I haven't gotten the chance to write in
a little while. Partially because I don't want to waste time on the
computer, and partially due to the lack of internet. Two weeks ago,
Nico and I hooked up with an organization here called
Quetzaltrekkers. We saw that they were running a 6 day trip from
Nebaj to Todos Santos, and though it sounded really cool. As soon as
we got to Xela, we made sure to sign up. Quetzaltrekkers (QT) is an
organization that was started to raise money for a couple projects
here in Guatemala. At first we were a little turned off that the
guides were almost all foreigners. Seemed like it would be better to
be guided by a local and have the local earn the money.
Turns out that all the guides are
totally volunteers, so that they can raise as much money as possible
for their main project, Escuela de la Calle, along with a few others, which
get underprivileged kids off the streets and into school. The guides
don't get paid at all... meaning they have to pay their own food and
accommodations as well. They all speak Spanish and English and
really know the areas. Even while on the treks, they do their best
to make sure that money spent goes right to the locals as much as
possible. On the treks, we sometimes stay with families in small
villages. These are places that don't even have a store, let alone a
hostel. It was really neat that they let us sleep in the school, and
each time a trek comes through, they rotate what family gets to cook
for us, and therefore a significant financial boost for a hard days
work.
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| Steve entertaining all the kids |
Anyway, back to the Nebaj trek. Day 1
was just a travel day to get there and then check out the town of
Nebaj. Steve, a new guide, also plays ultimate and happened to have
a disc with him. We start throwing around in their central plaza,
and very soon we had a crowd of young boys looking curious. So we
start throwing to them and before we knew it, everyone was looking
on, and all the young kids were trying to get our attention to throw
it to them. This eventually ended when a bunch of boys got into a
dogpile all fighting for the disc. So we take it away, but they all
follow us to where we sit down. Also turns out that Steve worked for
an orphanage in the jungle for 8 months and was great with the kids.
He starts doing this clown routine, and messing with them, and they
were all mesmerized.
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| On the way up to the altiplano - early morning start |
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| the altiplano |
The next 4 days was the hiking. It
reminded me a lot of the foothills of the Himalaya. Very steep
rolling lush hills. It was quite green, even though the rainy season
hasn't even started yet. Then on day 2 of hiking we got up to the
first altiplano. It was totally unlike anything I've seen before.
There were grassy rolling hills with large limestone boulders
scattered all over, with pine forest all about. Even crazier is that
these boulders were once on the bottom of the ocean! Amazing
geologic forces pushed them all the way up to about 12,000ft above
sea level.
The next few days brought us up over
hills and across river valleys, in what was some very impressive
scenery. It's crazy that almost no tourists make it to these areas
of such great natural beauty. In some of the villages on the
altiplanos, QT are the only foreigners that these people ever see.
It is very strange to see people just stare at you, or even run away
at the sight of a white person. Although based on their reactions it
must be way weirder for them seeing us than it was for us to see
them. Our guides were telling us that a few weeks ago on the trek,
someone pulled out a camera in one of these villages, and all the
kids immediately fell to the ground. They were legitimately afraid
that the camera would steal their souls. I've heard about it before,
but never thought I'd actually be among those people. And for that
reason we are asked to not pull out our cameras around them and to
make sure to ask people if it is okay that we take a picture.
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| Team Purple! |
What also made this a great trek was
the group. Everyone meshed really well together. It was a small
group, 9 total, and so we all hung out together and got to be
friends. On our next trek, the Lago trek, our group was 17 people,
and so you just could not bond with everyone in 2.5 days.
Nico and I heard that Lago Atitlan was
a really nice place, and planned to check it out. It just worked out
that QT was running their Xela to Lago trek two days after we got
back from Todos Santos. So after one rest day, we were ready to hit
the trail again. I can see why this trek is so popular, with see
some really great scenery and being only a few days, and it goes to
where people want to end up anyway. QT will even drop off a bag for
you at the end so that you don't need to carry all your stuff.
It was another great trek, but not
quite as good as Nebaj. The scenery was good, but not quite as
amazing and remote as the other trek. One sweet highlight though was
that on the last day, you get up at 3:45am, and hike to a nice
mirador for the sunrise. We got there just as the first hues of
light were on the horizon, and you could see the lights of San Pedro
below, and also just make out the 3 volcanoes that run along the
southern part of the lake. It was quite a beautiful sunrise, until
just before the sun poked up when a bunch of clouds rolled in and
kept us covered until the sun was well up in the sky.
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| Sunrise from the mirador |
Then we were left in San Padro will all
of our stuff and no plan. Typical for us.... San Marcos, across the
lake, sounded like an interesting place, so we took the ferry there.
What a weird place. I really liked how for the part of the town that
was near the water, there were no roads. It was just footpaths
winding amongst the trees and shrubs... and also the hostels and
meditation centers. It was a very idyllic tropical place, but
nothing there felt like Guatemala; it could have been anywhere. The
people were the weirdest part. It was a hippy haven, and all of them
with the weird clothes and crystals on their foreheads made me feel
so damn normal.
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| Lago Atitlan |
It was a nice chill time though, until
the next morning when we were feeling like we really needed to figure
out what we wanted to do with our last week here. Since there was no
internet to be had in the entire town, we packed up again and went
back to San Pedro, which was a bit of a bigger town and also party
central. It was really odd when the next morning at 7am we were
trying to find breakfast, and the only store open was a liquor
store... Anyway, it took us all afternoon but finally we came up
with a plan. I had wanted to go to the jungle and Tikal, but it was
actually really far away, and would have been such a pain to get
there. We decided on heading back to Xela to do more hiking! Before
that though, we went for a kayak on the lake, and also spent a night
in Chichicastenango which has one of the largest markets in Central
America.
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| From our paddle on the lake. The water has risen quite a bit in the past few years.... |
Chichi was actually quite a nice little
city. Saturday evening as we were walking around, many people were
starting to get set up for the big Sunday market. Neither of us are
much of the shopping type, but it was still interesting to wander
around and see what there was to see there. Then it was an easy few
rides on the chicken busses back to Xela. Xela kinda feels like our
home here in Guatemala, and it was good to be back in time for the
potluck dinner with everyone from QT.
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| From the market in Chichi |
For the third QT hike, we will be doing
a full moon hike up Santa Maria. It hasn't actually happened yet,
but it will be basically the last thing we do before heading back to
Guatemala City and flying back to NY the following day. I am really
hopeful that this time we will get good views of Santiaguito which is
the very active volcano that we attempted to see a couple weeks ago.
Starting the hike a bit before midnight should put us on the summit
well before sunrise, when the skies are the clearest. Wish us luck!
And of course to view more awesome pictures that we took (all from Nico's camera though)
