At Pizza Pacaya, the Oven Is an Active Volcano
The earthquake had already woken up Mario David García Mansilla, a Guatemalan cook, when he saw the “balls of fire” flying over his house. It was the night of May 27, 2010, and the Pacaya Volcano was having its biggest explosion in recent years. When García saw the burning rocks flying, he did what any reasonable person would do: look for the keys of his car, a ‘72 Volkswagen Beetle. With the volcano’s roars flooding the landscape, he talked to a couple of friends and decided to pick them up. Then, he did what any unreasonable person would do: He drove directly towards the volcano.
As they approached the erupting mountain, the sky lit up in a fiery red. He stopped the car less than a mile (1 km) away from the volcano, he says. “The first thing you feel, it’s the intense heat, like going into a sauna,” García recalls. “And the noise is like a seven-engine plane: deafening.” He wasn’t scared. Right there, he says, is when he decided that he would never move away from the 16,000-person town of San Vicente Pacaya, one of the 21 small villages that sit on the slopes of one of the most active volcanoes in Guatemala.
Ten years later, he has not only stayed, but he has fused his life with the volcano. The 34-year-old accountant and chef has become the first to bake pizzas on the smoking lava of Pacaya. His unconventional restaurant, Pizza Pacaya, employs two other people, and it’s located on any corner of the Pacaya hot enough to bake pizzas.
