This week’s travel dream: You vs. the volcano

The last traces of civilization disappeared as I ventured farther into the “buzzing, humid green” of Nicaragua, said Megan Kimble in the Los Angeles Times. Driving south from the international airport in Managua, “fields of swaying banana trees” flanked the road, their “shaggy fronts bouncing against a blue sky.” I soon looked up and saw the twin conical peaks of Concepción and Maderas “hovering over the horizon.” Together, the two volcanoes form Ometepe, the largest island in Lake Nicaragua, Central America’s largest lake. While Maderas is dormant, Concepción is still known to unleash “ashy belches” and even lava flows. Seeing it for the first time, I wondered why I’d agreed to scale an active volcano but couldn’t turn back now.

After taking an hourlong ferry ride across freshwater-shark-infested Lake Nicaragua, I arrived in Altagracia, the second-largest town on Ometepe. The next day, I awoke at 4 a.m. to meet my guide and then set off hiking into the “dense, humid darkness” of the surrounding rain forest. In the “hazy light” of the rising sun I could just make out rows of coffee bushes, “homes with turkeys strutting through the yards,” and howler monkeys barking from the shiny palms above. As the trail led up the slope, I crouched ever closer to the steep terrain until I was “using my hands as much as my feet.” Mist nearly obscured my way forward, and I had to grab onto “thick, spiny leaves” of a squat plant to hoist myself toward the summit.

While “gusts of wind pummeled my back,” I stayed as low as possible, shimmying on my stomach over the loose rock. A cold, hard wind threw me against the slope, and I could feel the “hot volcano beating beneath me.” When I regained my footing, I finally approached the edge of the crater. As I peered down into the “bowels of hell,” a lone swirl of fog rose wispily from the volcano’s mouth. Concepción turned out to be “more a forlorn Mount Olympus than Satan’s Lair,” but for me it had still been an imposing foe. As I began my nearly 11-hour descent, I “checked ‘climb really tall active volcano’ off my life list.”

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Contact: Nicaragua.com