Altagracia, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua, 2004-05-06
I got a bug bite on my arm. And then it went funny. The local doctor said it could be a bacterial infection from the instect’s urine. So gross. Lee, the Forest Service wild forest fire firefighter told me he once had a friend who got a spider bite that gave her something like gangrene and they had to cut a piece of her leg out. And then I started thinking about that part at the end of Requiem for a Dream… thanks, Lee.
Even from the top of Volcán Madera, yesterday, Lago de Nicaragua looked like the ocean, and not at all like a lake. Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t see it from the top. All I saw at the top of the volcano was the inside of the cloud that seems to be a permanent resident no matter what the weather everywhere else may be. Maybe that’s why they called it a cloud forest up there, because that’s where clouds grow! Wet, muddy, slippery, pretty green clouds with lots of crazy bugs, birds, and monkeys. There’s a lake in the crater too, and that was cool, but in the literal sense so was the air, which made it not so much for a swim in the non-literal sense as it would have been had it been, well, otherwise.
I’ve been having to think about school these past few days and it’s a terribly frightful thing. There sure is something to be said about getting a head start on school now that I know where I’m going (UCLA), but it’s really tough to beat the ‘I’m already here and there’s so many places to keep going to and see’ argument.