Day 44 - After yesterday's wedding experience, I felt it was time to do something more in line with my interests -- so I climbed a volcano :) It is named Chikabal, and is about an hour outside of Xela. The volcano is long extinct; the slopes are thickly covered in vegetation and a lake now fills the cauldron. The shores of the lake are a popular place for local Mayan people to have small ceremonies.

I went with a tour group, and along with the guide, we had three young women from Connecticut who were volunteering at an orphanage in Xela, and an older lesbian couple from Oakland -- the latter two rode horses to the top.

The hike was pretty steep and strenous, so it felt good to be stretch my legs and work off some of those tamales! There was a nice mirador (observation platform) from the rim, and then we descended to the lake and walked on a trail circumnavigating it. Along the way I saw a small group of people burning something that looked like brownies and I asked what they were cooking. "It's a religious ceremony" one of them told me. "Oh, lo siento!" I whispered back.

Later in the afternoon, back at Casa Leti & Ilda, I filled them in my activity. They wanted to know how much I paid and I was embarrassed to mention it was 200 Quetzales ($25), which I knew was a lot of money for them -- about as much as Leti earns in a day as a teacher. In fact I was a bit upset myself at having paid so much -- I easily could have done the hike sola with the bike, and moreover we had passed two tourists from Britain who had gone alone. Oh well.

But the funny part came when I mentioned that the two older women were married to each other ("casadas juntas"). Ilda about had a heart attack. "A dios mio, a dios mio, aqui en Xela! Aqui en Xela!" ("Dear God, here in Xela!"), in reference to the fact that they were lesbian. Leti actually had to console her, holding her hand and soothing her! I was holding back laughter at Ilda's response -- it was, comical to watch. But truly sad at the same time.