A horse I didn't take and a volcano I didn't find

Lately, I've come upon this a lot. People who take one look at me and think, “We want your money and will use your vulnerability as a foreigner to subtly lie and manipulate you into giving it to us.” While I’m not opposed to using this genre of methodology on hapless victims like my brothers (for character definition, see “I’m killing things with my face”, footnote section), I do not care to be the target of it. In fact, I hate being the target of it. It’s like after you get your hair cut, and you’re sitting in the chair astounded at the transformation between the haggled head of hair from an hour ago and the sleek figure in the mirror now, and in this moment of weakness the stylist brings out his/her most sophisticated hair jargon and mixes it with subtle guilt-driving mechanisms – dry hair and broken ends don’t just happen on their own, after all – to make you feel as if the trio of brilliantly expensive conditioning and styling products he/she is suggesting are not just an option but the only option if you ever hope to reveal your hair publicly again. No, I do not care at all for the manipulation over-sell.

So a week ago when I exited the highway and turned into dusty Anguahan, the village nearest to the Volcán Paricutín I’d set out early to climb, I was mildly put off by the cluster of men who, some standing and a few slumped against the wooden posts of a droopy horse-corral, took one look at the girl with a blonde ponytail riding through and swarmed, trying aggressively to coerce me into abandoning my motorcycle right there and renting a horse for the trek to the volcano. Little did they know this easy target was well-equipped; I had a page – the page – torn from my guidebook directing a route through Anguahan, past a giant satellite dish and down to a dirt parking lot where a volcano foot trail began. So not only was I instinctively inclined to ignore these offers, but I had a double-sided piece of fact-checked wisdom telling me that the horses were not necessary (and that the trail they led you on was “longer…and less interesting” than if you went by foot). I signaled a polite ‘no thank you’ and continued.

But ‘mildly put-off’ quickly escalated into ‘highly annoyed’ when one of these very determined horsemen galloped alongside my motorcycle through very narrow dirt streets to the town center, shouting out an unconvincing sales pitch in fragmented English, telling me I wouldn’t even be able to get to the trailhead on the bike. (This, I knew, was untrue). He was riding just enough ahead of me to kick up a cloud of dust so finally I stopped and explained in my best Spanish that as a matter of fact I did not require a horse, I would be driving to the trailhead and then walking to the volcano, and that I didn’t even like horses (true – I was an anomaly as a child growing up in a 4-H town), so thank you and goodbye. He looked back at me as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said, and in English replied, “You can’t get there with a moto,” and trotted off.

So what happened next... I found the dirt lot (entirely accessible by motorcycle), I found a trail, but in 8 hours of searching I did not ever find the volcano. Yes, it sounds strange, like what? Someone threw an enormous camouflage tarp over it? How can you not find a volcano? I don’t know. I just know that I didn’t find it.

Ok, kind of I do know. I went the wrong way… more than once. Constantly, actually.

I started on the horse trail instead of the foot trail (I thought there were the same for the first few kilometers – they weren’t). This wound through a pine forest full of dead ends and loops and confusing detours, so after twice backtracking, and scowling over the part of my page that suggested “a compass might be helpful”, I turned to my woodsman intuitions and started seeking out traces of horse droppings like they were clues from Hansel & Gretel’s basket. Not as easy as you might think – these horses were not well fed. But, hunched and slow-moving, I managed to find my way out of the pines…

The problem then was that in the pine forest there were exotic plants and flowers and other aesthetically pleasing vegetation to entertain my senses, but once outside it was just kind of, well, dull. So I put my country girl hat on, jumped an easy fence, and started off on what I was sure was a more exciting shortcut (and what was really just a divergence from that path that wasn’t even the right path to begin with). This is not much worth going into… suffice to say there is a part of me that thinks that having grown up surrounded by trees and lakes and fields and things, that I can wander off “into nature” anywhere in the world and will eventually drift back into something familiar. Not true. Mr. Bowen’s property lines do not extend this far south. There was some slogging through ashy fields and climbing over lava rock and other dirt-filled activity. Again, not worth going into.

Instead, here we pause for the story of the volcano (because it’s really quite amazing). In 1943, a local farmer was out tending his crops when (according to my page) “the ground began to shake and swell and spurt steam, sparks and hot ash”. What’s funny is that instead of, oh, I don’t know, going to tell someone about it, he tried to cover it up… which obviously didn’t work. Over the next year the volcano grew up out of nowhere to 410 meters (2,800 meters by 1952) and completely covered two nearby villages with its slow but persistent trickle of lava. (Imagine being able to set up a lawn chair and actually watch molten lava destroy your home). No one was hurt, but the towns were clearly destroyed – save for a single church tower belonging to the village of St. Juan. It’s still there today, and this is what I emerged from my “shortcut” to find.

The scene here is really something staggering. Pitch-black rock spread in jagged waves for miles, with a single church tower poking up out of it all (photo at top of page). There was a family from Spain (who’d come on horse) trudging up and down the rocks in deck shoes, but once they’d tired, I had the place to myself. What I found most incredible in wandering around it all is that some devout and seriously motivated locals make the journey to the crumbled remains of the church alter to keep it fresh with flowers and other offerings (or are they called sacrifices? This sound gory. I’m not Catholic. I don’t know the lingo). Now these are people who believe.

