Trekking from Xela to Lago Atitlan - Part 2

Day 2

Wake up at 6 am. I get my blisters dressed by Lotti and we go with the no pop option in hopes that if the skin stays intact this gives me better chances of not getting them infected. I guess this means I’m continuing on this hike. The first steps I take after putting those horrid shoes back on are amazingly painful. Just walking down the street to a local comedor for breakfast is quite an effort. Again I think “Oh no. I’ve made a mistake”. Breakfast is eggs, frijoles, tortillas, something like a pancake, battered plantain and some very sweet coffee/tea. We are given some rice and beans for lunch by the ladies at the comedor and are soon on our way. We follow a road around the side of a mountain, offering some pretty good views, and walk through some fields to find ourselves at the base of record hill. I know that the bit of walking I’ve just done was pretty easy but every step I’m taking is painful. Record hill however, that is not easy. The current record is something like 8 minutes (Santi used to hold the record at 8 minutes something). We are told that if you are just casually walking up the hill it should take you about 20 minutes. This makes the hill sound deceptively easy. It’s not. Alex splits off from me to see what kind of time he can get. He makes a good 17 minutes. The Germans are around 14 minutes and the Israelis are somewhere in-between. I crawl in at about 30 minutes with Caitlin and Lotti just behind me. There are rules to Record Hill, like you’re not allowed to dump all your water before going up, but I’m not sure of the rest.

Blisters all dressed and ready to go

Having a rest before attempting Record Hill

View from the top of Record Hill. That little bridge in the blown up area is the official start point. 

After what is a very quick rest for me but a leisurely rest for almost everyone else we head further up the hill, through some cornfields and then make it to a little tienda (shop) in a village where we can purchase hard earned ice-creams and other snacks. I am later told that it’s at this point that they lose a lot of people to blisters as it’s the only point that day where a bus can come pick you up. Somehow I power on after the ice-cream, sometimes just wanting to cry. Soon after the tienda we stop for lunch in a nice clearing on the side of the track. Lunch is rice, frijoles, tortillas, left over veggies and corn chips. This is an amazing lunch break, everyone fits in a nap. After this we soon come to a river crossing. There will be 8 more river crossings so we swap our trainers for sandals, giving my feet some relief. The river is cold but soothing. Not long after the river crossing we come to the part I had been dreading all day “The Cornfield of Death”. I had been told this was quite easy, again, not so. While it only lasts for a relevantly short amount of time, 15 minutes maybe, it’s pretty damn vertical. I was climbing with my hands at some points. However, we all survived the cornfield of death and then just had to walk along a paved road to Don Pedro’s House (the nicest man in the world). 

An example of the views we were getting

Me crossing one of the rivers with Santi watching over me

Pro Hiker

The Start of the Cornfield of Death

Cornfield of Death Views

View from the main road leading to Don Pedro's House

There is a cold shower here; a ready-to-serve smoothie and a huge dinner of veggies, chicken, rice and you guessed it: frijoles. After dinner we road marshmallows around a fire and this time Alex and I join in on the card games. We play Yarniv, an Israeli card game that none of the Israelis seem to be able to win. Then it’s back to bed in the same room we had dinner in, although now the dinner table has been removed and there’s straw mats on the ground for everyone to sleep on.

Day 3

We wake up at 3am and start hiking at 3:30am. I decide to wear my sandals for this part as it’s just along a road, my feet need it. About 15 minutes along the road we are met by two police officers who escort us for the rest of the trek (there have been incidents of robberies in past around here). After about 45 minutes we make it to the Mirador where we settle in our sleeping bags to watch the sunrise over the lake. While we are settling down one of the volcanoes on the other side of the lake erupts and we actually see some lava spewing out of it. I think it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The sunrise is amazing and makes you feel like it was all worth it. There’s dark smoke slowly rolling out of the volcano. We have a breakfast of oatmeal mixed with nuts, peanut butter and jam; it’s surprisingly good. I put those horrible shoes back on again and hobbled around the Mirador until it was time to go.  From here it was mostly downhill all the way to San Juan at the Lake. I’m not good at downhill at the best of times and my feet were in agony so it took me a pretty long time to get to the bottom. At one of our breaks on the way down we were told about a local legend for the volcanoes. There are three volcanoes surrounding Lake Atitlan, San Pedro, Toliman and Atitlan. San Pedro and Toliman were in love but one day Toliman starts cheating on San Pedro with Atitlan. San Pedro gets jealous so he chops Toliman’s head off. There’s a little hill called Cerro de Oro near the lake’s edge that represents Toliman’s head. 

