SwiftRambles

Guatemala At-A-Glance

Days spent: 27

Transportation taken: Planes = 2, Chicken Buses = 8, Shuttles = 9, Taxis = 4, Boats = 4

Number of places we stayed= 9 (8 hostels plus 1 homestay)

Final daily budget: $71

Wildlife spotted:

- Spider monkeys

- Not much other wildlife in Guatemala but we did spot many, many ugly stray dogs and farm animals

Beers tried:

- Gallo (Amber's favorite)

- Moza

- Homemade IPA at "Pool and Pizza" (Tied for Tom's favorite, see below)

- Brava and Brava Extra

- Cabro (Tied for Tom's favorite bc it was sold at the bodega close to Maria's house and was roughly $2 for a liter, quantity/proximity over quality)

- 2 homemade drinks from a town outside of Xela called "Soupa de Frutas" (Fruit Soup) and Rompopo

Tours taken:

- San Antonio Indigenous village, outside of Antigua

- Pacaya volcano (no lava!), outside of Antigua

- San Pedro volcano, Lake Aitilan

- Indigenous villages/hot springs tour outside of Xela

- Tajumulco volcano (Tom only)

- Semuc Champey and Lanquin caves

Most Touristy Activity:Taking the shuttle bus to Chichicastenago, an outdoor market that only sold touristy items

Least Touristy Activity: Staying in the port town of Puerto Barrios after crossing back into Guatemala from Belize.  It was not at all touristy but also not a very fun place to stay! 

Amber's favorite memory:Traipsing through the caves of Semuc Champey in candlelight

Tom's favorite memory:  Seeing the sunrise from the top of Volcan Tajumulco, the highest peak in Central America

Items lost: 

- Replacement sunglasses (for the ones I lost in Belize)

- REI bag that packed up really small (this was sort of my purse so this is very sad for me!)

- earrings

 Here´s a link to the photos we took in Guatemala, many which have been featured on this blog.

California Tom and the Temples of Tikal - Flores, Guatemala

With my leather jacket, brown hat, and whip in hand, I walked through the jungle searching for a lost civilization with my trusty sidekick (Amber). Trekking through the trees, and hearing a chorus of monkey, birds, and large bugs we made our way deeper. Thousands of years ago a large civilization prospered and we were destined to find the ruins. We tread carefully so that we did not trip any booby traps. We came to a break in the jungle and there looming before us was a large stone Mayan temple partially hidden with years of vegetation...(feed in "In the Wild Blue Yonder" soundtrack).

Avoiding the scary jungle beasts...



Not my boot:



California Tom in the jungle:

Water Under Rocks - Lanquin, Guatemala

After settling in at our new hostel and taking a sauna following a quick plunge into the cold river, we decided to go on a tour of a bat cave that night. Our guide didn't speak much English, and of course our Spanish is horrible, but we were able to go off the trail in the cave to see some cool caverns and rock formations that looked like animals or people. He even showed us where we could swim in the underground river if we so desired (we didn't). The highlight was at dusk when we sat by the cave entrance while thousands of bats flew by our heads and out of the cave to fetch dinner. No bats ran into us, but you could feel them coming awfully close.

Us outside the cave:



Tom being attacked by a lion:



BATS!

A long way to Semuc Champey - Lanquin, Guatemala

Note: We are very behind in blog posts (about 3 countries!) and we're trying to catch up... We are in Patagonia, Chile now and are not feeling any of the earthquakes as we are so far down south.  We are safe and are planning some hiking/camping trips over the next month or so.  Sorry the following post is so long, as the quote goes, we don't have time to make it shorter :)

After waiting out our week in Xela, following Tom's hike, we headed north to the remote region of El Peten. Our goal was to visit the the lowlands and in particular Semuc Champey - a cave / river system that is strikingly beautiful. Although we knew it would take a long time to get there, the journey was more difficult than anticipated.

After getting up early for our 7:00am shuttle, we were still waiting by our hostel come 7:30. Tom was getting understandably anxious. Luckily an owner of one of the travel agencies strolling by noticed we were waiting and we figured out together that they did not have our reservation in the "system" (or lack thereof). It was interesting getting his perspective about running a travel agency in Guatemala and some of the labor issues he's experienced. He fixed our problem and 5 minutes later a shuttle arrived to pick us up. So we left Xela at 7:30am thinking happily we were on our way! However, multiple transfers and side trips later, not to mention a 2 hour "layover" in Antigua, caused us to arrive at our final destination at 11:00 at night.

