Holy Santa Maria

Yesterday at noon we got back from climbing Santa Maria. What an incredible hike! We started with good hot soup at Quetzaltrekkers at 11pm. All the guides, except one, have these cool German or Dutch accents, so it´s fun to listen to them talk even when they don´t say anything interesting. I found that I couldn´t talk with the American guide because it was too boring. Then the 20 of us piled into the back of two pickups (trust me, they have the transport of huge gobs of humanity in tiny vehicles down to a science here) for a short ride to the base of Santa Maria. Basically, it´s in the ´burbs of Xela, which means a decent number of stand-alone concrete block houses along a dirt road. We woke up all their dogs and roosters with our arrival and shedding of layers as we transitioned from the cold of the pickup to the heat of the climb. There was a thin layer of clouds, but it didn´t look like it would last. Two hours of easy climbing, during which we talked to this great guy named Kevin, who guides rafting trips in the summers along the middle fork of the Salmon, and then does whatever-the-hell the other seasons. Currently, he was on his way back to California after riding his motorcycle to Panama. On his four month trip, he liked to climb the highest mountains around (there´s Tacamulco in Guat, the highest point in centroamerica, but the night hike thing is alluring on Santa Maria). I bet he sells out soon and becomes a blood-sucking lawyer, but he´s still cool for now. After that, there was about 3 more hours of very steep hiking. It was great, though. Our packs were light, and the stars were coming out, and we could see all the lights of Xela and surrounding pueblos. If I haven´t mentioned before, Xela is fricking huge. I think something like 120,000 people live there, but basically it completely covers the bottom of a big, flat bowl surrounded by mountains. So it was cool to look down on that. We got to the top before sunrise, and were welcomed by a deep rumbling and hissing as Santiaguito erupted gas and vapor and probably sent some pumice airborn. Ana, our head guide, said ¨Ya, der are too kinds off wulcaanos, and dis iss vun off they more blowing-up kind.¨ She went on to describe all kinds of stuff that I don´t really remember, but that I listened to with rapt attention. Santa Maria used to be enormous, until in 1902 it erupted violently, blowing an entire side of itself off into the sky and killing between 5-10,000 people. The Guatemalan president at the time denied that it happened, so it is hard to know exact statistics. Today, Santiaguito is all that is left of the other rim of Santa Maria, and it erupts every half hour or so. We could see little specks of glowing lava in the dark. Then the sun came up, bringing an fantastic sunrise, and we could look along the entire chain of volcanos, all the way to Tacamulco, all poking their heads above a layer of clouds that we ourselves were above. We had some hot coffee and tea, some took naps, and then we hiked down in the daylight, getting a chance to see all the vegetation and landscape that we had passed unknowing in the night. At the bottom, we took a chicken bus (aptly named for one of many species of fauna you´re likely to encounter onboard. You basically cram into the seats and eat your knees, because there is ALWAYS room for more passengers. But they come with amazing frequency, are astonishingly reliable and colorful, both in paint jobs and passengers, and cost between $0.13 and $0.52 no matter how far you´re going) back to Xela. Mariam and I proceeded to sleep for the rest of the day and night, waking only to eat lunch and dinner. Mariam is feeling a bit crappy today, maybe because of the toll of hiking 9 hours, all night, when normal people are sleeping, but she is recovering quickly. Plus her teacher´s father is a doctor, so she gets great medical advice in class.
This weekend we are definately going to the local soccer match, and then the big market in Chichicastenango on Sunday. And I cancelled my crummy subscription to MLB.TV, which sucked. So no more Sox games for me. All you readers can leave Sox updates in comments, if you´d be so kind.