In Guatemala, It’s April Volcanic Showers

Sometimes it seems like a calamity of one sort or another is often fated to hit a place  I’ve just been or where I’m headed.

Last year, it was the swine flu in Mexico.

Right after my visit to Arizona last month, the state enacts an unfair immigration law.

With only a couple of weeks until my trip to Guatemala, I’ve just learned of two volcanic eruptions that had recently occurred there.

While everyone was  preoccupied by the plumes of ash emanating from Iceland and halting air travel throughout Europe, there had been another big eruption April 26 in western Guatemala.

Violent and Unusual. The national seismological institute said the Santiaguito volcano showered sand and ash Monday over a large area of western Guatemala in an “unusual” and “violent” eruption.

Winds were carrying the ash in a northeasterly direction from the volcano, 2,500 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level in the province of Quetzaltenango, 206 kilometers (123 miles) west of the capital, it said.

Quetzalenango, or “Xela”–as it’s often referred to–is where I’m headed in two weeks.

A smaller eruption from Guatemala’s Pacaya Volcano was blamed for causing a landslide that killed a foreign tourist and her guide on April 10.

Photo by Wagner Cassimiro (Via Creative Commons)

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