About two weeks after our trip to Pacaya, Sarah convinced me that we were athletic enough to climb another volcano. We signed up for what was advertised as the trip of a lifetime climbing Volcano Acatenango. This volcano lies next to the famous Volcano Fuego, which is know for its regular, but relatively calm eruptions. Acatenango is also active, erupting about once every 30 years, the last time being around 30 years ago.
Acatenango was a challenge; Sarah and I both knew it going into it. The elevation was 13,045 ft above sea level, so not only would we have to deal with the climb, but the altitude as well. I admit, during the prep talk the night before we headed out, I started to get nervous. I had never done anything like this in my life. The day hikes in Maine with my family were years ago and nothing compared to the strenuous climb that would be Acatenango. But I had already payed.
I awoke at 5:30 early the next morning as the sun was about to show, and Sarah and I walked to Base Camp, a hostel/office in Antigua. I was nervous, like I was about to get up in front of people and sing. My stomach was a mess and I desperately needed to go to the bathroom (like I always seem to need to do when I am nervous).
We packed our once-empty, but now heavy backpacks with supplies for meals, the tent, changes of clothes, and 5 liters of water each. We loaded them into the back of the truck that was to take us to the base of the mountain and after a quick stop in a cafe for breakfast, we headed out as the sun rose.
Robert, our guide, had started our prep-talk by telling us the walk was 20% physical, and 80% mental. For some stupid reason, I didn't believe him until our first break on the mountain about 20 or 30 minutes after we had first started. I was already lagging (my excuse being that I am a sprinter not a marathoner).
I wish that I could say sometime between 8 (when we started) and 11:30 (when we took a break for lunch) that I regrouped, but I have to say most of my morning (and later the afternoon) consisted of falling behind out of sight, only to catch up when the rest of the group took a break. My constant (and only) companion was Lorenzo, the hired gun (literally) who climbed behind me, bringing up the rear.
Lorenzo, I learned speaking only my broken Spanish, was a 57-year-old former farmer who had changed careers because the pay was better guarding gringos on the mountains in the area he used to farm. He was married with a daughter about 4 years older then me. He had been on the climb about 30 times before. Both this, and his history of farming in the hills explained how he could hike consistently with a huge shotgun carried in his hands. His backpack he carried on a strap that he cast around his forehead instead of supporting the majority of the weight on his hips and shoulders. I think he did this because it is the traditional way to carry heavy products in Guatemala.
I wish I could tell you that this was the hardest thing I had ever done, and it probably was the most traumatic for me physically. But knowing I couldn't turn back without making the rest of the group turn back too made it easy. I was going to make it.
And I wasn't going to complain about it either. If I learned anything from those hikes with my family in Maine, is that complaining just makes the whole thing more miserable. So what if I had a slight cramp in my leg from hiking long distances? If I just sat down and cried and complained and whined about it (like I probably would have done in Maine in similar circumstances), it just would have made everyone else miserable, which would make me more miserable, and the cycle would never end.
So I didn't. Not only was I going to make it up the mountain (which had to be a given), but I was going to do it laughing and with a smile on my face (even if it hurt)... (and it did, hurt, I mean).
I complain about the trip now, but the worse came after the saddle.
Most people who know me know that I have a severe fear of heights. In fact, I would say that it is one of the only deterrents of my rampant curiosity to see and experience everything. Sadly, I will probably never go base jumping :( The clearest example I can give of this was my determination about 5 years ago to climb to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican (on the inside). A once in a lifetime opportunity I let pass because I let my fear of heights (and my vertigo) stop me. Obviously, I still remember this.
After you pass the saddle, the path ascends up a step incline of volcanic sand. The path is only wide enough in some areas for a person. But instead of vegetation on both sides of the path, on one side there is a steep incline and on the other an endless steep drop of sand that seems to fall out from under your feet (and does).
