Brenna Abroad

We had to leave the lake at 8am, so we got up early enough to enjoy one last sunrise there next to the fire before gathering all our things and catching the lancha.

We said goodbye to our hosts and hopped on the first lancha going toward Panajachel. It was surprisingly not that full, but of course, that didn’t last long. Large numbers of people climbed on on our next two stops, so that the entire front of the lancha which does not have benches was full of people standing and sitting as well. The guy behind me was wearing a KU National Champs tshirt which is awesome since, as a Kansas girl, I am a huge KU fan. He probably doesn’t even know who KU is though.

Once in Pana, we met up with Alfredo, our driver. He took us on to Chichicastenango, which holds a massive market on Thursdays and Sundays. There was so much color everywhere we looked, and so many people that it was hard to walk. And Alfredo told us that it was a quiet day there!

There is the tourist portion of the market, and then the local portion. They had a bit of everything.  The produce part was packed full of fresh fruits and vegetables, and smelled like cilantro. I love cilantro.

Alfredo gave us bits of information about everything, what things were, what the locals do, etc. One thing I found interesting was when he was describing the tops that the Mayan women wear. There are the smaller ones with one hole for the head for the younger girls. There are the larger ones with one hole for the head for the older women. And then there are the larger ones, with one hole for the head and another hole for breastfeeding for the other women. If you’ve been around the indigenous populations in Guatemala much, you realize that they have a ton of kids and start pretty young.

On the steps of the Church, they sold beautiful flowers.

We got to the livestock portion which was incredibly difficult for me. In the US, pretty much all meat is factory farmed which is a cruel process, but one that people don’t see. In Guatemala, the meat is more from farms, and they sell live chickens, cows, and turkeys at these markets. They are not treated like living creatures, but more like props. The chickens are all stuffed in baskets together with a net keeping them in, and their feet tied together. The cows are very skinny. There was a very distraught pig that multiple people were fighting to keep in a truck. And I don’t mean this to be negative to the Guatemalan people. They are not wealthy, and clearly, taking care of themselves and their families is more important to them than the farm animals, and these animals provide necessary money and/or food for them. But it was not a fun part for me to see.

We walked on to the cemetery which was really interesting. I am used to the cemeteries in the US, where the people are buried with just some sort of stone or granite marker. Here, the bodies are held in above-ground mausoleums. As with everything in Guatemala, they are very colorful as the colors stand for different things. You can tell the wealthier families from the poorer families by looking at the mausoleums.

We made our way back through the market to go on to Antigua.

We had some interesting conversations with Alfredo on the way, and before we knew it, we were at our hostel. We got checked in and carried our stuff up to our room. We had a private room (though shared bathrooms), and the lovely terrace was right outside our door. The arch was a few blocks away, and the park just a little bit further than that. A huge, yummy breakfast was included as well. Only $25 total for the night we were there… and Antigua is more expensive than the rest of Guatemala.

We started walking around. There was a park we hadn’t seen before, full of locals.  Many of them were making out, so we felt like we were intruding a bit, and walked on to the square.  It was so lively! I don’t know if it’s always that fun and exciting on Sundays, or if something else was going on, but it was perfect. There were buskers performing, live music and people dancing, tons of locals and tourists and dogs walking around, having a great time.

We noticed there were a lot of men walking around with big, muscular pitbulls, most of them wearing shirts that said Team 502 on the back and something about “Destruyendo” on the front, but we couldn’t see what else. We weren’t sure what it was all about but didn’t want to jump to conclusions… So Anthony asked. Apparently they are a group that works to destroy the myth that pitbulls are a dangerous and violent breed. It was Pitbull Ambassador Day.  I was super excited. I love any type of animal rights movement really. I happily climbed down to take pictures with the big, mean dogs ;).

A little while after, we saw some pitt babies too, so I got a big, wet kiss on the lips from one.

We went to the little market, and Anthony bought a mask to hang up in his office.

It was a perfectly magical evening for our last night in Guatemala. So bittersweet because I really did not want to leave. We ate some dinner, and when we started walking back to our hostel, it was very chilly and dark, but people were still out, enjoying themselves. We walked by another park with lots of food stands and people hanging out, laughing and eating and toasting to another wonderful Guatemalan weekend. The main part of the city is quite beautiful in the evenings.

We continued on to our hostel where we spent the rest of the evening hanging out on the terrace. Monday, the 11th day of our trip, we had to say “Adios” to Guatemala. I hope to come back some day and will miss it terribly in the meantime.

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.

We seem to be waking up earlier and earlier while we are here, eager to get the day started. On our 8th day in Guatemala, we were awake by 5:30am, cooked breakfast, cleaned up, got ready, and ventured on down to our canoe.

The day before, we had taken our waterproof camera out on the canoe just in case anything happened. The water had been so smooth and calm though, that this time, we decided to go ahead and bring our good camera. We made it about 50 meters before realizing the waves were way too rough and dangerous to have the good camera on us, so we turned back around and let said waves help us back along to our dock. I held on to the ladder on the dock with one hand so that the canoe and myself didn’t go floating away, and with the other hand, I held my oar out against the dock to keep the canoe from continuously bashing up against it. I sat there like this while wave after wave came crashing into me while Anthony took the camera up the hundred stairs to our house. I was getting quite the abs and arms workout. Anthony decided to take his sweet time so that I was nice and frazzled by the time he came back down with the waterproof camera.

Being… I don’t know, insane I guess, we decided we still wanted to canoe. So we went back out, paddling away. Everytime I tried to get a picture, a giant wave came toward us.  The locals on shore were staring at us, probably repressing the urge to laugh. It felt like we were canoeing in the ocean. But we just kept on keeping on.

