Travelogues

The beautiful setting of my new home Antigua is a ring of three volcanoes - Acatenango (which translates as "Land of Carrizos" in honour of the material from which local baskets are made) Fuego (Fire) and Agua (Water). The periodic binging of these giants on a destructive cocktail of lava flows, volcanic bombs (globules of lava spat into the air) and pyroclastic ash (exploded and pulverized lava) has paradoxically created vistas of the most fertile beauty and tranquility.

To get face to face with nature at its most contradictory, I this week climbed the erupting Pacaya volcano, which is just over an hour´s drive from Antigua. Our shuttle bus did most of the hard climbing for us, so we had a relatively brief hour and a half hike to reach the lava flow near the crater - small effort for a spectacular pay-off. My fellow hikers munched lava-toasted marshmallows as we steadied each other to carefully walk on and through the lava field. The heat and light of nature at its most elemental can melt millenia of socialisation and strip you back to your most essential being - as living energy resonating to a common pulse.

More prosaically, on the slippy, night-time descent I had frequent cause to gave thanks for my miner´s light and walking stick. The latter had been purchased from one of the assiduous swarm of local children who had greeted our bus and were waiting for us again on our return (to collect as donations the items they had so recently sold us).

On arriving back in Antigua, I learned the denouement of a drama that had been transfixing the nation for weeks. A point of significant personal curiosity for me has been the current general election campaign and what it might say about democracy in Guatemala. Within a few days of my arrival, it was hard not to note that Guatemalans across the country were indeed captivated by a voting fever that saw them rallying overwhelmingly behind one candidate. Voting for this man increasingly seemed to be an expression of blossoming national pride and almost a patriotic duty. My 6 member host family had proudly committed to the mathematically impressive feat of voting at least 100 times for him. Carlos Pena, the centre of this whirlwind of enthusiasm and support, was not however running for a political office - he sought the glossier prize of being voted the next Latin American Idol.

Carlos duly proved victorious in the final over a singer from Mexico - it being particularly sweet for Guatemalans to beat their much resented bigger neighbour. The nation then rejoiced with the same abandon Ireland used to greet its Eurovision triumphs - before we concluded that this was no longer cool. Out of step with my Guatemalan hosts, I have to confess I found the defeated Mexican to be the real hero of the show. Grinning bravely and persistently for the cameras as he congratulated the victor, his eyes screamed the hollow despair of a man gazing into the deep chest cavity from where his heart had recently been ripped.

On Friday afternoon, I caught the famed Chicken Bus to Guatemala City (Guate) to make new friends. Before I had left Ireland I had the timely good fortune to meet Enrique, a Guatemalan living and working in Dublin. Enrique was generous in both his advice and in giving me contact details for his friends in Guate. Additionally, I had been using the travellers` social networking site WAYN. Thanks to both Enrique and WAYN, I was looking forward to meeting 4 new Guatemalatecas that weekend.

As is the norm for unmarried Guatemalans in their twenties, Sissi, Ana, Lucrecia and Karin all still live in the family home. This meant that this weekend I enjoyed the unexpected benefit of also meeting the families of Sissi and Karin, who generously welcomed me into staying at their homes.

I met both Ana (a talented photographer who gave me an impromptu driving tour of the city) and Lucrecia (half way through her medical studies in Universidad San Carlos - Guatemala´s only state university) in the Miraflores mall.

A small museum at Miraflores displays many of the artifacts recovered from Kaminaljuyu, the major Maya city over whose ruins today´s shopping district has been built. I visited the museum on the same day it hosted a Star Wars convention - overtaking Darth Maul on my way to viewing Maya ceramics.

When I later that day met Karin (currently working as a hotel receptionist and counting the days until she returns to live in the UK again) I had the privilege of also meeting Karin´s teenage sister and her sister´s friends. It was heartening to note that teenagers throughout the world are united by both their common concerns - love, sex, school, friends, parents, alcohol, doing what they are told not to - and in crackling with an intelligence, potential and passion that is challenging and invigorating.

Sissi, recently returned to Guatemala after graduating as an engineer from uni in the UK, showed me how well-healed bright young things let their hair down on a Friday night. The 400Q (about $50 or 40 Euro) entrance fee to Fly Party - a Fiesta (party or music gig) held in an old hanger at Guatemala airport - put the event well out of reach of most Guatemalans. Guatemala may be deeply poor, but personal wealth is a passport to a country within a country.

We queued for entry in the dark beside a large, de-commisioned twin-propeller plane - one of the coolest props I have seen at a venue. As Sissi knew the organisers, we soon found ourselves in the VIP section. I have never before been surrounded by so many models - provoking a niggling feeling that I might be something of a genetic pollutant infiltrating the impossibly beautiful.

The pre-main act set list could as easily have been playing in Melbourne, Madrid or Vancouver - much of it even in Limerick 10 years ago (those crazy kids still dance to Blur and Madonna). The main act were a Mexican band called Camilla - which judging by the howls of laughter with which my Spanish teacher Lorena greeted this piece of information, must be the latin equivalent of McFly.

My only other night-life excursion of note was earlier in the week with my new flatmate Michaela. She proposed we toast my arrival in the apartment with liberal shots of Mexcal, a vile tequila variant which I do not recommend. Sometimes described as liquid wasabi, this noxious fluid has a kick that probably cleared my sinuses for the foreseeable future.

We moved to a local bar to continue our toasts with less aggressive beverages (the excellent local Gallo being a world class beer). On leaving the bar I noticed a particularly attractive young woman and threw her what I felt was a harmless appreciative glance. The next day I learned that it is not always clear what constitutes "harmless" in a country with unhealed scars from bloody civil conflict and high rates of gun ownership. Someone else had followed me in expressing appreciation for the same brunette. He has now left the city, persuaded at gun point that he make himself scarce. Flirting can be a high stakes game in Guatemala.