Chillin out waiting for the Sunrise

The View from the Mirador

Lake Atitlan - during our decent

After the break it was back down again. Eventually we got San Juan and headed straight for a coffee co-operative for a café frio or cappuccino.  I hobble around the co-op having a look at the coffee museum or the drying coffee beans. I almost can’t believe that we’re finally in San Juan! I actually made it. Now it’s just a short walk around the corner (still painful) to a weaving shop where we dump our bags and have lunch. It’s over! We made it! Damn!

There’s an hour until lunch and apparently it’s tradition to jump in the lake at the end. Most of us jump into two tuk-tuks and head for San Pedro. We rock up to a restaurant/bar that has a deck right out onto the lake where you can jump off from. I don’t realise how high the deck actually is until I’m about to jump off it but I’ve come this far I might as well jump in so after staring at the lake for about 2 minutes I finally jump in. It’s a bit cold and I’m way too tired to keep myself afloat for long so I’m soon out but the others jump in a few times. We sit on the deck and stare up at Indian’s Nose across the lake and contemplate the fact that we were up there about 8 hours ago. Then it’s back in the tuk-tuks to go back for lunch. Lunch is chicken, rice, sauce, veggies and tortillas. No frijoles?? Eating lunch in that shop, thinking back over the last 3 days, I’m glad I didn’t give up, it was worth it.

View of Indian's Nose from our Lake Swim. Can you see him?

The Gang

After lunch it’s time to deal with the bags and say good-bye. We still can’t believe it’s over. Feeling a bit sad but I relish the moment when I get to give those shoes back. Emails are swapped and good-byes are had. We jump back in a tuk-tuk to go back to San Pedro where we end up staying for 4 nights. We do almost nothing while we are in San Pedro. We meet up with the guys from the trek a few times for drinks and eats. We also spend a lot of time in the hot tub at our hotel, we feel like we’ve earned it. Lake Atitlan has been described as the most beautiful lake in the world and while I wouldn’t say that the villages surrounding it are beautiful, the lake certainly is.

My Feet at the end of the Trek

The View from our Hotel

Some Stats:

Trek Length: 3 days

Trekking Distance: 45km

Highest Elevation Reached: 3050m

If you want to learn a bit more about Quetzeltrekkers you can check out their website here

but put basically – Hike Volcanoes, Help Kids

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.

Xela

So after we finally made it to Xela we had a day to walk around, find a Spanish School and buy our notebooks and pens! Maybe due to some laziness on our part we decided to go with the second school we checked out, this meant we got to spend the rest of the day watching Breaking Bad on the laptop.

In the end we had two weeks of Spanish School at El Portal with a home stay. It was back to homework every night and I even had a test one Monday morning. It was actually nice to have a bit of a purpose to days again and we had that Friday afternoon feeling that we hadn't had for about 3 months. 

The Home Stay:

We lived with two Sons, Sergio and Diego, who were attending the local university; Rebekka, an Austrian girl who was out for 6 months volunteering teaching English to local kids; and whatever other random people were around. For one of the weeks we also shared the house with a couple from the States who were brushing up on their Spanish. Last but not least there was Cristina, a family friend who lived around the corner and came over to cook all our meals and her son Mario. 

Our Family for Two Weeks - Rebekka, Mario, Cristina, Diego and Friend Jorge

The Bedroom - It really did start to feel like home

This girl was always trying to break into our room so we had to tie the door closed with a plastic bag or block it with a chair

One of the Courtyards in the middle of the house, it was a very interesting set up, but it left me craving my own courtyard one day

I hate this shower with a passion, the hot water would only work if only a trickle of water came out and it took us about a week to figure that out. So it was cold showers every day during winter. 

School:

School was hard and I still can't speak Spanish, but I'm closer that before! Through school we got to see multiple other parts of Xela. Every Friday there was a celebration for the students "Graduating" that week. One week we celebrated with many tostadas and the next with a giant fruit salad.

Me and My Maestra, Claudia

Alex and his Maestra, Leyla

Extra Circular Activities:

Just outside of Xela is an amazing hot spring, Fuentes Georginas. It's heated by a local volcano. The three pools range from Pretty Damn Hot to I think I'm starting to Boil Alive. We saw our first humming birds here! 

