TRAVEL FOR INNER GROWTH: SMH TRAVELLER
The things we thought we’d never do: Nina Karnikowski writes about her experience sleeping atop an active volcano in Guatemala.
Despite being mildly acrophobic and a catastrophiser from way back, there I was. Attempting to sleep on top of Guatemala's Acatenango volcano, inside a thin nylon tent, in the middle of an electrical storm.
My heart was racing from lack of oxygen (we were, after all, at 3700 metres). The ground was vibrating with each clap of thunder. My legs ached from hiking to this point for five gruelling hours earlier that day. As I wriggled out of my soggy sleeping bag and crawled to the front of the tent, I asked myself for perhaps the 17th time that night: why on earth did I decide to do this?
The decision, in fact, had not come easily. I oscillated between "yes" and "no" with each story of delight or horror I heard from other travellers.
"No", when the woman on the plane said the trek up Acatenango was so difficult her toenails fell off. "No", when the young Canadian described the (not-uncommon) experience of suffering from severe altitude sickness at the top. "Yes", ultimately, when the German bartender in Semuc Champey told me, "you can really just … feel God up there."
I'm not religious but I was searching for something profound. And when I unzipped the tent flap that night, there directly opposite me that profound thing was: Acatenango's volatile sister Fuego, one of the most active of Guatemala's 37 volcanoes, shooting fluorescent orange magma into the inky sky.
My fingers shook with a mixture of excitement and fear as I tried to photograph the explosions. I sat there for a long time, mesmerised by the lightning cracking across the sky and the eruptions of molten stone.
I felt afraid, sure. But I also felt more alive, and more connected to the earth, than I had in a long time. And if that's not a reason for doing more things in life that scare us, then I'm not sure what is.
This story was part of a larger cover story, and first appeared in print and online here