There can never be too many volcanoes - Guatemala Part 1

Although we still have a good amount of time left out here, unfortunately it’s not enough to see and do everything. Being keen to leave sufficient time to explore a good proportion of Mexico, we decided to skip through Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador and head straight into Guatemala. We are in fact in Mexico now and I realise I’m a whole country behind in the blog, so I’m going to attempt to summarise our 10 days in Guatemala…

Antigua

Our first stop was Antigua, a beautiful colonial town with cobbled streets situated in the shadow of 3 looming volcanoes. After nearly 2 days of buses, the sight of the town and the warmth of the people that live there was really appreciated. So was the bar that had 3 shelves of sauces that you could choose from to accompany any one of the many sandwiches they offered. This is where we chose to replenish our hungry bellies and relax for our first afternoon. The music was authentic and the décor rustic with lots of terracotta walls and crumbling plaster. 

Hundreds and billions of sauces to try out on fried crispy plantains - heaven!

Volcan Agua, visible from Antigua's cobbled streets (and some very handy cloud passing by!)

The hostel was beautiful too with a great terrace over-looking the street that was filled with sofas and hammocks. That’s where we met Laundrie and Joela, from France and the US respectively who were taking Spanish classes in town. In fact, we joined them in their linguistic efforts and attempted to only talk in Spanish with each other. Amazingly, we managed to keep this up all evening, including over dinner too. It’s amazing how you can draw out conservations about what you are going to eat for so long!

The next day was another early start as we had booked ourselves onto a trip to climb Volcan Pacaya. This is the volcano that hit the news with its eruption back in March. Although now safe to climb, it is still massively active and some parts are hot enough to roast marshmallows over which I took full advantage of, and ate about 20. I never want to see another marshmallow again!

Gandalf pose

Marshmallow gorging pose - I think this may have been number 20 or so

Later that afternoon we took a trip through some of the amazingly colourful markets. Sprawling for what seemed like miles, ramshackle stalls, some of which are in the open air, some of which are undercover work together to form a labyrinth of different colours and smells. It took us 20 minutes to find the area where the vegetables are sold and then a further 20 minutes to find our way out of there! Everything you could ever need is sold here. I found a cage full of budgies and fell in love with one in particular, really wanting to take him with me! Sellers shout out their wares but are rarely pushy. The women are all really small but can amazingly carry such huge baskets of produce on their heads. I couldn’t even see one lady’s face as she was covered from head to toe with beetroots.

We picked up some veg for dinner but after a few beers back at the bar with the sauces, abandoned plans of cooking at the hostel and opted to eat out as it really is so cheap. We found a bar with some live music and without the accompanying xylophone which is played everywhere out here, being their national instrument. We ordered some food and over a few more beers decided that when we got home we were going to buy a budgie and called it Pretzal.

It was a great last night out but stupidly, not wanting to waste all the fresh veg we had brought earlier, opted to make our packs even heavier and carried it all the way to our next destination. 

Lake Atitlan

Lake Atitlan really was a whistle stop tour. This was mainly for the reason that we had booked in advance an excursion to climb Tajumulco, dormant volcano and highest peak in Central America in 2 days’ time not realising we’d have to be in the town nearest to the volcano a day earlier for a group briefing with the guides. To add to this, we had a bit of trouble getting our slightly hungover selves up and out of the hostel in Antigua in good time. 

This lack of foresight resulted in a 4 hour bus journey to the lake, getting there just as it got dark and the mosquitos came out, to then spend the night and the next morning there before having to jump on either a bus or a bus-boat combination for another 3 hours to get to Quetzaltenango (Xela for short) to make the briefing. 

To make the best of the logistical challenge we now faced, we decided we’d try to get up super early in the morning and get kayaks out for sunrise on the lake. We should have realised by the name ‘Mr Mullet’ that we’d booked a party hostel, but luckily it wasn’t too mental and we had a sober night in with the £1 of veg we had carted with us all the way from Antigua. A seriously amusing hostel though with the famous (or perhaps infamous) deal of your second night free, if you let them cut you a mullet. I have never seen so much bad hair about a place!

We were up at 5:30am and out on the lake by just after 6. It was so tranquil and although there was no spectacular sunrise, the early morning light and mist made everything look beautiful. The lake is surrounded by 8 unique little villages and we opted to paddle our way across in the kayak to San Marcos from our base of San Pedro. All the towns are very picturesque but unfortunately tourism has taken its toll on many, resulting in an alarming amount of hawkers and tour companies grappling for your business as soon as you arrive or in the case of San Marcos, the town has transgressed into a retreat for new age travellers and is a little too full of people in tie dye drinking carrot smoothies. I’m sure if you dig deep, you can find some genuineness to the place, but it did feel a little superficial in places. 

We had great fun in the kayak though and took some cereal and biscuits with us for a breakfast on the other side of the lake. The return journey was much harder as the wind had picked up, but biscuit power got us back. We had just enough time to shower, make a coffee and pack before it was back onto the bus and off to Xela. The 3 hour journey went by in a breeze on a very uncramped chicken bus, made even better by the most delicious milkshake I’ve ever had, prepared by a little Guatemalan lady with a blender at the roadside, and in the company of Behr from the US, a guy we made friends with on the bus and who must be related to Jim Carey. In fact, we’re still not convinced it wasn’t him!

The powerhouse at the rear!