After about 2 hours in the Hot Springs I think it was the most wrinkled I have ever been

One Sunday we visited the Chichicastenango market, one of the biggest markets in Central America, with our housemates Rebekka and Sergio and their friend Joey. Crazy market with some pretty traditional churches and the prettiest cemetery I have seen (all those colours in the background)

We were waiting to catch a minivan to get back to the bus station from Chichi. The minivan reverses, almost running over me, and when it opens it's doors there's a flood of people pushing to get inside. In the end we counted at least 26 people squeezed into that van. If the same van was in Australia you legally could have only fit about 16 people in it. 

We heard that there was a Taco Bell in town so we went on an excursion to find it. After a lot of walking we finally stumbled into a shopping centre, a real shopping centre with a food court and everything. We found and conquered that Taco Bell. This was our first Taco Bell experience and I was..... disappointed. I just don't get how Taco Bell can be so crazy popular (It was the busiest food place in the court and both our teachers raved about it) when you're in the home of real Mexican food!

The Road to Xela - Classic Guatemalan Road Trip

We decided our first stop in Guatemala would be Xela (Pronounced Shela and short for Quetzaltenango) to bunker down and learn some spanish for two weeks. There was a direct bus we could take from our hostel, too easy.

After making this decision we discovered that the Guatemalan/Mexican border was closed and had been for a few days. Apparently there were protests on the Guatemalan side that meant there were road blocks. People from our hostel hadn't been able to get through so they were stuck in San Cristobal for a couple of extra nights. We asked the hostel about extending by a night or two just in case but the whole place was going to be booked out due to two big groups coming to stay. Friday morning, the day before we were hoping to leave, we got the news that our fellow hostel loggers had left for the border, good news! We were hopeful then that we would also get through, until the massive protests started that night. Friday night there were big protests all over Mexico in relation to the 43 missing students so no one seemed hopeful of getting out. Luckily there were free cocktails at the hostel that night to take everyone's mind off things. Definitely a good idea before having to get up at 6am the next day for a border crossing. In the end I maybe got about 3 hours sleep.

Saturday morning we were up at 6am for our 6:30am shuttle, feeling a little rough. The shuttle didn't arrive until 7:30am. We were so close to getting our awesome free breakfast that everyone was a little disappointed when the shuttle turned up. We walk around the corner to get to the mini van and hit the first snag of the day: two of the girl's names aren't on the list. There's a lot of umming and ahhing, phone calls and running around until finally the guy says they can come on the bus. The bus then drives us a block or two over and we are told we have to get out. That's the end of Bus #1. We walk around the corner to a fully sized bus that's going to take us to the border. We pile into the bus with some other travelers who turn out to all be part of one organised group with an annoying guide. We get out onto the highway on this bus and for some reason the the highway has speed bumps all along it, making for a painful slow drive. After a little while the bus pulls over and there's smoke everywhere. We don't know what was wrong with the bus the driver got back on and just told us all to open the windows. This meant the next part of the journey was pretty damn cold. About 10:30am we pull into a restaurant for breakfast and are told to only take half an hour. This stop takes about 1 hour and is a horrible restaurant. We had to force people to take our orders, they wrote the orders down on napkins and the food took forever to come. Eventually our food came out. We ordered Tortas (toasted sandwiches) and what came out was not a toasted sandwich, but still a sandwich of some kind. I was so hungry that I just started plowing in. After a little while the waiter comes over and says it's not our food, that's the club sandwich. It was almost like he wanted to take it away even though we'd started eating it. We knew that when it came time to pay the bill that was going to be a battle, but for the moment I enjoyed a pretty delicious club sandwich. As we got up to pay we noticed our bus driver just sitting down to his breakfast, so were weren't going anywhere fast. The waiters tried to charge us for the club sandwich and not the tortas that we orders. After a lot of back and forth of saying the same thing the others we were sitting with came over to weigh in as well so eventually the waiters gave up and let us just pay for the tortas. Score.

