Volcano Santa Maria greeted me with majesty and beauty. With 15 kilos on my back I started to ascend this magnificent mountain. I was hiking with twelve other people, a multicultural group including people from Austria, Sweden, USA, Italy, Israel, Spain and South Korea.
Little did I know what a challenge this volcano would turn out to be for me. If before I have claimed Longs Peak to be physically the most challenging thing I have ever done, compared to Santa Maria that mountain is just walking in the park.
No, Santa Maria is something quite different. She makes you want to catch your breath every other step, she makes you wonder why you ever signed up for something this insane. She also randomly hits people with altitude sickness. I’ve never suffered from altitude before. But hey, I’ve never climbed Santa Maria before.
Let me tell you something; altitude sickness is not nice. Almost halfway up the mountain I felt completely fine, keeping my pace. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit me. I felt really dizzy and disoriented. My vision started to blur and I couldn’t even recognize the people around me. All I could see was bright lights and all I could think of was throwing my guts up.
Luckily, Santa Maria decided, that I would pass the test. Altitude sickness slowly went away and I was able to ascend all the way to the top. And oh man was that worth it!
Now you should know something about Santa Maria. She is not just any volcano. She erupted really badly in 1902, destroying a lot of Xela, the Mayan city next to it. Nowadays it erupts every twenty minutes or so, spitting smoke, gas and lava out. But eruptions are minor, so there is no danger (unless you go too close).
Santa Maria is also a sacred mountain to the Mayans and they often go there to pray, sacrifice chickens – and party. We did not see any sacrificing, but we did experience how the local people spend their nights on Santa Maria – singing, shouting, laughing, banging drums. Pretty much doing anything noisy. And if that hadn’t kept us awake the night, the strong thunder storm with hail would have. Lightings were striking right above our heads.
Early in the morning we woke up to see the sunrise and volcano eruption. It was quite something. And of course the two mountain dogs living there, Santa and Maria, accompanied us our whole time there (especially meal times).
The morning luckily revealed something positive about my fitness; I recover fast. Yesterday’s struggles and nausea was long gone and I didn’t feel the hard exercise at all. I was full of energy and happily almost running down the mountain.
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