scoff. Bring me your worst volcano, Guatemala!

And Guatemala did. The hike was a bit much, at least the initial climb, which was straight up for about 45 minutes. My lack of cardiovascular stamina made itself shamelessly known. But the endorphines racing through my veins, the sweating, pounding screaming insanity of my heart was a welcome companion up this slope. I don't make any claims to be a great hiker. Then we reached the summit and got a spectacular view of the surrounding volcano country. This was only the beginning of our fun. Our guide, in a delightful mix of English and Spanish, said we were going to go Down There (pointing to a black smoldering death pit that would have inspired Dante to pen his Inferno (he may have added more devils and torture racks than we found)).

The initial instructions were not very reassuring. We are going to take some precautions, our wise and energetic guide tells us. These precautions involve testing the black crusty lava with a stick before stepping onto its brittle and razor-sharp black death-surface of cutting-fury that could easily collapse into smoldering foot shoved into liquid magma. I grinned. No form, no paperwork, no insurance, no warning. I looked up into the sky and saw a few eager lawyers drifting above us in circles, waiting to pounce to the ground with claims to sign. Smiling, we collectively thought, this is the stupidest best idea of our lives.

The first part was pretty easy. The rocks seems pretty sturdy (cold lava "frozen" in rippling flows). They were unmistakably sharp, and covered with lots of little brittle lava-blades that we could use to slip in our Mach 3's, should need be. Then things started heating up (literally). The cold, bitter, and steady wind we had faced at the summit mysteriously and alarmingly disappeared. Suddenly there was a steady, almost imperceptible heat from some source. We found out it was the ground we were walking on. The brittle, crusty black surface was radiating the heat that was undoubtledly glowing and churning below its fragile surface, eager to consume a nice gringo leg. Then the first sighting occured. A 20 foot crack in the surface, and a foot or so down the glowing orange-red plasma you'd associate with real Oh My God This Is Like Real Life/National Geographic Lava! We, of course, doubted it was really lava and did what any responsible, intelligent citizen would do and POKED IT WITH STICKS. Sure enough, the sticks caught fire. Man alive, we thought. Lava. Real honest-to-goodness lava. Passing steam jets and scrambling up more and more of the crusty surface, we were made nervous by the quickly setting sun (I'm no "explorer", but I'd rather not be trapped on a live lava field in the dark and have to make my way home). Our guide was On A Mission and we soon found out why: a lava flow bursting out of the ground like a geological tube of magma toothpaste. Orange, glowing, flowing, real lava. We all lost it. Lots of phototaking. And then, following our needs as responsible, intelligent citizens (see above), we POKED IT WITH STICKS. Turns out, yes, it was real lava. (Amusing photos to be posted soon).

I'm no lava expert, but I was shocked by how HOT lava is. You get close to the real stuff, and it's absurdly hot. I could hardly stand to be that close to it for more than a few seconds. It felt like jumping in an oven real quick.

The sun setting, we scrambled to the tierra firme, and made our winding way up to the same summit and began the night-descent to the van waiting below. The return trip was not that thrilling, and was taken up with a lot of laughing, reviewing of photos and movies, and wonderment about how stupid and awesome we are.

Today we made the transfer to Lago Atitlan. I had no idea how beautiful it really was until I spent more than 3 hours here (first trip to Guatemala). We will be here, wandering around the perimeter of the lake for three days, taking photos, hiking, visiting meditation centers, learning about herbal medicine, and maybe doing some kayaking. All and all, a wild pair of days. This vacation has been a trip! (idiocy of statement assumed).

My issue with white people

So I have been getting into coffee. My strict no-coffee policy has been slipping recently, as I accept coffee if it's offered to me but I won't buy it. I still feel like I'm cheating with the sugar and milk. It should be straight or not at all, I argue. But I am gradually getting my feet wet. And this internet place has free coffee. It's pretty weak but hey, it's free.

I have found that in Antigua there are all these white people trying to learn Spanish. They are Europeans and Americans and Australians and Israelis and such. I should be glad. Peace Corps taught me that learning a second language is an experience that nothing can really equal. The process, humbling and frustrating and exciting, changes your whole perspective on the world. You begin to realize the differences in expression, in communication. Things like tone and cadence and rhythm all enter into language, so it's almost musical. The process is extremely enriching.

I want to send millions of Americans to other countries to learn a second language. I'd make them learn Spanish. We as a culture need to get ready for that fact. The fact that we are not the center of the universe and one day not all the world will kneel at our presence and kiss our holy feet with an English kiss. It just shows great arrogance and ignorance. "Learn some English" we hear disdainfully muttered to new immigrants to this country. My response? "Learn some Spanish." These people are guests in our country and we are showing them the ugly, mean, ancient face of American racism. I have been a foreigner in a different country and people treated me specially because they wanted me to leave Panama with a good impression of that country, that I would go home and tell my countrymen that Panamanians are kind and generous and patient, loving people. In the reverse case, in the mirrored case of a Mexican or Ecuadorian or Colombian who has moved to the U.S., who has given up the comfort of his own language and people and culture and family and history, to travel thousands of treacherous miles to a strange and often unwelcoming country fills me with a real disgust. I want to turn everything around: and when your Italian/Jewish/Polish/Swedish ancestors came to this country, when they sacrificed everything and left everything behind, were they not greeted with that same ugly disdain? When will we learn to treat each other like humans?

