Beacoup de lavaaa

This. Was. The. BEST. Weekend. EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Seriously.

This weekend would have to rank up there on the top five most awesome experiences of my life, I could go on and on. And I´m about to, so brace yourself. IIIIIII hiked a volcano this weekend, and it was awesome...did I say that yet?

Allright obnoxious enthusiasm aside...I went on a trip with the group Quetzaltrekkers (a group of volunteer hikers who organize hikes on volcanos around Nicaragua and donate their profits to the project I work for, Las Tias...I´ve mentioned them before because I was planning on working with them, but found my other job instead) to Volcan Telica, which is pretty close to Leon. We met up on Saturday early in the morning to pack bags and grab breakfast before taking the bus to the start of the hike. There were three of the Quetzaltrekkers volunteers (the way they do it is that each volunteer has to go on a hike twice before they lead it, so two of them were in different stages of training), a couple from Quebec who has been traveling around Central America for months, a guy from the Netherlands who has been doing pretty much the same, a guy from England who is basically an intern there and is in Leon for a few weeks volunteering with the cosmetic surgery branch of the hospital here, anddd me! We took the bus to a random place in the middle of nowhere, walked through a town and through a gate and right into this field of boiling mud pits! I´ve never seen mud boil before, it was pretty sweet...I felt like I should throw in some pasta or something. A kid from the town stuck his finger in the mud pit (braaave soul) and let us all take some. It was still super hot and I´m pretty sure he wanted us to smear it all over our bodies, saying it was great for the skin. Everyone politely declined, unaware that in a few seconds we would be coated with a layer of dusty mud from the trail anyway. So we started off on the hike, which was not (as I expected) a 7 hour hike up a volcano, but a 7 hour hike to the BASE of a volcano (which was actually pretty small and only took like 10 minutes to hike up). It was a beautiful hike though, first stop was under a lemon tree, second stop under a mango tree, third stop under a lunch tree (perhaps not the technical name, but at the end of the most burly vertical part of the hike, it was the most beautiful lunch tree I´ve ever seen), and last stop looking up at an active, steaming volcano. While intense, the hike wasn´t too bad, and it was AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME to be with a bunch of people that spoke English! Everyone was super friendly and open and it was really sweet to get to know everyone. We reached where we were going to sleep for the night, a really pretty clearing right at the base, set up camp and then hiked up to the crater of the volcano. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. It was pretty much a straight up hike of loose tumbling rocks, probably not my most graceful moment but once you belly crawled the last few feet right to the edge, it was AMAZING. You´re on your belly peering down into this huuuuge put from which smoke is pouring upwards (with a lovely stench of sulfur)...I was definitely in awe. We scrambled down and walked around the volcano to see the sunset and then went back to camp to make a fire and hang out some more. Ate some dinner, played some Mafia (suprisingly fun, I hadn´t played for years), and then around 11pm went back up the volcano! Ahhh if I thought climbing up a volcano during the evening was cool/kick ass/hard, walking up in the pitch black was an even more...thrilling, scary, WOWWW experience. A few of us were feeling sort of lazy when two people set off to hike up during the night, so we stayed back (you know, after spending a few hours relaxing by a fire at the base of a volcano you get a little jaded by the fact that you´re BY AN ACTIVE VOLCANO). But the guy from Quebec radiod down and all I heard was "beacoup de lavaaaa" and I was ready. So most of the rest of us scrambled up after them and DUDEEEE....real lava. It was really far down and you had to wait for the smoke to clear but there it was, redish orangish bubbling lava (last eruption of this volcano was 2004). That was probably the most breathtaking part of the trip for me. We climbed down and everyone craaaashed, long day. Woke up in the morning before sunrise, which was pretty astounding to see from near the volcano, and started the hike back down.

So here´s where everyone is probably thinking "So Alysse went on a trip, but had no problems??? This can´t be quite right"...and you would be correct. About ten minutes into the hike on Saturday up to the volcano I started feeling a little hint of blister on the back of both feet. About ten minutes later I started feeling a hint of the lack of a blister and the presence of raw skin on the back of both feet. Everytime we took a break I wrapped and rewrapped and rebandaged the backs of my feet, which would help for about five minutes until the mix of sweat and dusty mud would undo all efforts. By the time we got to the campsite my feet were screamiiiiiing "GET US OUT OF HERE", but at the same time my mind was screaming "DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE, THIS IS AWESOME", so I rebandaged and was fine. The next morning I did a superb job with about 10 layers of bandage, tape, mole skin, fancy British blister thingey, more tape...hoping that would do the trick. It did for a good hour, mostly because I couldn´t feel my ankles anymore...but soon enough I was literally throwing one foot in front of the other and moving at a snails pace. The back of my feet hadn´t been blistered for about 15 hours now, they were way past blistered and rapidly losing layers of skin...which was a stupendous sensation. After trudging along for a good amount of time, I made a spectacular decision...lost the shoes and put on my flip flops. AHHH relief!!! So the rest of the hike was pretty spectacular, I never thought I´d hike down from a volcano in flip flops but it actually wasn´t bad at all, and I moved about a million times faster. When we got to the bottom we had lunch at a comedor and headed back to Leon, sweaty, stinky, dirty, tired and happy. So skip through goodbyes, and see you laters, and fast forward to when I took the bandages off the back of my heels and tried to wash the dirt out of my wounds...only to realize that the dirt was actually now part of my body and wasn´t budging. I tried to tell my family that it was just that I was now "one with the earth", mostly because pouring water over my ankles KILLED and the thought of any more effort to remove the dirt made my stomach queasy, but they didn´t buy it. Soon I was equipped with an antibiotical creme, some other polmade thing, pills for pain and sterilized gauze...and was sitting with my foot proped up on my hermano Carlo´s lap (have I mentioned that he´s a doctor...okay well medical student, but he had a prescription pad to prescribe antibiotical creme and plastic gloves so we´ll go with doctor) while he told me to brace myself. Miriam and I started chatting while Carlos got ready to ravage my dirty, possibly soon to be infected ankle wounds and the conversation went something like this as he scrubbed and washed and scrubbed and SCRUBBED:
Me: YEOOOOOW!!!
Miriam: AIYYY...okay okay that looks terrible, let´s talk let´s talk look over here...how was the trip???
Me: Okay okay, it was good there were a lot of peopleacoupefromQuebecwhowerereallyniceAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH It was really fun I got to see the lavaatnightwhenitwasdarkAHHHHHHH CARLOS I HATE YOU I HATE YOU And there was a guy from Britain who´s a doctor andworkingwhereCarlosstudies AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CARLOS I DON´T NEED MY FEET PLEASE NO MORE NO MORE...

and on and on until I limped away with cleaner, antibiotic-ized feet. SO while this weekend was still one of the best, most amazing weekend of my entire lifetime and the foot issues didn´t take away from the weekend at ALL...I´m having a lovely time limping around Leon now with sweet gauze bandages on the backs of my feet...warding off predictions that I´m going to have an infection etc etc. Luckily I´m still on a high from such a great time so I could care less. Let´s see...a little over a week left of work, some traveling and then home! I hope everyone is doing well...love you all and can´t wait to see you!