‘splorin the volcanes

Nicaragua is known as the land of “lakes and volcanoes,” have I mentioned that before? That being the case, it is a goal of mine to climb at least a couple of volcanoes while I’m hanging out here in Nicaragua these two years (down to 1 year now!!! WHAT?!?) I started this out a little more enthusiastically.

“I WILL CLIMB ALL THE VOLCANOES! YEA IT WILL BE LIKE A GOAL AND STUFF”

-Bright eyed, optimistic, training Jessica

“Ok, that’s like, infinity”

-Jessica when she found out how many there are (19 active ones. a million inactive)

“I’m never doing this again!”

-Jessica when she was climbing her first volcano

San Cristobal- An Experience to never be repeated

 Last September I got it in my crazy head to go ahead and climb San Cristobal. THE TALLEST ACTIVE VOLCANO IN CENTRAL AMERICA!!! I live right underneath it, and I do feel pretty accomplished as I walk to school, look that volcano right in the 45 degree slope, and say “yea, I climbed you.”   The hike wasone of the toughest I’ve done, but that wasn’t what had me terrified near the top. This intense, steep, 1745m hike, turns to straight volcanic ash for the last 4 hours of the hike. This had me and the rest of my group dodging falling ash and rocks knocked loose by those ahead of us, trying to trudge along without losing the our unmarked way, and trying not to roll down the incline ourselves. To make things even better we made the brilliant decision to go during rainy season and a giant cloud rolled in. You could see nothing in front of, the faint footprint in the ash was my only guide. It was the eeriest thing. Each step my body told me “DONT GO ANY HIGHER! TURN AROUND! RUN!” but it’s not like I could find my way down. I knew if we didn’t make it down before the rain came we might get washed away, or worse, struck by lightening. This is the end, I thought. I also made a deal with God if he got me down I’d never go up again, so I’m not.

As if I needed any more reason than that, I got another sign people are not meant to be on that volcano a few weeks later as I was leaving on of my rural schools. I was chatting with a profe when the volcano let a giant, dark, cloud of smoke and ash. It stretched up high into the sky and was not like anything I had ever seen. In the past I had thought “omg! Is that a little mini erruption?” in pure naivety, because when San Cristobal does a “little erruption” YOU KNOW! My teacher was just like, “hmmm… I should call someone so they can come check that out. Here sit down for a second, I’ll buy you a hotdog.” So there I sat, in the shadow of a volcanic eruption, snacking on a nica hotdog. That, my amigos is a  #peacecorpsmoment for sure.

Nothing happened, it just spit ash for a while and my hot, dusty, hellish city became a hot, dusty, hellish city covered in volcanic ash.