I knew that from the church you could get to the volcano (albeit in a slightly backwards way), so I asked a very kindly old man (on a horse, leading two women, each one on a horse) which direction to head out. This turned into a complicated conversation that came to include the use of sticks (for lack of the word “crossroads” in Spanish) and a finger-traced map of the area drawn out on the dusty ground. I could hardly understand a word of his thick, unrecognized accent, but the hieroglyphs I got. Many thanks were extended, and I departed.

I walked for hours along the drawn-in-the-dirt path without seeing another walker (or horse), past roadside alters to the Virgin Guadalupe and goats wandering from who knows where (to who knows where). Twice, a truck passed (despite prior claims by numerous sources that the trail was totally “unreachable” by vehicle): the first time it was going in the opposite direction, and the second time I was aimlessly climbing in the rocks (trying to keep myself entertained after hours of solitude) and couldn’t scramble back quickly enough to hail a ride or even to ask if I was on the right trail. So I continued walking past an endless expanse of black and weaving between small mountains to a destination whose existence I could neither see nor verbally confirm. Finally, there was a sign in the distance…

Volcan ⇑ (2 horas)
Geologico ==> (1 km.)

This was unbelievable. (Two more hours??!) I looked at the time on my camera (for lack of a watch). It was 3:30. Already I’d been walking for 6 hours, which was far outside of anything the page predicted. Even if I made it to the volcano by 5:30, it would be, according to the page, another 3 ½ hours to get back. Which meant that even if I beat all time estimates, I would still be in a race to make it back by dark. Geologico, whatever it was, was only a short kilometer away. And its path seemed to be heading towards what my highly keen sense of direction told me was town.

So while disappointed about having to give up on the volcano, I was delighted with having a new important-sounding destination that was unknown even to the infinite wisdom of the page. The new path was lovely, tra-dee-la, wildflowers flanking me on both sides and birds chirping and nice smells and all those other things that make up pleasant postcard moments. And them WHAM! The record screeched to a halt. I turned a curve to find an enormous metal gate with serious barbed wire extending from it on either side (the gate closed, ironically, with a heavy padlock inscribed “American Lock”). Why, WHY put up a sign for an ambiguous geological attraction when it is barred from entry by a gate suggesting deranged captives or a nuclear reactor explosion. NO! I would not be denied two sights in one day (plus, this seemed like it was the only way back before dark). So I mulled a bit, kicked some dirt, fumed over the thought of the horse-guided folks sipping on margaritas by now, and pulled that country girl hat back out of my sack… there was a tree right next to the gate with a branch low enough on my side to where I could climb up onto it. From there I snaked my way onto a slightly higher one on the opposite side, crossing into the “other side of the fence” airspace, then worked my way down until I was hanging by my hands and able to drop the short foot or two back to the ground (it was nowhere near this graceful, and I actually sat on the tree branch for a few minutes wondering how long it might take for someone to happen by with a key to the gate and/or a ladder).

From here it was more postcard-perfect scenery (taken this time with a drop of caution; I was, after all, on the other side), but it kind of just seemed to keep going… and going… Where was this Geologico? (What was this Geologico, for that matter?) I walked double or triple the promised one kilometer and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Finally, I threw my hands up. This place was nothing but empty promises. I was just about to… well, actually, I don’t know what I was about to do, I didn’t have much of a plan or many options, now being trapped inside quite a lot of barbed wire… but at a good moment, I came around a bend to find two men sitting under a tree – a peach tree! – with a transistor radio spitting out some mix of static and salsa music behind them. I could have kissed them, I was so happy to see other humans! “Anguahan?” they repeated after me (I was finished with Geologico), “Oh yeah, it’s only another kilometer down this path.” Ah! Hoooome freeee. (But why are you looking at me like that… Oh, right, I’m an out-of-bounds American who has infiltrated your security gate and is now likely trespassing on your property. Right.)

I stood for a few moments to offer what I could in the way of Spanish conversation, and they finished by very graciously (considering the circumstances, and my Spanish) handing me peaches fresh off the branch. Thus I continued through the rest of the overgrown grove with the bounce back in my step. There was, of course, another huge fence at the end of the path, but a dog or some other claustrophobic animal had come before me and conveniently dug his way under the fence, so I slipped out that way.

So to finish this long story, I made it back to my bike (whose tires had not been slashed by angry, dejected horseman) and eventually back to my dumpy hotel whose grimy surrounds I was perfectly outfitted for in my veil of dirt and ash. When I finally put the bike to rest for the night, my parking-attendant friend looked me up and down and with a peculiar expression on his face and asked “Where did you go today?” (Followed in his eyes with, “To wrestle with pigs? To volunteer at the garbage heap?”)

“To the volcano.”
“Really!? By yourself!?”
“Yes…”
“Did you get a horse?”
“No.”
“You didn’t!? Did you get to the volcano?”
(Short pause to consider a pride-preserving white lie).
“No.”
“Did you walk?!”
(Ah, stop making those exclamatory questions! Can’t you see I don’t want to talk about it…)
“Yes”.
“Oh, you can’t walk, you must rent a horse.”

No. You can walk. You don’t have to rent a horse. That’s just a manipulative sales pitch. (And okay, if you do, why didn’t someone make that clearer on this PAGE IN MY GUIDEBOOOK?) It’s just that I… well… it didn’t work out this time.

A few days later I sitting on the beach and a horseman appeared to ask if I wanted a ride down the beach. No thank you. I’m fine just where I am.