There were a few more trucks from other tour companies there with us and several groups preparing to make the ascent.
“Where is the bathroom?” someone yelled out from the crowd.
“Everywhere!” one of the guides laughed, widely gesturing with his hand.
Randomly, I headed towards some bushes, only to find a few girls already squatting there. Apparently, my instinct for finding a woman’s bathroom in the wild is better than in the cities, where I am famous for accidentally walking into a bathroom and wondering why there are urinals.
Finally, giant backpacks mounted on our backs, we started our ascent. The only other traveler in our group was Celia, a young French girl who had been traveling around Latin America for almost a year. It turned out that one of our guides was from France as well, a tall young man who other guides nick-named “Tiger Maluma” because of the orange stripes in his hair and an uncanny resemblance to the good-looking Colombian singer. They chatted in French and while I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, this melodic language was a perfect background soundtrack to the imposing beauty of the volcano. The higher we climbed over jagged rocks on an unsteady path, the larger the white cloud over our heads grew.
Our other guide turned around and said something in Spanish to Victor.
“He said… This cloud is the volcano.” Victor said, uncertainly.
What could this possibly mean? Was it just a case of bad translation?
We kept climbing.
Only an hour later, we were at the edge of the crater, and everything became clear. Well, visibly everything became murky because of the giant puffing smoke pouring out of the crater and into the “cloud” above. The cloud was the volcano. Literally.
Gingerly, I walked up to the very edge and peeked in. The crater was exhaling smoke, thick and suffocating, it covered the ground and billowed up towards the sky, making it impossible to see anything. I backed up, my head spinning, a bit from excitement and fear, but mostly from the acrid smell. The guides waved to us to follow them – we had to keep going if we wanted to catch the sunset. We left our backpacks by the crater and headed around the mountain, to the west side.
We’ve been lucky to see some incredible sunsets in our lives and this one, with the red sun swimming through volcano smoke above a dramatic mountain range, is solidly in the top five. We sat silently for twenty minutes, while the sky changed from dusky grey to hazy pink to brilliant red, and then darkness crept in. If there were stars and moon in the sky, they were well covered by volcano smoke, and it was hard to see the uneven path as we walked back to our backpacks. At the crater once again, we stood on the edge, expecting to see nothing but the milky fog.
Suddenly, something shifted in the crater. The smoke momentarily dissipated and in the vast blackness, we could see red. Bubbling, scorching lava.
“Oh my God,” Celia whispered, fumbling for her phone. I reached for my camera. None of us were able to take a usable picture, it was too dark and hazy for any camera to focus properly. I stopped myself from trying to focus the camera manually. Enjoy the moment, I thought to myself, live in the moment. This was our first time seeing lava and even though it lasted no longer than ten seconds, it was seared into my memory forever.
In the darkness, guided by the light of headlamps, we trekked towards the campsite. There, we met another tour group of about twenty college-aged Dutch men and a few young couples from Europe. After setting up our tents, we warmed up by the campfire, while our guides prepared a quick and delicious dinner of tacos with beans and salad, followed by toasting marshmallows over the campfire. We sat around the fire, trading stories with other couples, most of whom, as it turns out, had been traveling through Latin America for months. Nicaragua in general, and Telica Volcano in particular, is no place for an accidental tourist. If the country itself is “off the beaten track”, then camping on top of a volcano is “off-off the beaten track”, and is mostly accessible to the young, the adventurous, and the free. And while, of course, we are still young and adventurous, the fact that we only had two weeks of vacation time and were able to come here, made me feel incredibly lucky.
We woke up at 4:30 am, after a surprisingly restful night in the tent, to catch the sunrise before heading down the mountain. Part of me didn’t want to leave so soon. I wanted to sit by the edge of the crater and catch glances of lava bubbling below, I wanted to watch the shifting sunlight on the surrounding landscape, and really, I just wanted to keep on hiking. But another part of me wanted breakfast. And so, we hiked down and after an hour of bouncing around in the truck, we were back at the “Volcano Day” headquarters, chomping down on the traditional breakfast of rice, beans, eggs, salty cheese, and plantains. If I could change one thing, I would change “Volcano Day” to “Volcano Week”. But if I could change two things, I would come back to Nicaragua for a second time and hike every volcano they have.