Back on the cold bus. Some of the girls had managed to get most of the windows shut so the drive was a little more comfortable. After a few more hours we got to the border. The bus driver took everyone's passport and $206MXN (maybe $306MXN, I can't remember) and took them all to the office to get stamped. I didn't really want to hand it over but I don't think I had much choice in the matter. While we were waiting for the bus driver to come back we had a toilet/snack break. Eventually the bus driver came back, handed out the passports and we were back in the bus for 5 minutes. Then it was get out, pick your bag up from the dirt and walk another 5 minutes to the next office. The end of Bus #2. The office was so small, nothing like what we were picturing. It was just walk in, get stamped, pay $20MXN and then keep going. On the other side of the office we had no idea what was going on. Lots of mini vans and people shouting. Eventually we got shepherded onto a bus that was going to Xela and San Pedro with the other people we'd been on the journey with so far and a new Swiss girl who was also trying to get to Xela.

The Border on the Mexican Side

Snack Break

Walking to the Guatemalan Side with all our Stuff

Away we go in the mini van, The scenery is awesome but the van is squishy, the driver is blasting Saturday night music and insistent on hitting every pot hole at a high speed. Eventually the van pulls over and the driver gets out to have a look. We know something didn't feel right but we weren't sure what. The Swiss girl is worried it's a flat tire as so far the other bus she's been on today has had two. The other van we're travelling with pulls in behind us. Not sure what gets fixed but the driver decides it's ok to go again. So we're off, but at a much slower speed. After what feels like forever we finally pull up at a service station for a break and more horrible snacks. The people from the other bus are asking why we are going so slow, apparently we've only been going about 30km/h. After a while the other buses take off but we're still at the service station. Two people from our group with better Spanish go ask the driver what's going on. Turns out the breaks on our bus have been broken the whole time and now they're waiting for another bus to turn up. Amazing. We wait a while for the other bus to turn up, start doing a bit of a group yoga session. Our bus is loaded with bags from the other buses so we find it pretty funny that sure, they'll get to their destination hours before we do, but we've still go all their stuff! Eventually the new bus turns up, we swap everything over and pile in. Amazingly it's even squishier than the last bus. The end of Bus #3.

Some of the Initial Scenery

Waiting for a new bus because this one is broke

We manage to drive for a few more hours without any hiccups to another service station. This is the swap over for Xela. The three of us going to Xela swap our stuff over, say good-bye to the others and end get in the new van. The end of Bus #4. The new van is actually really nice, proper seats, it's the comfiest we've been all day. It's now only a short drive into Xela. We pass two McDonalds on our way in. We get dropped off at the Swiss Girl's hostel since we haven't booked anything because we had no idea if we were going to make it. The end of Bus #5.

It's maybe about 7pm now. We get a room and a really nice feed. Turns out the hostel is really nice. Now we are comfortable and showered we can laugh about it. We're still alive and we're in Guatemala!

San Cristobal de las Casas

On our way to Guatemala we decided to stop in at San Cristobal de las Casas. We'd heard many good things about it, including having the chance to watch live chicken sacrifices in a church. We didn't end up watching any religious rituals but enjoyed it all the same. It's a cute little city with a beautiful backdrop of mountains. We found an awesome hostel that had free cocktails twice a week and an amazing free breakfast (Breakfast has become a big part of our lives. Nothing excites us more than free breakfast and towels in a hostel). 

If you're in San Cristobal visiting this canyon seems to be the thing to do. You get to boat through this amazing canyon that's about 1 km high taking in the views and the wild life. 

I could imagine fairies living in this waterfall

Found some crocodiles. We also got to some little monkeys and heaps of birds!

After the canyon we also visited this little town as part of our tour. There wasn't really anything to do there except each lunch but we found a fun statue!

Some sights from our walks around San Cristobal. I loved being able to always see mountains in the background:

In San Cristobal we had our first experience with bumping into a fellow traveler we had met in another town. We were walking down the street and saw a guy we had hung out with in Merida eating in a cafe. We hung out for the afternoon, walking around town, visiting this church and eating falafel. (Apparently San Cristobal also offers the best falafel. We hadn't even known falafel was on people's radars until having multiple conversations about it here).

View from the church

Chiapas was the State we were in

Throughout Mexico there have been protests in regards to the missing 43 students believed to have been killed by a drug cartel who was working for a politician. Just as we were preparing to leave Mexico the protests really kicked off. During our last night in San Cristobal there was a huge protest just outside our hostel, complete with loud chanting and graffiti. 

(I apologise for the terrible formatting, now and forever)

Ready to leave for Guatemala at 6:30 am