Seismic tremors in a crystal skull, a bonafide crystal skull. Look away.

A neighbouring Volcano got it´s mojo on last week and the cone glowed orange like a lit cigarette. I didn´t see it but felt the tremors in the dark city hours of the morning, and drowsily thought I´d awoken to the joys of another parasitic purge party because I felt so nauseous. Lucky for me it was just the four storey concrete building quivering like a slapped chihuahua. A disconcerting feeling, that. Lends credence to the idea that this physical universe is not solid, only that our idea of it being such makes it seem so.

The idea of a volcano waking up in the neighbourhood was enough motivation for me to lug my arse up Volcano San Pedro, the sleeping giant that my motel room squats beneath. After living in Western Australia far away from the possibility of fault lines crunching together, the idea of seeing a smoking mountain and feeling the ensuing seismic activity is pretty thrilling! I figured the view would be fairly spectacular from San Pedro´s namesake fire-mountain, which juts over 3000m above the town. It´s a three hour walk up there for the average Joe (which I certainly am in the fitness stakes), and without going into unglamorous details about my physical condition at the precipice I can say I was fucking relieved to finally make it up there. Oak ran up in less than two hours the filthy weasel, and sunned himself like the lizard he is for an hour while I rasped and wheezed and blundered through the terrain. There was no orange glow to be seen from Volcano Santiago but it was still smoking like an Aussie compost in full summer.

One of the pro´s of being slow to get up the mountain was seeing so many hummingbirds darting in and out of bromeliad flower clumps and twisted vines full of colour bursts. The guide who escorted me up the mountain said there were 38 different species of hummingbird in Guatemala! I saw three types in the subtropical volcano foliage although now I want to see all of them. On the way up the volcano I passed three ecosystems; the bottom kilometre of the volcano is flanked by coffee and maize plantations, and on the way up we were overtaken by a young boy and an old man armed with machete and hessian sacks, off to collect dried corn from their fields. The boy was followed by a pack of six dogs, who were all sleeping around him when we passed them further up the mountain as the boy went to town on his cornfield. I suspect that any hapless fools attempting to thieve a cornstalk would experience the sensation of dogjaws to the jugular. The second tier of the volcano had a lot of tall trees including avocado, cypress and other native species I forget the names of. My favourite section was the last because it looked like Jurassic Park, strangler figs and ferns and vines all vying for canopy space.

The first section of the volcano affords a birdseye view of San Pedro village fronting the lake below, and overlooks the cornfields of a local man who gets up at the crack of dawn to hoe down and commence other rigorous physical labours...I couldn´t do it!

Marces my volcano guide points out some more bird species (all of which elude any attempted photograph...I have a newfound respect for wildlife photographers)

Is there anything prettier than a strangler fig in its full strangler glory? I think not...

I painted a sign for a neighbouring bar this week, and collaborated with another artist I met in town - Konstantine from Russia! There are skulls on both sides of the sign because the founder of the bar (Cheff Chaman) has a brother who found a huge jade crystal skull in his fishing nets off the coast of Belize three years ago. Heh. How does a crystal skull end up in a fishing net and..and...I have thousands of questions all of which require that I simply must see this crystal skull for myself. Reserve the fairy-magic-dolphin comments for later folks...neither I nor you have likely been in contact with a real-deal crystal skull and until such time I´m intensely curious. For those who know why I´d be excited, Cheff Chaman says that when he touched the skull he received some pretty interesting communications. So...I´m not leaving town until I meet Mr. Jade Skeletor-Smile. The skull is as big as a human one except that it is elongated in the occipital region, beyond the scope of which would be possible by binding a human skull. Oh yes I do love the aliens as you know. I also love how these little morsels of awesome just fall in one´s pàth if one is open to it. It´s happening. I am totally going to hang out with that skull.

Kudos to Konstantine for skulls featured on the left hand side!

What else from San Pedroville...I´m moving house soon. Either I´m moving in with one of the Mayan ladies who cooks in the restaurant (in which case I´ll learn more Spanish, learn to cook more local food and probably paint a lot more) OR a bunch of gringos are going in together to rent a three storey architect´s dream right on the lake (in which case I´ll be partying a lot more, sleeping less and likely waking up on the floor in random places). Both options seem appealing right now. Oh, and FINALLY the cafe squirrel Gonzales dropped in for a photo...and one of our delicious avocados. He´d better let me cuddle him soon.