I LOVE mud

Surrounded. Supported. Utterly relaxed. If I ever have to take a long uncomfortable space voyage in hibernation, I want to be packed in mud.

Fifty kilometres outside of Cartagena is El Totumo, a 15 metre high volcano filled with mud. You can book a day trip to visit the volcano from most of the hostels in town, though it is listed as “Mad Volcano Tour” (which is true in the slang sense of the word, but more likely is a misspelling of the word “mud”). Legend has it that the volcano used to spew lava and ash like a proper little volcano, until a priest exorcised it’s demons through the liberal use of holy water, turning its insides to mud.

At first glance, the volcano is a disappointment. Rising straight out of the parking lot is a large mud cone with a set of wooden steps up the side. Around it is nothing but cars, busses and ramshackle snack shops. Clad only in our bathing suits, we joined the long line of tourists on the steps waiting for their dip in the mud.

Once we reached the top we were presented with a different view entirely. The centre of the volcano is about the size of a large hot tub, reinforced with wooden planks at the edges and with a small wooden ladder to enter or exit the mud. Inside was a seething mass of humanity, all transformed into horrible slate-grey monsters from the slick coating of mud. I was entranced. Once covered in the mud, people ceased to be recognizable from one another. Their bathing suits, now the same colour as everything else and plastered to their bodies, made them appear naked. It didn’t help that some people had taken globs of thicker mud from the edge of the volcano and given themselves false noses or horns. Dan said to me “this looks like a vision of hell.” But unlike an imagined hell, everyone was hooting with delight, slapping the surface of the mud and squirming around one another gleefully.

As I descended the steps into the mud, I was shocked as how perfectly smooth and creamy the body-temperature mud was. I laid down on the surface, my head cradled in the softest pillow imaginable. Every spot on my body was completely supported with the same even pressure on all sides. Because the mud is so dense, it is impossible to sink in it. While lying on the surface of the mud, you were exactly half in and half out of the mud. If you were hovering vertically, the mud supported you at exactly chest level. Suspended, I reached down with my toes as far as I could. Yup, this was a bottomless mud pit, or at least, a mud pit that extended down to the ground and beneath.

It’s rare to encounter a physical sensation that is so wholly unique. I tried placing my limbs in a variety of different positions, and no matter what position they were in I was completely and utterly relaxed. The mud did all the work to keep you in place. Maybe it’s meant to have therapeutic minerals, but I think the real “healing power” of the mud is the delight you feel while being embraced by it.

A dip in the nearby lake afterwards transformed us back into regular flesh-and-blood humans, but even suspended in water, there’s a sense of gravity that can’t compare to the weightlessness of mud.