Locals call it La Casa del Fuego. Sailors call it The Lighthouse. The Mayans called it Tacnajuyú.

No matter what they call it, they all revere it.

Climbing Volcán Tacaná is a spiritual experience. It’s hard not to feel the universe’s majesty and your own smallness against the colossal volcano rising 4000 meters into the sky, blanketed in both lush tropical jungle and evergreen forest.

The Spiritual Cowboy crew was lucky to experience Tacaná with a couple of good friends, telling stories and laughing as they made their way up the ever-narrowing road, standing aside every now and then to let a donkey pass by or to marvel in the air of that sacred place.

Just when the crew started to feel the weight of the climb, a small wooden hut came into view and a woman welcomed them in, doling out bowls of homemade chicken stew topped with thick slices of homemade bread. She told the crew stories about her own life and about the volcano and the village as she stirred a pot of high altitude coffee on the hut’s stone hearth.

In that moment, as they sipped coffee together from clay cups, an awareness fell over the room and it seemed like everyone suddenly knew that they were part of something that had been happening the same way in the same place for a very long time.