That´s the volcano I climbed a couple of weeks ago!
I finally understand what Huxley was talking about when he wrote, “Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing. After a few days of this impossible landscape one finds oneself thinking nostalgically of the English Home Counties.” [from Beyond the Mexique Bay, 1934]
I don’t know about those last couple of sentences, but I agree with his first statement. I hadn’t really seen it until this past weekend, because of all the clouds and rain since I’ve been here! But today was glorious. A perfect day for a hike, which the school had in fact planned. We scaled the “Nariz de Indio”, so called because the set of mountains I’m standing on looks remarkably like the profile of a horizontal face. We climbed the highest peak, the “nose of the Indian”. It was a perfect hike. Strenuous, lots of elevation gain, great views.
I didn’t believe it at first, but Lake Atitlán is a caldera from a volcano that exploded 84,000 years ago. The ashes from that eruption have been found as far away as Florida and Ecuador. The lake filled in this sunken hole, and is fed by underwater springs. There is no known outlet for the lake, it is believed that there are underwater rivers that lead elsewhere. The depth is another mystery – it has been sounded as deep as 1,000 feet, but is believed to be much deeper. Crazy. The water level also fluctuates quite a lot. Just in the month I’ve been here, I’ve watched it rise several feet. A cabaña I used to study under is now in several feet of water because of all the rain. Mayan settlements have been found 60′ underwater, demonstrating that at certain times, the water level was that low to allow villages to build by what was then the shoreline. At the other extreme, some of the old-timers remember when they could swim from a deck that is now 60′ from the lake. Scary, since several hotels are now built where the water was 20′ deep only 30 years ago. They may get washed away in 20 years.
After the hike a few of us went to “Los Termales”, hot baths that are heated strictly by solar energy. I can’t believe how they could get them so hot (I’d guess about 101°F) with only the sun heating the pipes. Anyway, the baths were good for the muscles after the hike.
