Fire burn and caldron bubble

You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/v/Up1MdaWS2ZQ
I had to remove the embedded object because it was freezing people's browser.
It was dark and stormy night. No, really, it was. I arrived in Copahue with what can only be described as a deep sense of dread. From Neuquen, the land turned green and hilly, a massive relief after the days of flatness. The hills became mountains and the Volcano Copahue became part of the landscape for every turn. Scenic. Pretty. Nice. Until it got dark. And snowy. And I found myself driving in the clouds. Dark clouds. With some lightning. And snow falling. Well, not so much falling since I was IN the cloud and it can’t really fall FROM the cloud if the earth itself is IN the cloud. The snow was more just hovering around the car and eventually settling in little pockets around the road. Then, of course, the road became gravel. The land around the road became volcanic black with small shrubs and nothing else. My lights bounced off of the snow and clouds and illuminated nothing but rubble around the road.  Scary rubble. The kind of rubble left when something explodes or collapses. When I finally reached the town, I was not reassured. In the dark, the town appeared to be a mining camp. The buildings were long, low and barely lit. All of them sat in the base of a crater, surrounded by rubble, and not only were the buildings covered in misty clouds but there was steam rising from the ground all around me. I was either driving into a mining town or a mad scientist’s lab. Perhaps a mad mining scientist. I had cartoon visions of the ground cracking open to expose a spaceship vaguely resembling one of the more threatening bug varieties, climbing up from the earth with a giant drill bit where the stinger should be, and lumbering toward me while sparks shot out from under the wings.

However, I made it to my hotel  without any giant bug spaceship attacks. I got out of my car, walked through the cloud and into the hotel.  There was no one in the lobby inside, or in the dining room, or in the giant lodge-like lounge where there was very nice crackling fire. I stood by the fire for a few minutes before one of the doors at the back of the room opened and a cleaning woman was clearly startled by me standing in front of the fire. I don’t blame her for being startled given the mad-scientist night. She indicated for me to wait and she returned with the desk clerk. I asked him, in my bad Spanish, “Does the hotel have wifi?”  He didn’t understand. “Does the hotel have internet?”  He didn’t understand. “Does the hotel have internet (adding a typing gesture).” “Ah,” he responds, “Yes, when there is electricity.”   Hmmm….I think…I must have misunderstood him, but he said yes.  I checked in. I went to my room. I tried to turn on a light. There was no electricity.  I had not misunderstood him.  As it turned out over the next few days, the hotel…and the town…only had electricity for a few hours each day – for reasons explained to me in Spanish I didn’t understand. I went to bed cold and hungry and wondering why on earth I came to Copahue – the internet had called it a spa.

And, I’m pretty sure I woke up into a different town. True, the town looked like a communist camp, but it was a giant improvement on the mining mad scientist town of the night before.  A town in a crater is much improved by a clear blue sky.  I wandered the town – which didn’t take long since there were only about 5 actual town blocks. I drove my car down a dirt road along the volcano until I became stuck in the snow and struggled to turn around. Steam rose in a strong, spewing plume by a small geothermic building.  Steam also rose from the giant mud pits in town that were part of the “spa” as well as from random areas along the road where people had grouped rocks around the small muddy bubbling holes. I can not describe my fascination for the bubbling mud. Hot, bubbling, mud coming directly from the earth- this earth which, despite everything I learned in science class and on Discovery television, feels so solid and permanent to me.  The hot mud coming from the ground, the sheer violence of the bubbles, the loud churning popping sound that came with them, made me feel – not just know – but actually feel how changing it all is. Changing. Temporary. And worth awe. All of it.

if you don't see a video of bubbling mud at the top, you can also see the video  here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up1MdaWS2ZQ
Other pictures of Copahue are available on my flickr account