Putin' on the mist...

So today I woke up at 3.45 a.m. to say goodbye to my friend Stephanie. It was almost tearful, and probably would have been if I hadn't still have been sporting my pajama shirt under my hoodie and wondering what bed would be like when I got back in it.

At about 4.30, I returned home (our friend and a teacher here, Juan, was nice enough to play chauffeur that early in the morning). I got back in bed until a leisurely 5.30 a.m. when the alarm went off. Tony and I were to meet everyone in front of the school by 6 a.m. to go on the bus. While Tony and I did wake up with the alarm, our feet did not hit the floor at that hour. Instead, we spent until 5.51 a.m. (no exaggeration) "discussing" whether or not we wanted to go, each of us waiting for the other to back out so we could return to our wonderful land of dreams. (I actually had been dreaming that my parents' house had just caught on fire in the laundry room, but I was willing to take my chances and return to the dream as I pretty much had the blaze under control when the alarm yanked me out of my firefighting at 5.30.)

These nine minutes before our set reunion time, however, proved that neither Tony or I wanted to take responsibility for a missed opportunity to see a new bit of this country, so we hauled over to the school, hopped in the minibus and went off with the school's owners and our fellow students.

The hike was the most challenging I had ever been on, yet just my speed in a way. While the inclines were steep and my legs were quivering with exhaustion, there were no two-inch-wide paths on the side of a homicidal precipice. Heights and I don't get along, so as long as I can't see how high I am, I'm fine. Give me a cliffside "you are here" point of reference, and I become an awkward hurricane of tears and paralysis.

The hike's endpoint was a sacred (Mayan) lake, the name of which escapes me right now, but I'll look for it on Monday when we return to school. We climbed paths through cornfields and sacks of potatoes on the side of the road that wound through a jungle and rainforest-like atmosphere and wondered at the pure brute strength of the farmers and agricultural workers who would have to come up here to work and carry these heavy loads down. Then we were almost hit by the pickup truck on its way down. Mystery solved. (To be fair, though, we did see a man and his son climbing barefoot with hoes in hand on our way down hours later.)

Once at the top of one mountain, we thought we were homefree. We saw the welcome booth to the "park" hosting the lake, and figured that with a five-minute walk, we'd be basking in sacredness. Ah, stupid tourists. After what may have been another 20 minutes of hiking at an uncomfortably sharp and slippery angle, we got to the lokout point, which afforded us views of a nearby volcano (we heard it gargle, but didn't see it as we were walking). Opposite the volcano lookout deck, there was another platform jutting over the mountainside with a look out over the lake. At this point, we felt betrayed, cheated ... and muscle cramps -- we had hiked HIGHER than our watery destination. Not cute.

As a result, we had to walk down a nice little line of over 100 or 150 stairs to get back down to the lake. Here was my "you're this high" point of reference. I handled it expertly, though. Kind of. I didn't weep, and sometimes that's enough for me.

Finally, we reached the lake where we all but collapsed. It was serene and we all lay on our backs on the (mostly white) volcanic rock beach, chatted, watched clouds creep and swirl overhead and chucked stones at each other and at inanimate objects. The body of water filled a volcanic crater and was flat for about five feet into the water, but then dropped down sharply, we were told by our school directors. How deep is it? I learned the Spanish word for "abyss" today.

On our hike back, we took a different path, traversing trails shaded by amazing foliage. Another student likened it to the movie "Fern Gully" for context. We walked under fallen trees covered in vines, past exposed roots of massively titan trunks and at one point -- perhaps the most beautiful part of the hike -- through the mist I wrote about seeing in my first blog entry. I wrote then of how these clouds settled into valleys and snagged themselves on mountaintops, and this time we were actually walking through it.

The way back down felt like the physics of light speed compared to our asthmatic climb to the top. Falling came especially quickly for me, but I recovered nicely. It was a good fall in that I did not fall into a cow pattie or take anyone down with me.

For the rest of the day, I'm anticipating a shower and a nap and then we're meeting a couple friends at the Blue Angel Cafe to watch "The Life of Brian."

Ah yes, and Tony and I just went for some Indian food a few blocks for us. Who knew I would have to come to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala to find the best curry I've ever had? Delightful. More later, take care!