Volcano Volcshmano: What’s a little eruption?

God, I thought I never would make it out of Medellin. I was going to take a trip to Guatape, but then I got too sick. Volcanoes aren’t the only thing erupting in Colombia. I felt bad because my friend Lauren came to visit, and the second Lauren got here, I was sick. So I sent them on a tour without me.

“Don’t you wanna do the tour?” Lauren asked.

“No, you go ahead, I’ll be alright” I said coughing, trying to sound like I was sacrificing something and not relieved to not have to do anything for a few hours.

We did go on a coffee tour where I was so stuffed up that I could only breathe out of my mouth.

“What notes do you smell in the coffee?” Our guide asked.

“I smell mostly,” I thought for a moment, “mucus. A lot of mucus.”

I finally booked a hostel in Salento, a little town 8 hours south of Medellin. Then I couldn’t book a bus. So I rebooked the hostel. Then I couldn’t get a bus again, so I had to cancel the hostel and book another one.

Medellin is the city of eternal spring, though the only thing that felt eternal was being stuck there.

“I’m leaving for Salento today,” I tell Pieter.

“Oh, aren’t they evacuating that area?” He asked.

“Um, what?

“Yeah, it’s like an orange alert for a volcano there. Apparently, it went off in 1985 and killed 25,000 people.”

“Uh oh, that’s not good.”

I called my mom.

“You hear about the volcano?” She asked me. “You’re not going to be going anywhere near it, are you?”

“Oh, um, well, actually. I am going exactly there. I was calling to see what you think I should do about it.”

“Well, the US embassy says government employees are not allowed to travel to the area.”

“Good thing I’m not a government employee! Aren’t you glad I never got a respectable job, mom? Now I can go to active volcanoes.”

“Hey, Brian!” My dad yelled into the phone.

“Your dad is on the phone,” my mom told me.

“It looks beautiful in that area,” he said.

“George, it’s an active volcano.”

“Well, it’s still a beautiful area. Cynthia.”

“I’m gonna ask someone in the hostel what they think,” I told them.

I walk to the front desk.

“What do you think about going to Salento with the volcano?”

“It’s fine. I was just there,” said Tatiana, the hostel manager.

“But what about the volcano?”

“It won’t explode.”

I appreciated the confidence, but it did seem to be a little bit overconfident for someone that was definitely not a scientist. Not that scientists always get it right. But they are realistic. They might tell you the probability of something bad happening. “Based on current analysis, the risk of eruption is elevated during this time.” No scientist will ever say no that won’t happen. Cause that is too close to faith.

But perhaps a little faith is precisely what I needed.

So now I’m on my way to Salento on the bus. I’m starting to realize, though, that if there is any sort of evacuation that it is going to be extremely slow. Hell, it’s slow to get there. And there is no panic. There are no accidents. There is no one trying to flee an eruption. No one trying to avoid becoming the next Pompeii. Or the next mount saint helens. But the good news for me is that I don’t have to worry about any of that. Because if I die, it’s not my problem.

That’s not true. I’m not gonna die. I’m not a scientist, so I have faith.