We befriended an English couple on the shuttle bus and we decided to continue our journey on the shuttle with them to Lanquin instead of stopping in Coban (which is what we paid for). After many twisty turns, a stop to cover our backpacks on the roof from the rain, a long gravel road, and some really bad Spanish music blasting on the radio, we arrived late in Lanquin and our first choice for accommodations was full for the night. However, we were in for itluck! Our entrepreneurial shuttle bus drivers knew exactly where to take us: Jam Bamboo. The sales pitch for our accommodation began in Coban which we didn't realize. Someone mentioned staying at some random place and Tom said yeah maybe just to get the person to leave him alone. Then he noticed the same gentleman riding along in our shuttle bus. We could foresee that we would likely have to go where our drivers took us and that they were going to get a kickback for taking us there, but we were powerless to stop the well-oiled machine. So another 20 minutes down a gravel road, we ended up at Jam Bamboo, but lo and behold, it was full also.

Volcan Tajumulco - Xela, Guatemala

As I mentioned before, one of my goals for Guatemala was to climb Volcan Tajumulco, the highest point in Guatemala.  After biding our time in Xela for the week, the morning of the volcano trek finally came.  Unfortunately Amber was still under the weather and not up for a major expedition, so I again went off on my own, meeting new travelers.*

I hiked the volcano with Quetzal Trekkers, which helps supports a local boys home and a school. The hike was not very long distance-wise, but we went up from 11,000 feet to just under 14,000 feet to the top. We got to the campsite near the top and it started raining. I borrowed some equipment from the tour operator, but my legs were still cold. The inside of the tent got soaking wet and we somehow fit 8 people into one tent. I didn't mind the conditions, but with the rain, cold, and cramped conditions, I was thinking that Amber made the right choice to stay home.  We went to bed around 8pm and woke up at 4am to hike to the top and see the sunrise. The view was breathtaking as you can see a range of volcanoes silhouetted by the sun. The volcanoes were all ones that we had seen in Antigua and Lake Atitlan and now they looked puny in the distance.

Volcanoes in the distance (from left to right: Agua, Acetenango, Fuego, Atitlan, San Pedro, and Santamaria):

Waiting for the sun to come up:

Big Market Day - Chichicastenango, Guatemala

One of Amber's Guatemalan goals was to check out the large outdoor market in Chichicastenango (ChiChi for short.  So from Xela, we traveled a couple of hours for a day trip to ChiChi. We went on Thursday which is one of the main market days and we actually were underwhelmed by the market. It seemed to mainly have touristy items for sale and didn't seem as big as we were expecting. We had already been to a large market in Antigua which seemed more "local".

I did leverage some of the skills I learned from my "Negotiations" class from Wharton to haggle for some items including a $2.50 watch, a $2.50 ornament (since we collect them from our travels), and $2.50 knit gloves for my volcano hike. Everything seemed to cost about the same thing, which was good for our travel budget.  However, that was before Amber came across the most beautiful scarf in the world and decided that was what I needed to really practice negotiating on. Unfortunately, the seller asked for about $60 for it and I was still thinking $2.50 should be the going rate.

Clean stove project - Xela, Guatemala

While waiting for my hike at the end of the week, Amber and I looked into volunteer opportunities near Xela.  We went to a volunteer organization that matches volunteers to openings and we signed up to help with a clean stove project. The foreign-funded charity installs wood powered stoves with chimneys in Guatemalan village huts. Many indigenous villagers cook in their huts with wood fires causing numerous health problems including blindness and respiratory issues. The charity organization buys the materials and installs stoves with ventilation and identifies the neediest families that need them. We found out the day before that the day we picked was going to be a buying day and not an installation day which made for a less exciting day. Amber felt sick in the morning so I went with about 10 other people out to a village 3 hours away from Xela. I rode a chicken bus 5 hours and did manual labor for the day: moving large cinder blocks and bricks from a truck to different homes in one village. The villagers were appreciative and one family fed us a quick lunch: soup, tortillas, and a plantain tea. We provided materials for 7 stoves and got to see a finished product that was completed earlier. I was huffing and puffing at 9000 feet carrying bricks, but local women were also helping carry some of the materials and they were putting myself and the other volunteers to shame. I was carrying about 10 bricks at a time in my arms and the women would carry about 20 bricks in a bag strapped to their heads. We probably looked like pathetic weak foreigners but we were helping and everyone was really nice (except for the little boys that were playing soccer who flipped us the finger...with utmost diplomacy, I flipped them the bird right back.)

