Up, up and a-lake

Xela is considered to be something of a quiet city – there aren’t many museums, galleries or major cultural events. What attracts people to Xela are the many satellite villages and activities within a couple of hours.

Last weekend I had my first foray with the outdoors when my school arranged an excursion to see Laguna Chicabal – a deeply sacred Mayan site.

The Lagoon is located in the crater of Volcán Chicabal, at about 2,712m above sea level. It is considered the centre of the “cosmovision” for the Mam people – a group of Native American people who live around Xela. The lake is closed for a month around April/May each year to allow the Mayan people to worship “Jueves de la Ascension” undisturbed. The rest of the year, tourists are free to visit the lake, although swimming in the lake remains banned all year around.

We left Xela at 6am, and caught a couple of shuttle buses to San Martín Sacatepéquez, the town at the base of the volcano. From there, it’s about a 5km walk up to the laguna.

San Martín Sacatepéquez

A chicken wandering around dud potatoes

Oh I’m sorry, did I say “walk”? 

Not a path we walked on

It’s a hike.

An actual path we walked on

Up.

Oh hi, cloudline. I'm just going to walk through you for a while. 

Like, UP-up.

This photo does not do justice to how steep the "up" was. 

And, to add to the lung-busting fun, it started raining about halfway up.

Because you know what these dirt-covered rocks needed?
Water.

Fucking fabulous.

I call this "the exact moment I vowed to never leave home without my raincoat again"

But finally, with my heart beating in my ears, we reached the summit. The sacred lake. 

And...

...

....

.....

.......

The majestic Laguna Chicabal

Yep. Fogged out.

My emotions.
Literally, I was so exhausted, this was the only gesture I had enough energy to muster. 

Luckily, after about 10 minutes at the top, we had a brief break in the clouds and then we actually saw the lake.

*heavens part and angels sing*

And then we got to take a closer look at the lake. Which to the screaming joy of my quads meant about 600 of the dodgiest, muddiest, most uneven wooden steps down you have ever seen. Crazy fun.

Again, this photo does not do the slope justice. It was *steep*

Down at the lake-side, we got another brief reprieve from the fog, and got a few snippets of lake, which was prettttttty beautiful. 

The sign reminding everyone that not to swim in the sacred lake. With "with clothes" added in pen.

Goodness gracious, tourists, you are such a classy bunch. 

We were there while a few groups of people were worshipping, which was interesting, because with my broken Spanish, it seemed like there were equal numbers of christian worshippers and mayan worshippers (who speak a different, Mayan language). 

We went for a (mercifully flat) stroll around the lake, and watched as waves of fog rolled in and out over the lake - it was fairly amazing, and it made me forgive the mountain for the horrendous trek to get there. 

It seems that while swimming is banned, fishing is not. 

Mirror!

This dog feels about the same way about the rain as I do. 

Some more groups of worshippers

A new wave of fog

The same sign (No Nadar [con ropa]), at the end of our walk when the lake was once again engulfed by fog.

And so, it was time to go back down the mountain.

Now, normally, I'm all about the easy options. Cook > Clean. Down > Up.

Except when the "up" was dirt/mud covered rocks on incredibly steep slopes. Then I started to realise that the fun part of my adventure was about to begin. Let the 5km-long slip-and-slide commence.

Needs more mud. 

But the walk/slide/mudbath down wasn't a complete bust, because I discovered an entirely new brand of communal insanity.

Incredibly steep and muddy UPHILL mountain biking.
  

At first, we only saw this guy, pedalling desperately up the hill, as his tyres barely gained traction in the mud.  

Happy campers two and three.

AND THEN THERE WERE MORE.

Actually about 100 in total.

All walking/running/pushing/pedalling their bikes up the dangerously rocky and slippery slope that I could barely walk up with only a backpack.  

So much mud

So as we were stumbling/sliding down the mountains, these two blokes overtook us.
RUNNING.
With hoes.

While I was walking down the mountain looking like a hybrid of toddler and a drunken velociraptor (my arms perched at roughly 90 degrees). 

Again. You just don't understand how steep this was. 

Corn in the fog

A beginner’s guide to hot springs and modes of transportation in Guatemala

Between near debilitating jetlag, and sorting out my school and homestay the first few days in Xela were a bit hectic, but because I did all my life admin before the weekend, I got to squeeze in an adventure on Saturday, when some hostel amigo/as went on an EPIC ADVENTURE to the Fuentes Georginas.

