Veró and I didn’t know it, but we were desperate. And $3 is a bargain, right?
We had exhausted the festivals at Mitad del Mundo and the eggsperiments at El Museo de Sitio Intiñan. The helado de paila back at the monument was suspect, our feet were weary, it was too soon for another humita, and we were about to cross that dangerous line that hits all travelers at some point: we weren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves.
We had options–watch more dancing, check out another museum, force down an early dinner–but none of them were feasible, especially given the entirely enjoyable trajectory of the trip thus far; we weren’t willing to settle.
And like a vision emerging from the mist (remember this), a tour guide materialized from the shadowed doorway we just happened to be passing. “You want to see a volcanic crater he asked?”
Ever have those moments when Destiny wraps you in her arms and says, “Here I am. Serendipity brought you to this exact point in space and time so that we would meet.”? The planets (well, the sun at least) had aligned. Fate had spoken.
Veró and I looked over the postcard outlining the tour. We’d be driven up the mountain to El Templo del Sol, situated against la caldera del volcán Pululawa, where we could glimpse wildlife found only in its unique ecosystem. Even more fortuitous, there was a celebration of the Solstice inside the temple, where we’d be bathed in cosmic energy and enjoy aromatherapy. We’d have a guia especializado and enjoy complimentary chicha (no thank you) or café with canelazos (whose translation eluded me, but apparently they sell them at Domino’s Pizza). And we’d get it all for just $3. It sounded too good to be true.
And boy, was it ever.
As the van drove up the mountain, the sun and relative warmth around the monument dissolved into a low-lying fog, which sagged about our ankles like a pair of droopy drawers. We were smack in the middle of a cloud, one that wouldn’t be lifting anytime soon, a fact that the driver had conveniently failed to mention to us when he squinted at our sun-lit faces disappearing into the dusty recesses of the van back at the monument.
Rather than risk plunging head-first over the invisible edge of the crater, we followed the group from the van into the temple, but immediately lost them upon crossing the threshold. Apparently the entrance vaporized our guide as well, because he never revealed himself. Veró and I climbed up into the circular tower and watched el pintor Cristobal Ortega at work.
Ortega uses just the fingers on one hand to paint his creations, many of which feature volcanoes and other scenes from the Andes.
Ortega, el pintor más rápido del mundo, was done in a matter of minutes, however, by which time Veró and I were antsy. It was starting to occur to us that we might be a couple of $3 chumps. So we took matters into our own hands and headed back outside to either a) Find our guide or b) Find the crater.
Those ambitions didn’t last long. Nobody else was stupid enough to abandon the temple in favor of the fog, so we weren’t about to find a guide outside. And knowing that the first misstep off the crater would be a doozy, and one from which we wouldn’t easily recover, we threw in the towel and retreated back to the driveway to wait for the van.
Some might consider this the worst experience of our trip, but the way I saw it (once we descended back out of the cloud, that is), it became just another good story to share.
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