Buenos!
The first stop on my Central American journey is Guatemala. I arrived in Guatemala City last Saturday, and was supposed to be picked up by the driver for the place I was staying at overnight. Of course I couldn't find him, and was quickly mobbed by a hoard of eager chauffeurs. I'm not sure whether it was my huge orange backpack, bright purple hoodie, or pasty white skin that gave it away, but I had 'gringo' written all over me. A man offered to call the place where I was staying, even after I didn't accept his offer at another hotel, and quickly put me in touch with the person I was supposed to meet. Next thing you know, I am being led past the crowd to a dark parking lot, and an unmarked vehicle is opened for me. As I jump in the back, it all hits me. This was a scam. The guy called his friend, who came over to pick me up. Classic gringo mistake. I was about to be driven to a back alley, robbed of all my belongings, and left for backpage news of the local newspaper... Turns out I was wrong, and when I saw my name on a sheet in the passenger seat, I was suddenly reassured. First lesson of the trip: not every tico is out to rob you.
After making it out of the ever so inviting Guatemala City, with its barbed wire, barracks-like metal gates, and shotgun-wielding tienda guards, I made it to Quetzaltenango (known as Xela, pronounced 'Shay-la') the next day. My host family is amazing, the school is great, and the town is full of interesting stuff, but more on all that later. Time to talk volcanos.
My house (in orange) in Xela
Guatemala has some volcanos. You may have heard. One erupted the other week, closing the airport for almost a week, and covering cities in ash. No big deal though, compared to Agatha that was a joke.
Yesterday I climbed a volcano. Santa Maria rises almost 4000 metres above sea level, and its peak is a dominant view from Xela. It isn't active anymore, but from the top you can see the active Santiaguito erupt every few hours in plumes of smoke. We started the climb at 5am, as it takes between 3-5 hours for a gringo to get to the summet (or 1.5 if you are a local Mayan woman wearing flips flops and carrying a baby on your back). In terms of difficulty, it was really steep, and the air is quite thin so it can be exhausting. Three of the girls turned back just after the halfway mark, and a bunch of us at the front had to stop regularly to wait for the rest of the group. It wasn't such a big deal though, because the view on the way up wasn't all that shabby.
View on the way up
On the way up we were regularly passed by a group of local women in traditional weaved clothing performing some kind of ritual all the way up. They would stop at various points to pray in some sort of (from what we understood) hybrid Christian-Mayan ritual. It was really quite neat. Our guide told us that at the top there was some sort of prayer ceremony held every weekend, which explained the number of locals making the trek.
At the top
We finally made it up in about 5 hours, with the last 15 minutes being the hardest on the lungs and legs. Unfortunately, the cloud cover had rolled in, and there wasn't much of a view, even though it felt like we were on top of the world. Sure enough, numerous prayer sessions were going on, and we were actually the only group of foreigns on the peak. We had a well deserved lunch, but as per normal, it soon started raining, and we had to once again gear up and head down the volcano. The rain made for a slippery descent, and more than one person from our group took a nasty spill or two. On the other hand, the locals bombed down the hill like there was no tomorrow, hopping around like mountain goats. It was actually unbelievable how gracefully they got down, while we were busy going step-by-step so as to avoid breaking ankles.
And the rain begins...
'Locals do it better'
Unfortunately, the mountain got the best of one of the guys in the group, and shortly after taking out his ankle he started cramping up. The guide told us to keep going, and he and a few others stayed back. Just before we got to the bottom of the volcano, we encountered a local man on a horse who asked us where on the mountain our friend was. Apparently, the easiest way to get someone off the volcano is by horse medivac. Interesting. While it will make a great story once he's feeling better, I can just imagine that the absurdity underlying an equestrian medivac wasn't much consolation at the time...
Part of the crew
After an early morning, I went home and crashed, waking up at 9pm before going back to bed two hours later. The rain is still coming down today, so the morning was spent watching the Round of 16 (GO DEUTSCHLAND!) and finding an internet place open on Sunday (not the easiest feat). The Mexico/Argentina game has just started, so I'm back off to home to watch it. Vamos Mexico! (until the quarterfinals that is... sorry Francisco).
Back at the bottom of the volcano