The Fuentes Georginas are hot springs at the base of Cerro Quemado, a dormant volcano within the mountains which surround Xela. The springs were discovered by a pair of locals in about 1902, and were later turned into communal baths, and named after "benevolent dictator" Jorge Ubico's wife. Ubico was the last president before Guatemala's ten-year long civil war. He came to power with the backing of both liberals and conservatives, and ruled for about 13 years during which time he did some good things (built infrastructure, provided some economic stability) and a few more bad things (quashed opposition, made it legal to kill indigenous people who failed to comply with a law controlling when and where they could work). According to the internet, his nickname was "the Little Napolean of the Tropics". Which I literally could not love more. After he was overthrown in 1944, Ubico fled to New Orleans where he lived in exile until his death in 1946. 

Like the intrepid exploradara/os we are, when faced with the option of saving 30quetzales (the currency here – about 6 dollars) by not taking a tour bus up the mountain, we laughed and thought of all the brews that could buy (a lot), and decided to wing it ourselves.

A chicken bus. 

So we jumped on the local bus (known as a “chicken bus” – and it’s too soon for me to say whether that’s an affectionate term) to travel to Zunil the town at the base of the mountain. The buses are good fun – no seatbelts, no suspension, no concept of passing distance or speed limits, no limit on how many people can ride… #libertarianparadise.

The only vaguely clear photo I could take from the chicken bus. 

The ride was short, but really interesting, because it was my first chance to really look out of a window on a bus (I had an aisle seat on my coach from Guatemala City, and the windows were fogged up with humidity for the whole ride).  The mountains interspaced with valleys, with a generous serve of atmospheric fog gave me views that I don’t think I will ever find underwhelming. It also shows how the majority of Guatemalans live – that is to say rurally on impossible slopes.

Another small town outside Xela

We had a quick stop in a small village, where a guy jumped on and enthusiastically espoused the virtues of the plastic things that hold cards that you clip onto the bottom of lanyards (no sale), and another guy with an ice-cream trolley brought 4 pre-made ice creams onto the bus to sell.

The ice-cream guy's cart

After the chicken bus, we haggled for a ride the 8km up the mountain with a local man. When I was a kid, when Dad came home from work, he’d always stop 5meters from the driveway and let us ride on the bull bar at the front of the Hi-lux into the garage. Little did he, or I, know that the years of hitching rides on bull bars would prepare me for this moment. Eight of us piled into the back of the ute, and held on for life as we made our way on the single, occasionally dirt, lane road up the mountain. There are no photos of the journey, because of said holding on for life, but it was just stunning. We rose up through the clouds, and just when you think you’re at the top of a ridge, you catch a snippet of another peak high above you – it was just incredible.

Along the roads we got a closer look at the truly magnificent determination of Guatemala’s farmers. Not a single square metre was wasted, vertical or otherwise. And yet somehow, the crops were still planted in perfectly straight lines. Goats and cows lingered on the side of the roads, occasionally tethered, but mostly constrained by the fact that they literally could only go up or down the road.

But at the end of the road, we reached the hotsprings, which were pretttttty amazing. We ended up spending a number of hours there, jumping in and out of the pools. At about 5, just when we were starting to think about contemplating going home, a storm rolled in and we decided to wait it out. Hanging out in the springs in the rain was just incredible – but as the rain kept coming, and it became less likely that this would be just another 30min downpour, we had to make the dash down the hill.

Hot springs

So, we rallied and dragged ourselves out of the water, only to find that all of the pick up trucks that you could hitch had bailed… leaving us with the deeply undesireable option of walking 8km down the mountain. We managed to summon all of our collective luck and found one truck going down that we were able to squeeze into. It’s not common that I’d say squatting in the back of ute, while on the verge of hypothermia and with rain-knives slashing  my face was a godsend, but hey – Guatemala changes a lass.

At the bottom of the mountain, we managed to intercept an almost-but-not-quite full chicken bus heading back to Xela, however at twice the cost of the first bus. Turns out, twice the cost meant twice as far away from where we wanted to be back in town, so we again legged it through some kind of early Christmas market to jump into one of the shuttle buses that service Xela.

I have no idea what this is.
It's not a shuttle, or a chicken bus.
But I now dedicate my time in Xela to finding out and riding in one of these. 

The shuttles are good fun – they’re your standard minivan, however rather than sticking with a paltry 12 or so people, you become intimately acquainted with up to 25 of your newest friends. There are people sitting on people, standing/bending awkwardly around the chairs, as well as up to 4 people hanging out the side of the van.

Very pretty.
Very cold. 

Long story short: 

hot springs: good

chicken buses: cheap. 

ute-based transportation systems: lifesavers. 

shuttles: not so much. 

Until next time, frenemigos!

The view straight up in the hot springs.