Rocking that *International* Paradise

Although I had climbed Volcan de Atitlan (the highest of the three volcanoes at Lake Atitlan), two years ago, the fact that Rachel and Christy and I planned last weekend’s trip to do it again all on our own made it seem like a brand new adventure.  Our first order of business was to decide how exactly to arrive at San Lucas Toliman, the town we’d hike from.  We decided to drive directly to the town, rather than driving to Panajachel and taking a boat across the lake, and therefore, we had to gamble on which roads leading to the lake would be least full of potholes.  After much deliberation, and after getting the opinions of multiple people, we took the way the app Waze said would be half an hour shorter than the other two options.  This southern route meant no winding through the mountains, no traffic jam passing through Chimaltenango, and best of all—a brand new landscape that none of us had seen before.  And we lucked out—only about a 3km stretch of the road we took had any poth

I’m really not great with technology.  I am constantly on my computer or attached to my phone, yes, but when it comes to how things work, I rely almost entirely on techie friends.  So, you can imagine the pure dread that went through me about a month and a half ago when my computer started making strange noises, froze, and then the “blue screen of death” popped up asking me to restart the computer.  But worse…when I did that, this disturbing message popped up: Insert full-blown panic.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that “life” is saved on my computer.  And it’s true—I have a lot of memories, both in picture and journal format, saved in electronic files.  (Thankfully most of my digital materials for work are saved on the school computer or in the cloud, so that was less of an issue).  Fortunately, as I mentioned before, I have techie friends.  I sent a few frenzied photos to them on my phone, and they succeeded in calming me down.  No, the world wasn’t e

It was on the way to hike Santiaguito, the most active volcano in Guatemala, that I asked Rachel, “Will this be the 13 th Guatemalan volcano that you’ve hiked, too?”  It was.  Lucky #13 for both of us.  Knock on wood that our 13 th wouldn’t be our last! Rachel, Russell, and I were mostly excited, but all a little nervous to be hiking Santiaguito, “Guatemala’s youngest and most dangerous volcano.” [1]  The volcano erupts nearly every hour, and we planned to sleep right next to the crater, crossing our fingers that the wind wouldn’t blow the wrong way and shower us with flying rocks and lava.  Our friend Ben, a guide from Quetzaltrekkers, had hiked it before and was excited to take us up.  He assured us that the hike was “More of an adventure than just a trek,” and estimated it would take us 8 hours of hiking each way.  That’s a long trip, when you consider that our group can generally make it to the top of any volcano here in Guate in 4-6 hours.  But we were totally up fo