My rant will slowly drift toward some magnetic pole. Yes. So all these white people are learning Spanish, which is the real passport to an entire continent. From the Rio Grande to the Tierra De Fuego in Chile, a continent becomes accessible, a culture and history and people comes really, finally alive. Millions and millions of people can now have a conversation with you. But something in this annoys me. What is it, I cannot tell. I am impatient with these new learners of Spanish. I see their faltering, fumbling attempts to speak and I get annoyed. This says a lot about me, I suppose. I want everyone to learn Spanish but I want them all to skip that intermediate phase where they fumble around for words and make a lot of errors. I want them just to be fluent. I walked behind a guy with his Spanish teacher here in Antigua and the conversation clunked along until the Spanish teacher gave up and switched to English. I felt frustrated. Just learn it and really speak it, I want to yell. I need more patience in my life. Study it and speak it and practice it and get out there and just DO it. So many people here are just doing it in a kind of yuppie or hippie way, like they want to learn Spanish to be all fashionable or trendy or something. I don’t know people’s motivations to learn Spanish, so I don’t know if they want to use it to travel or to get a job or what. But they take these Spanish classes and live in Antigua and then go out to trendy bars with other Americans where the whole barstaff are English ex-pat’s or something and they all speak English with each other. It seems silly or sad. And it frustrates me because it’s not how I learned, perhaps. They aren’t out in the campo, living where you can’t speak English with anyone except when you see other volunteers. They are sort of sliding by, feeling they are all special or something, and they’ll go home and have this “great experience” of living in this foreign city and they’ll talk all like it’s so exotic and challenging and there was so much suffering involved in throwing your toilet paper into a trash can at the side of the toilet, or not having a car to go wherever you want, or having to eat different food. It will be Peace Corps Super Lite and they will think it so hard.

And I suppose it is. I am too hard on these people. I want everyone to do Peace Corps or some similar challenging experience or almost not do it at all. Do it or don’t do it. Don’t dick around with this in-between stuff.

And of course this argument is absurd. It’s all relative. To someone who really lived in the jungles of Africa for 25 years as a missionary, working in solitude and fear and danger, my little two years in too-developed, skyscrappered Panama was a pampered existence. We want to think we are all bad-ass and yet there will always be someone more bad-ass than us. Peace Corps Mali volunteers probably would laugh at the idea of a volunteer in Panama or Costa Rica. It all goes back perhaps to me taking this experience so seriously when for others it may mean very little.

I smiled to myself when the title of this entry popped into my head. It is perhaps a testament to how far I felt integrated into Panamanian culture. I now talk about “these white people” and yet forget I stand, at least epidermically, among them. Yet something has profoundly changed. I can step out of my body and my mind and my background and stand with another, in another body and time and place and language and culture. I think PC is making or has made me more empathetic, with the ability to see it from another’s perspective. And yet the diatribe above. It’s not complete. Seeing things from another’s point of view. Understanding that if I was living X person’s life with all the different forces and conditions and trials of that Other Existence, I would probably act the same way. I am trying not to judge so much. Understanding why people do things. That we’re all just people and we’ve all got our faults. And to this lost, broken, twisted people arrives God and stands among us not in American flesh or Jewish flesh or African flesh or Cambodian flesh or Panamanian flesh. He comes in human flesh. A human. Among us. To tell us what? That we are all just humans and that we should love each other, that we should see the piercing glory of God in the glint of another human eye, the radiating force of the divine life playing in this surging river of flesh and color and pain and love we call this life.

My prayer, continually, is “don’t give up on me.”

Thoughts to Meringue

Another day in Antigua, Guatemala. The gringo-saturation of this town is getting to me. I think it's time to be moving on. But tomorrow should be exciting. A hike to an active volcano, Pucaya. Throwing things in live lava flows. And seeing what happens. Wish I had a camera to film the destruction.

New things in my life besides blogging: YouTube. I've realized all the music videos I loved so in Panama can be found with a simple YouTube search. I've currently been on a meringue binge, so it's a great joy to have all the meringue I'd ever need at my finger tips. I think I will keep up with Latin music in the U.S. I went from hating to tolerating to enjoying it. My slowest transition. But perhaps my deepest one. Latin Americans are so passionate and dramatic. Their music follows suit. We have much to learn from them. An image of joy in my head is the return to america and rolling through the streets of Charleston in my yeye camry with the windows down pounding meringue or salsa or tipico or ballenato and singing along, attracting stares.

Chilly and cloudy in Antigua. Nice quiet walks and moments in empty cathedrals. Insence and candles. And I send out an email to Mepkin Abbey, a third visit in December? I need time to process things and I cannot think of a better place.

People here are very small

I am in Antigua, Guatemala, for the second time.

I had forgotten two things. One is that it is colder here than I remember. This is good because it reminds me of fall and turkey and changing leaves and Thanksgiving and sweaters. The second thing is that people here are very small. All of them. Por lo general, as we say. Most of the women barely reach my chest. It's like some land of little people and their tortillas and colorful clothes.

Traveling alone is interesting. You have freedom to do as you wish and yet it's sort of lonely. So I wander around, doing what I like most to do, just wander. Hemingway wrote "cruise around by yourself and see what happens to you." I think this is good advice. I try to walk as slowly as I can and do as little as possible and just observe things, just take it all in.

Responding to the initial (i first typed "inicial" ... Spanish may have a permanent place in my mind) criticism to the title of this blog: my idea or image was that Dante, the poet, in the Divine Comedy, passes from Inferno (hell) through Purgatorio (purgatory) to Paraiso (heaven). And yet my idea was AFTER all of that what if Dante just wandered around between all the stuff in between? It's sort of how I see my life, wandering through the between. Lost and curious and quiet and patient and slow and impressed by all the between that is between heaven and hell that we call this world.

This will be my journal on the road that is public. The real one is private.
Blog is such a hideous word.