By the time we actually started up this way (after a false start complete with heavy packs) we had set up camp in the saddle of the mountain because of a storm. We were able to climb without our packs to the top.
This didn't hurt like the first part had. The first part hurt, but wasn't mentally hard, cause I knew I was going to make it. The second part was not physical stressful, but mentally I didn't think I was going to make it. The rain is starting to come down and the sun is half set. Not that you can see because of the clouds moving in. And I was petrified.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Real Life
When I'm traveling am I living my real life or taking a break from it?
When I return to the States, will I be going back to my "real life?"
Who cares? this is so much better than whatever else I would have been doing.
Who cares? this is so much better than whatever else I would have been doing.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Shameless Blog-Plug
Like my page on Facebook, to see pictures from Guatemala!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Around-the-World-in-Days/239638059417642
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Around-the-World-in-Days/239638059417642
This is Guatemala...
This is Guatemala, when...
1) The bus shuttle for your day trip picks you up 20 minutes late and instead of bringing you to your destination, like you assumed it would, it drives around the city for 10 minutes picking and dropping off people until you stop around the corner from where you started and the driver tells you to get out of the car and wait for another bus shuttle.
2) you wait 15 more minutes, the whole time wondering whether a bus is actually going to come, or if you just got tricked out of $8.
3) the driver arrives and when you finally do get on the bus you head to an active volcano (Pacaya) where you have heard that several people died in 2010 when it unexpectedly errupted.
4) the guide, several men with horses, and many kids with walking sticks bombard you when you disembark the bus. The guide wants to simply take you up and down the trail before dark, but the kids want to sell you their walking sticks and they won't give up until that have sold you one. The men with horses just want to charge you to ride a horse up and down the mountain.
5) you find out that entrance to the park was not included in the ticket price, so you and your friend beg from the other tourists 100 quetzales (about 12 bucks) and you get it in return for a promise to pay it back.
6) 5 men with horses follow you up the mountain, waiting for people to get tired so that they can charge them to ride the rest of the way up the mountain, even though only one person actually wants a horse.
7) the terrain you are climbing up keeps shifting under your feet because it is actually not ground, but 25 cm of tiny rocks and debris that rained down over the mountain and the surrounding area when the volcano erupted a year ago.
8) you get to the top of the mountain and half the group has ended up on horseback. Gringos.
9) instead of staying a safe distance from the steaming crater in order to take pictures, the guide leads you through hardened magma to a plateau right under the mouth of the volcano.
10) the guide provides clean sticks to roast the marshmallows you brought. Over lava.
11) you realize that the best s'mores you have ever eaten were cooked over magma (FYI this is quite a good way to toast marshmallows. With a fire the marshmallows are either slow to cook or on fire because you got them too close to the flame. Lava, on the other hand, toasts the marshmallows speedily and there are no worries that they will catch fire.)
12) as you reach the bottom of the volcano, your guide excitedly points off in the distance where you can see another volcano spitting lava into the sky juxapositioned against the dark night sky.
13) you climb back into the shuttle at 7, and the group drives for 20 minutes when the van starts to act up.
14) the van breaks down, full of 11 gringos and the driver. The driver gets out, calls someone, and tries to fix the car on his own.
15) he fails. (though this also happens in America. Frequently)
16) a tow truck comes up, and the driverof your van informs you that it is unsafe to disembark in this area of Guatemala, so you have to stay in the van.
17) the van is jacked up onto the back of the tow truck.
18) the tow truck pulls the van loaded with 12 people all the way back to Antigua in about 2 hours, only stopping once to pick up a passenger up from the side of the road.
19) this is the great adventure that you were hoping for.
1) The bus shuttle for your day trip picks you up 20 minutes late and instead of bringing you to your destination, like you assumed it would, it drives around the city for 10 minutes picking and dropping off people until you stop around the corner from where you started and the driver tells you to get out of the car and wait for another bus shuttle.
2) you wait 15 more minutes, the whole time wondering whether a bus is actually going to come, or if you just got tricked out of $8.
3) the driver arrives and when you finally do get on the bus you head to an active volcano (Pacaya) where you have heard that several people died in 2010 when it unexpectedly errupted.
4) the guide, several men with horses, and many kids with walking sticks bombard you when you disembark the bus. The guide wants to simply take you up and down the trail before dark, but the kids want to sell you their walking sticks and they won't give up until that have sold you one. The men with horses just want to charge you to ride a horse up and down the mountain.
5) you find out that entrance to the park was not included in the ticket price, so you and your friend beg from the other tourists 100 quetzales (about 12 bucks) and you get it in return for a promise to pay it back.
6) 5 men with horses follow you up the mountain, waiting for people to get tired so that they can charge them to ride the rest of the way up the mountain, even though only one person actually wants a horse.
7) the terrain you are climbing up keeps shifting under your feet because it is actually not ground, but 25 cm of tiny rocks and debris that rained down over the mountain and the surrounding area when the volcano erupted a year ago.
8) you get to the top of the mountain and half the group has ended up on horseback. Gringos.
9) instead of staying a safe distance from the steaming crater in order to take pictures, the guide leads you through hardened magma to a plateau right under the mouth of the volcano.
10) the guide provides clean sticks to roast the marshmallows you brought. Over lava.
11) you realize that the best s'mores you have ever eaten were cooked over magma (FYI this is quite a good way to toast marshmallows. With a fire the marshmallows are either slow to cook or on fire because you got them too close to the flame. Lava, on the other hand, toasts the marshmallows speedily and there are no worries that they will catch fire.)
12) as you reach the bottom of the volcano, your guide excitedly points off in the distance where you can see another volcano spitting lava into the sky juxapositioned against the dark night sky.
13) you climb back into the shuttle at 7, and the group drives for 20 minutes when the van starts to act up.
14) the van breaks down, full of 11 gringos and the driver. The driver gets out, calls someone, and tries to fix the car on his own.
15) he fails. (though this also happens in America. Frequently)
16) a tow truck comes up, and the driverof your van informs you that it is unsafe to disembark in this area of Guatemala, so you have to stay in the van.
17) the van is jacked up onto the back of the tow truck.
18) the tow truck pulls the van loaded with 12 people all the way back to Antigua in about 2 hours, only stopping once to pick up a passenger up from the side of the road.
19) this is the great adventure that you were hoping for.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Lucky
Concerning my family... I got lucky.
I'm halfway around the world and I still get voicemails, emails, and conversation almost daily (when I get online really).
If they weren't so supportive, there is no way I'd be able to do this.
I'm halfway around the world and I still get voicemails, emails, and conversation almost daily (when I get online really).
If they weren't so supportive, there is no way I'd be able to do this.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Old Shoes
For Emily and Sarah.
It's funny how we let ourselves be defined by labels.
I think it starts in elementary school, when you actually start becoming your own person making your own desicions. You hear yourself labeled one time and you either embrace it completely or reject it. The label "tomboy" could mean that you spend your formulative years wearing anything but dresses, or only wearing dresses.
It's like the first pair of shoes you got to choose yourself; it's not exactly what you wanted, but it is what your mother thought you needed for school. So you make it work.
But the labeling doesn't end in elementary school. In middle school you become a nerd, or an athlete, or a pagent princess. For me, I was the "outsider."
And so in high school, the label "introvert" just becomes an scientific-sounding progression of that previous label. How easy it is to go from "tomboy" to "outsider" to "introvert." The labels become less defining, but it doesn't stop us from trying to live them up or down.
You think that college is a whole new beginning, but you've lived in the labels so long that college ends up just being an extension of high school. Unless you take drastic action that summer before freshman year (changing you name, your hair, your clothes, losing that baby fat, etc.), you continue to be an "introvert". It's simply easier that way.
You even leave the country, and you hold on to those labels. They mean something at this point. They're an explaination for that hard question: "Why are you the way you are?"
"It's hard for me to meet people 'cause I'm an introvert."
"It's hard for me to learn new things 'cause I'm not much of a studier."
"It's hard for me to try new things 'cause I'm more of a reader than an doer."
And then you realize, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, that she thinks your an extrovert. Of course, you protest vehemently, because if you aren't an "introvert"... then what are you?
But nevertheless you begin to wonder.
Out of curiousity, you take a personality test.
And you find out, she might be right.
"It's hard for me to meet people," you've been saying to your new friends.
"It's hard for me to learn new things," you've been saying in your beginner's spanish.
"It's hard for me to try new things," you've been saying while traveling the world.
Maybe it was easier to explain why you couldn't do something than to just do it.
You'd been so worried about explaining your limitations to yourself that you haven't realized you've outgrown the labels (and the limitations). Maybe you find that the labels never really truly fit right. Like that pair of shoes that's a smidgen too small that you wear because it's easier to keep wearing them then go shopping for new ones.
Maybe, like shoes, you can never own just one label. Or maybe, like shoes, you're constantly wearing them out.
It's funny how we let ourselves be defined by labels.
I think it starts in elementary school, when you actually start becoming your own person making your own desicions. You hear yourself labeled one time and you either embrace it completely or reject it. The label "tomboy" could mean that you spend your formulative years wearing anything but dresses, or only wearing dresses.
It's like the first pair of shoes you got to choose yourself; it's not exactly what you wanted, but it is what your mother thought you needed for school. So you make it work.
But the labeling doesn't end in elementary school. In middle school you become a nerd, or an athlete, or a pagent princess. For me, I was the "outsider."
And so in high school, the label "introvert" just becomes an scientific-sounding progression of that previous label. How easy it is to go from "tomboy" to "outsider" to "introvert." The labels become less defining, but it doesn't stop us from trying to live them up or down.
You think that college is a whole new beginning, but you've lived in the labels so long that college ends up just being an extension of high school. Unless you take drastic action that summer before freshman year (changing you name, your hair, your clothes, losing that baby fat, etc.), you continue to be an "introvert". It's simply easier that way.
You even leave the country, and you hold on to those labels. They mean something at this point. They're an explaination for that hard question: "Why are you the way you are?"
"It's hard for me to meet people 'cause I'm an introvert."
"It's hard for me to learn new things 'cause I'm not much of a studier."
"It's hard for me to try new things 'cause I'm more of a reader than an doer."
And then you realize, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, that she thinks your an extrovert. Of course, you protest vehemently, because if you aren't an "introvert"... then what are you?
But nevertheless you begin to wonder.
Out of curiousity, you take a personality test.
And you find out, she might be right.
"It's hard for me to meet people," you've been saying to your new friends.
"It's hard for me to learn new things," you've been saying in your beginner's spanish.
"It's hard for me to try new things," you've been saying while traveling the world.
Maybe it was easier to explain why you couldn't do something than to just do it.
You'd been so worried about explaining your limitations to yourself that you haven't realized you've outgrown the labels (and the limitations). Maybe you find that the labels never really truly fit right. Like that pair of shoes that's a smidgen too small that you wear because it's easier to keep wearing them then go shopping for new ones.
Maybe, like shoes, you can never own just one label. Or maybe, like shoes, you're constantly wearing them out.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
La Antigua
They call it the "Antique Guatemala" because that it just what it is. Before Guatemala City was the capital, the seat was held in Antigua. The city was hit by two devastating earthquakes (of 1717 and 1773), after which the capital was moved to its current location. But walking through the streets of Antigua it is easy to imagine that the Spanish Military government held power here for decades. The architecture is glaringly colonial and they churches positioned on every other street corner (I am only exaggerating a bit) retain the echoes of past religious conflicts.