Stove materials:

Loading the truck:

Killing time in Xela - Queztaltenango, Guatemala

We left the lake for the mountains and I was excited to try and climb the highest point in Central America, Volcano Tajulmulco. So we headed to the second largest city in Guatemala, Quetzaltenango, called Xela for short (thankfully!). I researched the costs for the guided climb and the cheapest, most safe (English speaking guides), and most philanthropic tour operator only does overnight tours on Saturdays (more on the hike in a future post). As we arrived on a Sunday, this meant we had a week to kill in Xela.

In fact, we arrived on Super Bowl Sunday.  As we had an unexpectedly tough travel day (we had to take 3 chicken buses and a cab to arrive in Xela, and we have never been on a bus so crowded, I was literally standing in the stairwell of the bus with the door open careening around mountain passes - it was scary!), we deserved some beer and football.  We headed to a bar simply called "Pool and Beer" to watch the Super Bowl en espanol.  I got to enjoy an IPA for the first time since setting off on the Big Trip and it was good!  Brewed by a friend of the bartender, it felt well-deserved after a tough travel day.  After attempting to ignore the Spanish, we actually felt very American for a while and it was a nice change of pace.

Checking out the Super Bowl while drinking a beer:

Letting go at Lake Atitlan - San Pedro, Guatemala

After the harrowing volcano climb in Antigua, we deserved some rest time right? Well, we thought we did so we decided to head to Lago Atitlan or Lake Atitlan, which is a beautiful lake surrounded by volcanoes and mountains. Located around the lake are a series of small towns. We decided to head to the town of San Pedro as we were able to get a shuttle there directly from Antigua. And our shuttle driver, to quote Rain Man, was an "excellent driver". As parts of the road were unpaved, he navigated carefully and then for each of the scary hairpin turns, he made sure to honk to let potential oncoming traffic know we were coming.

As we drove, we passed through foggy villages and Guatemalans of all ages picking coffee or walking along the road with loads of sticks for firewood. Pickup trucks filled to the brim with coffee workers whizzed by us. We definitely felt like we stepped out of the "Disneyland" version of Guatemala that Antigua represents and into a more authentic experience.

Our first look at San Pedro:

NO LAVA - Pacaya Volcano, Antigua, Guatemala

I didn't know a lot about Guatemala before I came here, but one thing I knew for certain that I wanted to do was climb an active volcano. Guatemala has about 10 active volcanoes and one of them is located near Antigua and it happens to be one that you can climb and see the lava flow. Tom and I headed out to do the afternoon hike, with the idea that you can see the glow of the lava at night.

After taking a long shuttle ride through some twisty roads, we arrived at our destination. The guide hopped on our bus and said something in quick and to me, incomprehensible, Spanish. One thing for sure that I heard was NO LAVA. Apparently there hadn't been lava for the past two days which of course the tour company neglected to tell us. Tom and I both wanted to turn around right then and there but we had to do the hike as we were already committed. I think I also heard 1 kilometer and 1500 ft elevation change - that is a lot of elevation change in .6 miles!

Before we got started, there were tons of little kids selling sticks to help navigate the steep climb. I wanted to get one as another person recommended it. Of course, Tom was too manly to need a stick. However, we didn't have enough change for just one so Tom was forced to decided to get one too. Sensing new prey, about 15 children surrounded Tom yelling "Stick! Stick!". I will never forget the sight of this gaggle of small children half Tom's size shoving sticks in his face. Tom handled this with aplomb and with sticks in hand we started to head up the hill.

And up and up the hill we went! The pace of the guided tour was fairly quick for me and I was struggling with the altitude and maybe being just a teensy bit out of shape. As I was trailing everyone else huffing and puffing up the steep grade, a man and a boy on horses started following me and saying "chica, horse, chica, want a horse?". It was already embarrassing being the last one and on top of that I didn't need someone offering me a ride too! No way was I getting on that horse. Thankfully two other girls in our group elected to take the horses so they stopped bugging me and let me suffer in peace.

Tom in front of two other volcanoes at viewpoint: