On the walk back I smelled the sulphur from the geysers, white steam twisting skyward. Farmers baked meats in scald-pits, carcasses infused with the scent and the feel of the burned-up inner rock. They were prize items for cruise-ship passengers shuttled in on yachts from the larger islands. I was fascinated by the sickening smell – rot, flesh – and by the sight of the charred meat slabs being delivered from the vents. I imagined that the flesh had always been there, burning in the lower earth, and was only now being excavated, eaten like the ritual consumption of a god.
