42. Floating in Retard spaceship - Ometepe, Nicaragua
I spot her from afar. It’s 7.05 when we arrive and she is standing next to our excuse of a tourguide up Volcano Concepción. A German girl of unsound proportions. She is extremely tall, skinny. Her skin is pale, with some red and insect bites. Her legs, barely covered by some very short sports seem to go all the way up to her chest. I find her very non-attractive; and I find myself wondering why. There is nothing evidently wrong with her. Come to think of it she has pretty much my figure. Noticing this I ponder whether should I in fact ever meet my female anatomical equivalent - would I be attracted to her or not? Sitting on the bus I comment how I never fit into these damn seats and she evidently has exactly the same problems, her legs turned towards the corridor. Iguana looks at us like we are some kind of German Puppenkiste.
We arrive. All the gringos get off the bus and start hike-run-walking. We are the last. The trail leads through some forest and offers beautiful plants and birds. We hear the typical alpha screams of howler monkeys, mixing with the screech of blue jays and ugly raven like black birds that offer a remarkable spectrum of different melodies and sounds. We have a DIY breakfast on a gigantic ceiba tree.
It’s 30something in the shade. The tourguide gets pushy, German giant girl is running forward at insane velocity as if the volcano had limited seating, Iguana is behind oozing natriumchloride into her garments and I am sandwiched in between trying to keep up with my anatomical equivalent without deserting my increasingly sigliquicant other.
3 hours later. The final treeline. Shade. Wind. Cool. Lunch break. Iguana puts on her indecision face staring into invisible hyperspace. I can literally hear the song in her head “Should I stay or should I go?” in a trash minimal acid version. Guidepush. We continue our march up the steep uncovered grass level. After 5 minutes Iguana SMILES and proclaims she is turning back. No hint of regret or shame, she beams with joy like a Uranium doll. She is off to find her moral side adventure with a Nicaraguan kid called Junior.
The rest of us continue up the steep path. First it’s earth with grass, then dust and rocks. The red ones are solid, the grey ones boogie. No more grass, we crawl up on all fours. Next level: No solid rocks, just moving rubble - how do you surf uphill? Looking back down everything is tiny, even German giant girl appears to be a little grasshopper. Things get STEEP, but also solid. Don’t think. Don’t imagine fractured skull, broken ankle, burned skin. DON’T. 2 hours later the peak is in sight. Blink. I am on the crown. This day - unlike most - there are no clouds and visibility is perfect. I can look all the way into the crater, from where fumes are rising up reeking of sulpher.
A girl walks towards me along the volcano rim with her arms stretched out for balance, a smirk on her face as she guides her body over the ridge with her gaze fixed at an imaginary star behind me. Are suicide-selfies a clinical symptom of a death wish? People like to see themselves in danger to imagine themselves in the beyond? I notice imagining you are invincible and already excepting defeat essentially imply the same freedom: Not giving a fuck.
Along the crater rim I spot tiny people in the distance and at first am shocked as to what risks they must have taken to walk along the crater, from where steep precipitous falls loom and promise death. I learn they took other trails up and must be thinking the same when they see me as a glimmering dot of turquoise.
The view down from the volcano is absurd. We are standing on a platform floating above the rest of the island like a RETARD SPACESHIP. The island itself emerges out of the centre of a gigantic lake whose edges in turn are visibly surrounded by land. This all within Nicaragua which itself is trapped between the pacific and the atlantic ocean. Air trapped by land trapped by water trapped by land trapped by water. The whole concept of surface becomes a mind fuck. I am floating above it all tempted to just drift out into space.
Guidepush. I learn there is gravity here, going down is way more tricky then going up. All the way down is a giant slideshow. The view is rather scary. Quickly I am overtaken by an American guy around 55. It’s semi-controlled sliding. Just find the next stop to your slide and surf it down. Pebbles in my shoes.
down down down we go and everybody falls on their bum, German girl drops 3x right in front of me as her insane energy finally runs out. There is significant blind luck involved in not getting hurt on this trail. In fact we were advised some gringo slipped the other day and got carried down with a lot of torn skin, a shoulder injury and a skull fracture.
The further we get, the more the guide keeps pushing for speed - all day he has been stressing us. "Why are you in such a rush?" I ask him. Now I learn the truth: It’s all because of the bus! If we miss the bus, we have to pay 1 extra Dollar for the ride home. Now that clearly is more important than us not breaking an ankle. #worsttourguideinthehistoryoftime
I arrive back in our shelter, destroyed. Iguana had the best day. She sat down in a café and found the world’s best homemade cookies; and mango-papaya smoothies.