Atmospheric jetty pose at Lake Atitlan

Trying to blend in at San Marcos

Beautiful Lake Atitlan in the morning

Quetzaltenango (Xela)

We got to Xela well in advance of our briefing and in enough time to grab lunch at a place called the Maya Café where a set lunch of 2 courses, a drink and a coffee put us back a whole £2 each! Still can’t get over how seriously cheap Guatemala is.

Fluent Spanish Tim reading the daily noticias antes de almuerzo

We found the tour company’s headquarters and met the guides who outlined what the 2 day trek would entail. The company is called Quetzaltrekkers. It’s a non-profit organisation and all the money goes towards helping under-privileged kids in the area. All the guides are volunteers and survive on tips alone. At the meeting we got to meet the other 9 people coming on the trek and organise loaning any equipment we may need such as head torches or extra warm layers as the trek was going to involve another sunrise mission to the summit. We were also all given some things that we’d have to take for the benefit of the group – parts of tents, poles, shit-kit etc. Together with this there was also food to share out and each of us had to take 5 litres of water. It was going to be a heavy pack!

We expected at the company’s office by 5am the next morning which meant yet another early start. We all arrived there bleary eyed and jumped in the back of a box van which took us to the bus terminal. It was then 2 buses to the start of the trail. The packs were seriously heavy, but I can’t complain as Tim, bless him ended up carrying a 6 man tent as his extra item and on top of that another 4 man tent because whoever was responsible for that had either managed to shun their duty or hadn’t been aware that this was the case. To lighten his load, I took the 2 kilos of Guacamole that was needed as part of the group lunch. Seriously, it weighed nearly as much as our tent! In fact, when we trek alone, due to all our research into finding such lightweight gear, our packs are usually less than half what they were for this trek. Oh well, we saw it as a challenge and a way to earn a good meal!

Off to climb the highest peak in Central America, but granted we started from quite a high altitude

Luckily the climb wasn’t too strenuous, partly because the start point was also at quite a high altitude. There were also a couple of people who haven’t trekked much so the pace was fairly laid back and we stopped often for breaks. 

The views over Guatemala were stunning

As the day progressed however, there was more and more cloud building and by the time we reached our end point for day 1, we only had 20 minutes to get the tents up before the heavens opened and we were hit by a pretty big storm. 

There was not much wind, but there was an awful lot of rain which started to pool on the top of the 6 man tent we were in. Fortunately a very waterproof outer shell kept us mostly dry but it was cold and dark and any plans of heading out to the craggy outcrop for sunset were abandoned! The thunder was intense and often the inside of the tent was lit up by lightning. It was exciting but I was also a bit scared, much to the amusement of the others seeing as though I had spent most of the day explaining my love of storms and trips out to the States!

The people we shared our tent with were really good fun and we managed to amuse ourselves for 6 hours straight, chatting, eating chocolate, sipping liquor and listening to a bit of music. The guides looked after us well and even managed to cook us all up some pasta which they served to us all inside our tents. Eventually we all decided to hit the hay. It was still raining a little and we hoped that when we were called upon at 3am for the climb to the summit all remnants of the storm would have passed.

We all managed to keep warm that night, snuggled up together and when the wake-up call came we were relieved to see that the sky was clear. In full auto-pilot mode we trudged up to the summit in convoy and all managed to all get up there in time for sunrise. 

Waiting for dawn to break on the top of Tajumulco, with Ben and Lizzie

It was one of the best sunrises I’ve ever seen. The view from the top was spectacular. You could see so many of Guatemala’s 36 volcanoes looming in the distance and the clouds made it look even more magical. The morning light was dazzling and it soon warmed our very cold bodies up allowing me to shed some of the many layers I was wearing including 2 coats and 3 pairs of gloves. We could even see the shadow of our volcano to the west. I tried to jump high enough to see my own, but couldn't quite make it that high!

Sun rising over layer upon layer of volcanoes - still can't get over this sight

Beautiful still...

The 'I'm on top of a volcano as the sun is rising, I'm so happy' dance

Aaarrrghhhh... time for a selfie... arrrrrggghh

Guess the real volcano? The other is our crazy arse shadow!

Walking around the rim of the crater back down to 'basecamp'!

When the sun was fully up we headed back to camp for a laid-back breakfast and hot drinks, before packing up and heading back down the volcano, where we ate lunch and a had well-earned beer at a local comedor. All the way down we chatted amongst ourselves. 

It was a really varied and interesting group. There was another English couple. She was lovely but he was a little overpowering and talked like Alex Winters; tall lanky Ben from Manchester who although he didn’t look it was a cage fighting vegetarian, a really sweet couple from Belgium who live in a squat and who find seasonal work such as picking fruit or cleaning that then allows them to travel for the remaining half of the year, a winey girl from Washington who had a really squashy face, a lovely Canadian girl who works as a biologist tracking animals in the forest, a Dutch guy and a guy from Mexico City who looked just like Rob from the Slug and Lettuce and was training to be a guide. 

I can’t recommend the company enough. We were really looked after and it was for such a good cause. Before we left, we donated a few bits of kit – my silk liner and Tim’s waterproof trousers. These are things we can pick up again if we need them in the future and Quetzaltrekkers are so grateful for any hand-outs. And hopefully, fingers crossed we shouldn’t be doing anything that cold again, although I’m sure we say that on a weekly basis!

Right, I’ve spent too long on the above, so the remaining Guatemalan wonders coming in the next post.