Our 9th day in Guatemala was our last full day at the lake. I woke up wanting to cry, but instead, rushed around so that we could go hike a volcano. The volcano across from our house to be exact.
While waiting on the lancha to take us to San Pedro, the waters were once again calm, and there was a fisherman out on his kayak. It was very picturesque.
We caught the lancha, and the head of the agency met us and had us come to the office real quick before getting our “taxi” ready for us. Turns out a taxi means the bed of a pickup truck, which we had seen often but had not yet experienced. So we went speeding up the hill to the entrance of the volcano standing in the back of a truck. We got checked in and started marching proudly to our fate.
I had read that this hike was very strenuous and tough, but we are young and in decent shape. I mean, I take the stairs up to the 5th floor at work every day, so I’ve got this, right?
Volcán San Pedro is approximately 10,000 feet high or over 3,000 meters. And it is steep. There are no parts that just level off. You just climb up and up and up. Our guide was pretty well worthless- he just ran ahead of us as fast as he could without saying a word. Apparently my training of taking the stairs at work was not enough. I had to stop constantly, especially since we were at a much higher altitude than I am used to back home in Kansas and couldn’t catch my breath. Fortunately, there were a lot of great views to see when we stopped.
There were two guys from England on the hike with us, and they seemed pretty grateful to stop frequently as well. We talked about our travels, and when we said we were only in Guatemala for 11 days, they said “11 days! Tha’s all?!” And when Anthony explained to him that most Americans only get 2 weeks vacation, they responded, “Two weeks for a whole year! Tha’s insane!” Thanks. We know.
After climbing what felt like 5 million kilometers, I thought we had to have at least gotten halfway up when I saw a sheltered look-out point. We climbed up to the second story for the view, and noticed on the sign that we were only one-third the way up. For the second time that day, I wanted to cry. My hiking boots are a bit big on me, so they had already managed to rub throbbing blisters into the back of my heels, and my poor little heart wanted to explode.
After catching my breath and giving myself a pep talk, I was totally ready to move on. There were a few people from other groups who had just decided to stay there at that lookout point and give up on the rest, but I was not going to be a quitter.
But then as soon as we started climbing again, my blisters hurt worse than before and I was out of breath again after 3 minutes. Anthony kept encouraging me, mostly because we couldn’t make Americans look bad in front of the English. It was a total competition. I would square my shoulders and trudge up a bit more, then stop. Then again. Then we got this fantastic view before we would be entering the jungle, and that’s when the guide told us it would be our last view for the next 2 hours until we reached the top. Son of a…
Anthony was looking at me expectantly, so I started up again, but those damn blisters made me want to collapse to the ground with every step I took, and my windpipe was protesting any air coming in so that I could breathe, and once we got a little ways up in the forested part, I told Anthony I was not going to be able to make it. If it was just the difficulty of the climb, I probably could have pushed myself the rest of the way up, but very slowly. But my God, those blisters turned me into the biggest baby in the world. Anthony told the guide we were going to go ahead and turn back, and I’m sure his pride was damaged with the young Englishmen venturing their way up to the top while we gave up, but he happens to be a pretty fantastic husband who doesn’t let his pride get in the way of his wife’s well-being, so he put a grin on his face and turned back down. My hero.
Fortunately, the walking downwards caused my feet to shift forward in my shoes, so they were no longer rubbing at the blisters. It was a pretty treacherous descent, though, with the loose dirt and gravel down those steep slopes. My knees were starting to get just a bit achy when we noticed the old Mayan man for the first time. Who knows how far up the volcano he goes every day, but the first time we saw him was after the third way point. And he walks all the way back down, carrying a ton of logs on his back, strapped to his forehead. He had to have been in his upper 60s-70s, but here he was, using his head and his back to carry all these logs down a volcano, with only a stick to help keep him from falling all the way down. I felt pretty wimpy after that and decided I’d better not complain about my achy knees.
When we finally made it back down and into town, we stopped for some chips and guac to rest a bit, and I started looking at the reviews for the hike to make me feel better about myself. It mostly accomplished that. While most of the reviews were “Super hard but worth it!” there were more than enough college athletes and similar talking about how it was the hardest thing they had ever done. All of a sudden, I went from “I wasn’t able to make it to the top of the volcano :(“ to “Holy crap, I almost made it to the top of that volcano! I’m a badass!”
Slight exaggeration, but leave me alone.
We got back on a lancha, and when I asked Anthony for the camera, I managed to drop my phone. I drop my phone multiple times a day from various heights onto various surfaces (such as concrete), and it is indestructible, but apparently, it could not survive the one foot drop onto the metal floor of the lancha because the screen cracked pretty majorly.
It’s still usable, so oh well, I’ll deal. We stopped at San Marcos to eat a late lunch, at another vegetarian restaurant set back in a beautiful garden area. We decided to try and snap pictures of birds while we waited for our food.
Once we were done, we walked back to the lancha. I could not handle my boots rubbing on my blisters for another second, so I embraced my inner hippie and walked barefoot like everyone else in town, and we sadly said goodbye to San Marcos. I’ll miss that quirky little village.
It was just us and another couple on the lancha for the first time ever, and I was a bit suspicious when the captain did not know our dock and did not know which side he should come up to our dock. He fumbled around a bit, and while he did that, the other couple told us not to pay him too much because it was supposed to be a private shuttle for them. Nice.
We climbed up to our house, all of our muscles protesting, got cleaned up, and went back down to the dock to hang out.
It was getting very cloudy out, and when the sun started to set, it cast a pinkish hue on the clouds, which our camera gladly picked up and intensified.
It was absolutely beautiful down there, and it was the last sunset we would experience at the lake. Having 5 days there got me all sentimental about it. I did not want to leave whatsoever.
