It is louder than distant thunder but not as loud as thunder directly overhead.  It is like a deep, deep underground explosion.  It is BIG.  And it happens just about every day, sometimes twice.

“Anna (housekeeper), what is that deep rumble we hear all the time?  You know.…” and then I make a deep rumble sound……..and look at her as if she can suddenly understand English with mime and deep David-doing-rumblings accompaniment.  Which she can……..

She looks at me like I have just noticed that the sky is blue……..”el vulcan!”

“So the deep rumbling is a volcano?”

“Si, todos dias” (every day).  And then she makes a gesture like a volcano blowing it’s top.

El Volcan Agua as seen from 'our' house

But that is just it.  It doesn’t.  One of the the three local volcanoes makes this incredible, deep rumbling sound for a few seconds – maybe two or three times – and that seems to be it.  Every day.   But that’s all, folks. No big explosion, no additional smoke or steam, no earth tremors……….. certainly no eruptions……….just these incredibly deep rumbles.

Where does that energy come from?  ‘Well, the centre of the earth, I guess. Duh!‘

But more important – where does it go?  If there is no tremor, no eruption and not even any extra smoke, where is that energy going?  Are there great slabs of magma just jiggling about down there?  And, if so, where does the room for all that jiggling come from?  We got big hollows down there?  Where’s the ‘sloshing’ room?  And why doesn’t all that jiggling add up to something?

I suppose there is some kind of scientific baffle gab about thermal this or that and plate tectonics and gas releasing or something…….but, I am sorry, whatever the explanation is, it is not good enough.  There is some kind of immense power thing going on down there and why it doesn’t show up even more frequently than it does is a complete mystery to me.

And talk about alternative energy!  OMYGAWD!  These volcanoes are a way greater source of energy than any dozen nuclear reactors.  In fact, at one of the local volcanoes the global alternative energy company Ormat put in a steam driven generator for generating electrical power. It’s hooked to the Guatemalan grid and it is producing like mad.

Guide Carlito with Thermal Electric Generating Plant (right side mid-ground) on the slopes of El Volcan Pacaya

I dunno………I’m just stupid, I guess.  It must be cheaper and more efficient to dredge tar sands and pipe that sludge to China than to simply drill a little deeper and tap into the heat of the planet.  Geothermal.  Even though there is no pollution or environmental damage……..I guess I am just some kind of loony doofus who doesn’t get it.

I’ll bet Exxon could explain it to me.