The heart of Antigua resides in the Central Park, or Parque Central. The rest of the city is organized grid-wise with "avenidas" running north to south and "calles" running west to east. The entire city is surrounded by active and inactive volcanoes. Any direction you look, you see the mountains looming into the clouds (that is if there are clouds, the sky has been surprisingly clear since I have arrive, probably because the rainy season in Guatemala is in late summer) The streets are composed of old cobblestone that you can image has been here since the city was first built. Drive to fast on the road, as most of the drivers do here, and you will be in danger of giving all your passengers motion-sickness.
The house I am staying in sits in the most north-western part of the city. A white house, with two levels, the windows are barred ( like most of the windows in Antigua). I live on the upper floor. It is usual in Guatemala for there to be spaces in the houses open to nature. For example, the courtyard of our house (not really a courtyard, more of a small area open to the sky) resides on the first floor of the house. But my window and the common balcony open over it. This means that every time I leave my room, I actually step outdoors. But it doesn't matter; the weather is warm and it rarely rains this time of the year.
I've had two housemates that I've lived with since I arrived. Ester, who had departed to return to the States (but who lived in Washington, DC for a time, which clearly makes her a kindred spirit) and KC. Both girls attend the same Spanish school that I do.
The school is gorgeous. Unlike the many other Spanish schools that seem to pop-up (or have popped- up) all over Antigua, the school that I attend, Christian Spanish Academy (a former school for missionaries that still seems to attract many people of the faith) is very professional. At every table in the school it is possible for the student to see the sky directly. I, however, have the best table of all. My teacher, Lisa, and I sit at a table in the middle of the modest courtyard surrounded by flowers, bushes, and (after 10 am) the sun. I don't think I've ever learned as well as I have outside. Lisa also tends to have patience with me (which most teachers in the States have lacked). She seems to understand that sometimes I just need to be standing when conjugating verbs. If you are ever looking for a school to learn Spanish, I heartily recommend this one. Note: the teachers don't speak English, you learn entirely in Spanish.
The heart of Antigua resides in the Central Park, or Parque Central. The rest of the city is organized grid-wise with "avenidas" running north to south and "calles" running west to east. The entire city is surrounded by active and inactive volcanoes. Any direction you look, you see the mountains looming into the clouds (that is if there are clouds, the sky has been surprisingly clear since I have arrive, probably because the rainy season in Guatemala is in late summer) The streets are composed of old cobblestone that you can image has been here since the city was first built. Drive to fast on the road, as most of the drivers do here, and you will be in danger of giving all your passengers motion-sickness.
The house I am staying in sits in the most north-western part of the city. A white house, with two levels, the windows are barred ( like most of the windows in Antigua). I live on the upper floor. It is usual in Guatemala for there to be spaces in the houses open to nature. For example, the courtyard of our house (not really a courtyard, more of a small area open to the sky) resides on the first floor of the house. But my window and the common balcony open over it. This means that every time I leave my room, I actually step outdoors. But it doesn't matter; the weather is warm and it rarely rains this time of the year.
I've had two housemates that I've lived with since I arrived. Ester, who had departed to return to the States (but who lived in Washington, DC for a time, which clearly makes her a kindred spirit) and KC. Both girls attend the same Spanish school that I do.
The school is gorgeous. Unlike the many other Spanish schools that seem to pop-up (or have popped- up) all over Antigua, the school that I attend, Christian Spanish Academy (a former school for missionaries that still seems to attract many people of the faith) is very professional. At every table in the school it is possible for the student to see the sky directly. I, however, have the best table of all. My teacher, Lisa, and I sit at a table in the middle of the modest courtyard surrounded by flowers, bushes, and (after 10 am) the sun. I don't think I've ever learned as well as I have outside. Lisa also tends to have patience with me (which most teachers in the States have lacked). She seems to understand that sometimes I just need to be standing when conjugating verbs. If you are ever looking for a school to learn Spanish, I heartily recommend this one. Note: the teachers don't speak English, you learn entirely in Spanish.
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