Finally packed with what I thought were far too many jackets and socks –
as I knew for a fact that I would be an icicle at that altitude regardless of
how many layers I wore – we headed off in a taxi towards the station and our
tour.
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| View |
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| Forest |
“What’s wrong?!”
Note to Self: Smile needs some work. “Um. There are no doors.”
“But it’s facing the forest.”
“But there are no doors.”
“Was there someone looking at you?”
“There. Are. No. Doors.”
I didn’t think I could be any more clear or rational, but our taxi driver, lead ranger, and guide couldn’t stop chuckling as they registered us for the hike.
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| Gradient from Hell |
This confusion lasted through the registration of the other hikers and questions as to what we’d packed.
“Do you have a cook?”
What, in my bag?! Or maybe this white girl?!
I didn’t realize that if we’d paid for the tour agency to provide food, it would also come with a cook who would make the trek with us. Once this was all worked out, including the fact that my friend and I would carry our own supplies (the ‘stupid idea’ that the other Dutch woman had noted), we headed up in a large group including two mothers of two and two children around the ages of 7 and 12.
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| Strong, silent park ranger |
I was dead last. As in, over an hour behind everybody else – including the hired porters weighed down with food, water, pots and pans, and clothing. The last two hours of the 6-hour hike were spent in a state of constant cramping of both my thighs. I literally could not either stand or crouch, and the incline made it impossible for me to give my muscles relief. I would take a few steps, try not whimper as my muscles and knees locked up, and aim for relatively less steep ground upon which I could keel over like an arthritic stick insect - at which time the cramp would spread to my butt and I would jackknife up again.
I was accompanied by an armed, taciturn park ranger who mainly spoke Swahili. He didn’t say a word every time I stopped (literally every few seconds), found me stick in the forest to lean on (I’d initially thought he was just making good his escape), repeatedly asked if he could carry my backpack (only if I went into rigor mortis), and had a minor stroke every time I fell over and then clawed my way to my feet again (likely thinking I would do myself harm – the joke was on him as I literally could not do any more harm to myself than my thighs were enthusiastically experiencing, unless perhaps I decided to give birth halfway up a volcano). Thankfully, he started laughing and become much friendlier once I started rambling in fugue state of agony.
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| Gradient from Hell - Take II |
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| Cooking hut jointly claimed by America and pirates |
“…I don’t know.”
“ ‘My God, my God, why have you left me?’ Right?”
“…I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m not sure about Swahili, but this is probably close to what he says in French… ‘My God, my God, why have you left me?’ ”
“…Really? Jesus said that on the cross?”
He was laughing but, unsure of my ability to handle a spiritual crisis while facing paraplegia, I abruptly headed towards a different rabbit hole.
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| The world's largest lava lake |
He laughed uproariously. “Why would you ask that?!”
“Because there must be some danger. Or do you just carry that to scare mzungus?”
More laughter. “The gun is to help me walk. Apana – I cannot leave you. You will not go back. Courage! You can do this.”
And this is how he went from being the quietest member of our group to the most positive and genteel – pulling me up by the elbow and wrist, offering me balm for my thighs, murmuring that we were so close, dragging me to easier paths, giving me goals and encouragement. However, he did want to know one thing.
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| The toilet |
“How old are you?”
“…97.”
Hearty chuckles.
“150.”
More laughter. “20?”
Then it was my turn.
Tired of my ineffectual rubbing at my aching thighs, at one point he literally grabbed my legs and gave me a few brisk rubdowns to the knee. As a rabid feminist raised in a traditionally Indian household, I meep’d and hoped this wasn’t a prelude to rape because I just wouldn’t know how to explain to Carrottop how I was incredibly out of shape and yet still loved to hike and carry my own bags and one thing led to another…
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| The view from the toilet. (FYI, I'd rather see the back of a door.) |
On the last, steepest stretch of rock just before the lip of the crater where our cabins beckoned like miniature suburbia, the sweet 7-year-old came down to let me know that the view at the top was totally worth it.
It was. So we sat and watched the molten lava wave and curl, etch golden continents and break, burn and flower crimson for over an hour that night while our breath caught in tendrils around us, as covetous as any dragon.
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| The lava lake in the morning |
I paid $300 for this, I thought, wrestling it back down where it belonged to wait for the foggy dawn.
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| Our cabins between the two craters |
The hike back down offered a few near-scrapes, but – though I fully expected to make a spectacular fall down a stretch of the mountain – my thighs held up well. To my surprise, I wasn’t even as sore as I usually am after a hike; I think my legs were in shock that I’d continued hobbling 2 hours after they’d let me know on no uncertain terms that they wanted to go home. By that point, my friend’s shoes were tied on with some help from a Spanish Principe Encantador, duct tape, and shoelaces, but to see her go, you would think she was at a ball. In the same situation, I would have just laid down and begun rolling – the ensuing tears and blood could have only made the trip downhill faster.
We all made it in the end - though the park ranger I fondly thought of as mine went far ahead to escape babysitting duty – and I had a great conversation with our tour guide about faith, encouragement, and our duty as Christians.
To top it all off, the sweet 12-year-old wanted to sit beside me a few times to ask about piercings and tattoos. Is it every geek’s secret dream to be a cool aunt or is it just me?
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