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Permalink Reply by Shaman on March 7, 2009 at 9:21pm

Gorgeous pics! It's so amazing how these overgrown hills always scrape the sky so gracefully. It sounds like you had quite an adventure in your volcano hiking. Don't let those bad experiences discourage you. Do more homework and pick safer hills next time. Although you can't predict all dangers, you can usually identify mountain ranges and hiking routes that have tenuous or bad reputations, such as the ones you described (where dangers facing foreigners were already well-known).

Although I love the big hills in the sky, I actually haven’t spent much time hiking in elevation. I spend most of my hiking journeys in foot hills, low-elevation and valleys. But when I lived in Panama in the 1980s, I did spend some time hiking in the foothills of Vulcano Baru, which is the second largest mountain in Mexico (an anthill compared to Mt. Everest). Baru is nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean in northern Panama, right along the border of Costa Rica.

My first wife and I would drive up to Baru from just outside of Panama City, where I was stationed on a military base along the Canal, and we’d hike and eat and hopscotch the local communities. Back down in Panama City, I also had great bicycling partner with iron lungs from California, and he and I would ride up and down the foothills near Arraijan (the hilly. lush green countryside adjacent to the Canal). But Panama, unlike the islands of the Pacific, is not known for its tiny mountains.

Also, many years later, in early 2001, my second wife and I flew to Mexico to visit some ancient ruins and to hike the foothills of Popocatepetl, the notorious volcano just outside of Mexico City. Sure enough, just days before we arrived Big Popo blew her top again and tens of thousands of people were evacuated. No hiking for us. And so instead we backpacked in Mexico City for a few days and peeped some ancient ruins and temples in the area. Then we headed to Vera Cruz before catching a bus across the gorgeous and catcus-studded Sierra Madra mountain range, which took us down deep into the Valley of Oaxaca.

We did a great deal of hiking down in the Valley (where it's cooler). Oaxaca is also home to the early Zapotec civilization, which goes back at least 500 years before Christ. Aside from hiking and investigating ancient ruins, we really enjoyed hanging out at the zocalos (town squares) where the wonderful indigenous folks sold their colorful arts and crafts, and women cooked hot spicy food in outdoor stalls along the square, and men wearing big sombreros strummed guitars and sang into the wee hours of the morning under the Valley's moon.

We didn’t encounter any problems on these trips. Indeed, we rarely encounter criminal activity or hostility in our adventures (and together we've been to over 5 continents, 20 countries and 35 US states). With exprience comes wisdom, We've learned to plan our journeys and our routes with extreme care (geography, climate, food and hydration, risk levels, medical care access, money storage, map, compass, etc) and we work very closely with local communities (in advance), and we constantly gather information as we move about. Very often we literally work on assignment (I'm a writer, my wife is a health researcher) in the same countries where we travel. And so this usually gives us a rare intimacy with the local community that you typically don’t get as a vacationer. But again, you can't foresee every possibility even when you know the local people,

All you can do is plan ahead and enjoy the journey. And like the ancient Tao teaches, just flow like water.

Permalink Reply by Shaman on March 10, 2009 at 1:36pm

I meant to add a two pics of Popocatepetl. After Popo blew its top, my wife and I scrapped our planned hike at the foothills.

Shortly before my wife and I arrived in Mexico City, tens of thousands of people were evacuated from the vicinity of Big Popo.

Piercing the clouds, snow-capped Popocatepetl is one of the most active volcanos and second highest peak in Mexico.

Permalink Reply by White Lion on March 10, 2009 at 1:45pm

Fascinating. It's a shame what's happening down there in Mexico now.