After spending a few days chilling out by the lake in San Pedro we decided to head for Xela (also known as Quetzaltenango), Guatemala's second biggest city, stopping first in Panajachel one of the bigger towns on Lake Atitlán.
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| Chilling out at Lake Atitlán |
However, what's normally a straight forward three hour bus ride from Panajachel to Xela wasn't so easy after all the recent rains. Huge landslides had taken out some of the main roads. We ended up having to get a van, then a boat, followed by a half hour ride on the back of a pickup truck and then two more shuttle busses before we would arrive in Xela.
Xela is pretty high up in the mountains and serves as an excellent base for some spectacular hikes through the surrounding countryside - you'll also find some great coffee and tasty beer making our arduous trip worth while.
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| The city of Xela at nighttime |
As you might have gathered at this stage, I like volcanos, in fact when I run for president I'll be proposing we get some in Ireland. Santiaguito is Guatemala's most active volcano and towering over it is Santa Maria, an old dormant volcano. To get a good view of the constantly active Santiaguito you can clime Santa Maria and to get a really cool view of it you can do it at nighttime - so I did.
Two Swedish girls, myself, our Guatemalan guide Bayren and a local dog (Guatemalan dog's love hiking!), set off from Xela at 8pm, starting our hike about 9ish and finishing the steep climb at about one o' clock in the morning. From the summit we had an amazing view of they city of Xela along with an amazing view of the red glow of lava from Santiaguito. We made a quick fire to warm ourselves up and then set up camp for a few hours sleep before waking for sunrise the next morning.
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| Sunrise for breakfast! |
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| Santa Maria, the volcano we were on was perfectly cone-shaped and cast an amazing shadow during sunrise, the shadow itself looked like another mountain |
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| Our four-legged friend was up to watch the sunrise as well |
After taking in the amazing views we had a quick break for some much needed hot chocolate (it was freezing sleeping up there), which was cut short as Saniaguito erupted beneath us. Once everybody was completely sick of me saying "man - volcanos are so cool!", we packed up our gear and retraced our steps looking forward to getting back for breakfast, even if it was going to be eggs and beans again.
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| Santiaguito was awake early as well! |
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| Getting ready to head back down, the city below is covered by a blanket of clouds. |
After surviving, and really enjoying the hike up Santa Maria, I figured I should do more of this hiking lark. So the next day I headed off on a three day hike from Xela back to San Pedro on Lake Atitlán.
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| Laurianne, Becky, Jean-Phillipe, Myself and Byron |
Our crew was made up of Becky from Liverpool, Jean-Phillipe and Laurianne from Quebec and Byron the guide who let the trip up Santa Maria (Nico, who I'd been traveling with, was pretty sick while in Xela so he missed both the Santa Maria hike and this one). Unlike the others in the group I haven't really done much hiking, so I wasn't quite sure how the 10 hours of hiking on our first day would go but a combination of a great guide, a fun group of folks and some spectacular views to take my mind of any tiredness made it very doable.
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| Byron, our trusty guide. |
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| Stopping for breakfast on day #1 |
We covered a lot of ground on the first day, first climbing a pretty big mountain, traversing across some peaks high above some river valley's below. Towards the end of the day, Bayrun, pointed out a river in the distance that we'd need to cross.
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| The river in the distance |
As I was hiking into the river it began to feel weird to be hiking into a river without a kayak on my shoulder. Those thoughts were confounded even more when we got to the river to find a sweet Grade IV/V rapid. At this point Bayrun, told us he had some good news and some bad news. The good news was that where we were staying was just up the hill on the other side of the river, the bad news was that the bridge to the other side was gone - probably washed away with the recent rains!
Bayrun headed further down the riverbank to find some locals had put together a makeshift bridge. They told him that we'd all have to pay 100 Quetzales (about 10 euro) each if we wanted to use it - they were blatantly trying to take advantage of tourists. After telling them there was no way we were paying that, Bayran took out his machate, started hacking apart some logs and and tying them together making a bridge of our own.
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| Lashing some logs together with vines |
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| Our bridge starts taking shape |
We all worked on this for a while and made it half way across the river. We knew we'd be able to make it the rest of the way but it would probably take another few hours, so we went back to renegotiate with the locals. After talking to them for a while, they agreed to let us cross for just 50 Quetzales for the whole group, along with a loaf of bread they saw by one of our bags! While it would have been cool to have made it across on the bridge we built ourselves, it had been a long day and we were all looking forward to getting some rest before another day of hiking.
We stayed with a family in a tiny village not far from the river we crossed. The family had a Maya sauna, which is basically a little hut, covered with clay with a charcoal fire inside. It did a nice job of relaxing our sore muscles at the end of the day.
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| Inside the sauna, relaxing after a long day hiking |
The next day was a shorter hike, again filled with some spectacular views.
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| We were on top of the mountains behind me the previous day |
We finished the second day in Santa Clara, an village by Lake Atitlan. Again, we stayed with a family, but this time the village was a bit bigger and to our delight, sold beer. We spend the afternoon relaxing with some well deserved cold ones.
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| Relaxing with some cold ones! |
The next day we had an early 5am start and a shourt 40 minute hike up the nearby Indian Nose (a mountain top overlooking the lake) to see the sun rise above Lake Atitlán. The view was amazing and made the previous two days well worth while.
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| Sunrise at Lake Atitlán |
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| San Juan and San Pedro waking up below us |
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| Taking in the view |
A short three hour hike later and we arrived at San Pedro, tired, hungry, in dire need of coffee, but all very happy we had done the trek.
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| Three days later we made it to San Pedro |
From San Pedro, I headed back to Antigua, hoping to catch the festivities for the upcoming Día de Muertos festival. Day of the dead is a festival in honor of the dead in Latin America. It's celebrations and traditions differ depending on where you are. In Guatemala, it's believed the spirits of the dead for during the festival. People visit the cemeteries of their loved ones, clean and decorate their graves and have a huge party right in the graveyard. They also construct beautiful huge (seriously, they're massive) kites and fly them over the graveyards to catch any spirits that don't return to their graves.
We headed to the town of Santiago Sacatepeque near Antigua to see of the kite festivals.
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| Lots and lots of huge kites |
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| Yup, they're graves everyone's walking on. Spot the kites flying overhead. |
It was pretty weird to see such a big party in a graveyard, which stage and band in the cemetery but it was nice to see the dead remembered in such a positive way rather than the usual gloom and sadness.
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| At the festival with friends, definitely a fun way to spend the last day in Guatemala |
After an interesting day experiencing some of the local culture and spending a great evening with friends we said goodbye to Guatemala in search of some surf in El Salvador. I hadn't intended spending so much time in Guatemala, but it's one of those countries that you can never enough time in. I though three months would have been plenty of time to travel Central America, three years would probably have been a better!
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