Trekking from Xela to Lago Atitlan - Part 1

During our two weeks of study in Xela we’d been too busy to do a lot of research on where we were going to go next in Guatemala. We still didn’t know much about the place. One name that came up a lot though was Quetzaltrekkers – a non for profit hiking company located in Xela (they also have an office in Leon, Nicaragua). We’d heard a lot of good things so we decided to check them out.

The first challenge was finding their office. We found the building with their logo on the side and knocked on the door. A guy opened the door, we said hello and followed him in. First we went through an empty front room, then past a family cooking lunch in a kitchen, around a corner and up some stairs, past some people sitting at scattered chairs and tables on a bit of a terrace, down some more stairs and then our guide got to the open door of a room turned around and awkwardly said “So this is the kitchen….?”. This confused us so we asked “Quetzaltrekkers?” “What?” “Um…. Quetzaltrekkers? A trekking company is supposed to be here?” “I dunno, I only moved in yesterday. You should ask some of the other people who live here” “Ooooookaaaaay”. After that confusing exchange we decided to dig deeper into what turned out later to be an odd hostel, after Alex spied some hiking gear through some trees. We soon found ourselves at Quetzaltrekkers HQ, being greeted by a friendly guide saying “Yeah, it’s pretty confusing….maybe we need more signs…”. *Cough*.

After talking through some of the options we decided on doing a 3 day trek from Xela to Lake Atitlan, probably their most popular hike. We were nervous and excited. We had a pre-start meeting the night before the trek to meet everyone and sort out all the gear we needed. To my dismay everyone on our trek seemed to be pretty fit, I was going to be dragging behind the whole way. Alex and I borrowed the most gear out of everyone, I had to borrow two sets of shoes, and we got the food and water we would be carrying with us – Corn chips and Spice kits. 

The Poster for the trek at HQ

Day 1

We wake up early because we have to be at the Quetzaltrekkers office by 6:30am for breakfast. We left the house at 6am to church bells chiming, each of us wearing two 50L backpacks. I thought the weight was going to break my knees. Amazingly we made it to HQ just in time for breakfast, first challenge of the day completed. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast, bananas and pineapple and a hot drink. After everyone was packed and sorted (thankfully they do a bag drop service for a bit of extra dinero and we only had to carry one bag with us on the hike) we walked for “20 minutes” back to the other side of town, past where we had been staying to the bus stop.  We had a 30 minute Chicken Bus ride to our starting point, a small village. After getting off the bus it was straight up hill for 30 minutes. This is where I got a taste of how the rest of the trek was going to go, one of the guides stormed ahead with most people being able to keep good pace and straight away I was left behind with Alex and the other guide walking slowly so as not to leave me behind. Not 30 minutes in I was already thinking “Oh no. I’ve made a big mistake. I am not fit enough to do this”.

All ready to go at HQ

Shi's backpack was the craziest backpack I'd ever seen. He carried all the light bedding stuff and his sisters carried the heavy stuff. 

We eventually catch up with everyone having a break on the side of the road. I trade Alex my spice kit for his corn chips (the spice kit is surprisingly heavy), now I have two bags of corn chips. While resting we do a round of introductions again and get a rundown on what we’ll be doing today. We are lucky that we got a lovely group of people who were always very kind to me during my struggles. Our guides were Lotti from England and Santi from Guatemala (Santi is crazy fit, apparently a professional runner once hired him to do the same trek we did and they did it in about 4 hours! I don’t know how that’s even possible). In the group there was Caitlin from the US: photographer and avid trekker; Hannes and “Paul” from Germany: Semi-professional footballer and the interesting combination of broody but friendly; Yav from Israel: musician, economist, dreamer; Neir from Israel: “Can I be a vegetarian for tonight too please?” and the 3 Israeli Siblings: pretty fit from their time serving the Israeli army.

View of Xela

After the pleasantries are over we start the hardest part of the whole trek – an approximate 2 hour hike up a mountain to reach what is known as “Alaska” and the highest altitude of our trek: 3,050m. This is pretty brutal for me but eventually we break through and are suddenly in the middle of golden fields of corn and grass. During a break we are informed that this is “Alaska” and it does get quite cold on days when the sun isn’t shining. We walk through a village that Quetzaltrekkers’ funds help support in various ways (new water system when the old one was damaged from an earthquake and assisting children with their schooling). After the village we do some more climbing to find our lunch spot – a nice ridge with an awesome view. Lunch is vegetables, bread, corn chips and frijoles (of course!).

Alaska - The highest Point of Our Trek

Views on the stroll to lunch

The View from Our Lunch Spot

Luuuuuuunch. I hadn't felt like I deserved lunch like this for a long time

After lunch it’s time start heading DOWN! Sure, going uphill is hard and takes a lot of work but going downhill uses a whole different set of muscles and my legs were like jelly. If it was even possible I was even slower going down. Luckily some time before I had found a nicely sized stick for support. During the decent I fell down once, half rolled my ankle once and Caitlin came pretty close to falling over the side when there was a slip in the ground. People kept offering to take some of the heaving stuff off me and I declined until it felt like I didn’t really have a choice anymore, I guess they were sick of my slow progress. Eventually all that was left of the day was to follow a road around until we came to our accommodation for a night. Usually this should have been a pretty easy walk but my feet were killing me, my legs were jelly and I had a big (although now lighter) pack. I fell over once more on this stretch. At 6pm we arrived to the guest house with the church bells chiming in the background.

We shared the paths with many different locals

During the Decent we walked through a Cloud Forest

As part of the trip everyone got the chance to use a temescal (A Mayan Sauna) for 15 minutes. I knew this was coming and it was what helped me get through the day, we hadn’t had a decent hot shower for two weeks. The temescal is heated little clay room with a bench. There are 3 buckets – one filled with hot water, one with cold and one empty. You mix the different waters in the empty bucket to your desired temperature, sit on the bench and pour the water over you. This was enjoyed by all. During the temescal I had confirmed my suspicions – I had blisters. The worst blisters I’ve maybe ever had, all over my feet. Showing off my blisters to the group prompted a 15 minute discussion on what felt like one of the biggest decisions of my life: to pop or not to pop. In the end I settled on the boring answer of “I’m tired, I’ll decide tomorrow”. Dinner was a hot drink and pasta. Alex and I went to bed early while the rest of the gang stayed up playing cards.

My feet after a day of the most walking I've ever done in my life.