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They offer you a horse before you set off on the 2.8-kilometre, 1.5-hour hike up Volcano Pacaya. Most people decline, but the horses go up anyway.

“Taxi? Taxi?” the horsemen offer periodically, as if secretly mocking us: “Foolhardy humans! You think your pretty, well-maintained nature sidewalks prepared you for this?

Some folks always cave.

The climb isn’t all that hard. It starts with a steep dusty climb, which becomes volcanic dirt, which becomes black Martian rocks. And after transversing the most barren, scraggly terrain, you see it: lava. Real goddam lava.

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It’s no flowing river, just some glowing lumps tumbling downhill. But still. Lava. That is to say, molten rock. That is to say, magma. That is to say, the center of the planet. Lava is the ejaculate of the Earth, an energy-filled gush which, given enough time, becomes more Earth. It’s the origin of just about anything you can touch.

Freshly-cooled lava, the blastocyst of soil, is light for its size. It has a slight metallic sheen, like it was quickly spray-painted silver and gold. It feels that way too, lightly sticky to the touch. And it’s sharp. I put one rock in my bag and it fucked up my camera screen.

This all makes it incredibly unstable to walk on, prone to shift beneath you at any time.

“Dale! Dale,” the guides started yelling with a measure of urgency. “Vamonos amigos, ahora!” Above us a swath of rocks crumbled away, exposing a ridge of bright orange. That, too, began to crumble down, towards us. “Vamos ahora! Es muy peligroso!”

Naturally, none of us moved, but instead reached for our cameras. The eruption was a good 150 metres away, and though we were in its general path, the lava gave up halfway down. The guides realized they could only move us so far.

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The show lasted 10 minutes.

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Of course, the good lava comes as we leave.