But then we saw a lancha approaching… and another lancha approaching from behind us. Freaking great. We could feel the canoe being pushed toward the stony shore, so we kept paddling backwards while the water kept knocking us around. It may not sound like it, but we’re pretty smart individuals- we know you’re supposed to turn into the waves… but that’s a little difficult when they are coming at you from every side. We managed to back out enough to avoid a crisis, and finally decided that it was time to give up and head back. I had been feeling like Pocahontas in that “Just Around the Riverbend” scene during all this, so I was pretty sad that we didn’t make it around the bend to find Grandmother WIllow.

Once that fun was over, we gave ourselves a small break and then decided to go on to a village on the lake we hadn’t seen yet- Santiago Atitlan.

Apparently this was more difficult than I was expecting. We got dropped off at the dock in San Pedro and were told to walk about 10 minutes down the road to a different dock. So we walked to the end of the road, and there was nothing there. We asked a woman working at a store, and she said to go down the alley by her store and then turn left, and it’d be about 15 minutes. So then we just kept on like that with this maze of roads and alleys. Every time we reached a dead end, we would ask someone the way, and every time, “Si, down that road”.

Eventually, we made it only to be told that the lancha wouldn’t be leaving for 45 minutes. We backtracked a bit and stopped at a restaurant with the view below and had a beer, then went back.

The water was even choppier than when we had taken the canoe out. A different lancha pulled in, completely unable to be controlled and nearly wrecked into ours. Then it was our turn to venture out in the waves.

The first couple minutes were kind of fun. We kept hitting huge waves, and everyone would laugh a bit like we were on a roller coaster. But then it just kept getting worse. Our little boat was being tossed all around, and each time we crashed into a giant wave, a gush of water would come flying in at us. You know those scenes in movies of boats caught in a huge storm at sea? That’s about what we looked like. The boat needed to be turned one way to face the waves, but we needed to go a different way to get to Santiago. The captain did a bit of a zigzag dance, trying to turn into the big waves, and then turn the boat for a few seconds toward shore, and so on.  I started looking around and noticed that even the locals were looking worried. I started forming my plan of what we would do if we tipped over, but we were way out from shore.

We were finally able to turn into the cove where Santiago is located, nestled between the volcanoes. The water was much calmer there, so I started breathing more easily. Anthony asked one of the locals if it was always like that, and he shook his head emphatically. “No, normalmente es mas tranquilo.” No, it’s usually calmer.

Forgetting about the near death experience (for my camera and phone at least) of the boat ride, Santiago is beautiful. It is the largest village on the lake and is almost entirely indigenous.

Once you get off the dock, there is a street full of little markets and colorful shops.

A boy walked us up to the top, giving us a little bit of information on the town and showed us to a tuk tuk, who took us through town and over to a restaurant and hotel on the bay.  Trucks packed full of indigenous Mayans, usually all girls or all boys, kept driving by.

The restaurant was nice, and the bathroom stalls had notices of the different famous people who had been there. Reba McEntire was the only name I really recognized, but the last one on the list made me laugh:

We were going to tour the town a bit more, but having that lancha ride back to San Pedro hanging over my head, I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself until I got it over with. So we went back down to the dock to get on the lancha.

 

It was completely packed full. We managed to get on and sit, but after that there was zero space left on the benches, and the front of the boat had 2 baskets full of live chickens.  But then some rather large woman decided she was going to climb on anyway. The locals next to me were trying to say it was too full, but she sat down with the chickens. They all looked at each other and started kind of smiling and reaching at the life vests ahead of them, jokingly (ish).  I had a little Mayan boy next to me staring out at the waves, obviously excited.

In general, it was going more smoothly than the way there. The first big wave we hit, the little boy shrieked and yelled “Me gusta!” and started laughing. Once he realized that I was completely terrified, he kept laughing at me, having the time of his life.

We started approaching San Pedro and were so close when suddenly, the boat was tipping, everyone was sliding to one side, yelling “Woah!”, and then… the boat steadied itself again. Huge sigh of relief. We made it to the dock, and Anthony and I found our way back through town to the other dock, still having two more lanchas to go.  As is, we were feeling a little unsteady on our feet.

The lancha to San Marcos was not quite as bad. We still got sprayed a little, and the captain had to do some dancing around the waves, and there was one point where we stopped for some reason, and then we noticed there was some completely insane person swimming out there.

We ate dinner in San Marcos at another veg-friendly restaurant. San Marcos has really grown on me. It’s definitely a bit gimmicky with all its New Age-ness, but the restaurants are yummy and picturesque, and it just seems so much calmer and more peaceful than San Pedro.  We paid quickly to catch the last lancha heading the direction of our house.

When we climbed on the lancha, we noticed everyone on it who had come from San Pedro was wearing a life vest. And there were no life vests left. Anthony, looking and sounding a little worried, asked them in Spanish why they were all wearing life vests which made them all laugh. Because of the giant waves, of course!

When we were telling this story to our host and her guests during drinks later, they were incredulous. In the 8 years they had lived on the lake, they had not once seen an indigenous person put a life vest on. Yet here we were, an entire boatful of them with life vests on.

As the lancha pulled out and toward our house, we kept getting sprayed by the cold water and everyone would shriek and laugh, and Anthony joked around with all the locals on board. We stopped in the middle of the water, again, and the old Mayan woman next to me said to Anthony, “No hay bastante gasolina,” (There’s not enough gasoline) and then laughed. Funny woman. The lancha started up again, and we were back on our way, her sharing her shawl with me to help block the cold water. When we got to our dock, they were all jokingly asking Anthony in Spanish if they could get off there with us.

Feeling very relieved to be back on solid ground and to be done with lanchas on this ridiculously windy day, we ran up the steps to our house and got cleaned up. I contacted the paragliding company to see if we would be able to go paragliding the next day, but of course, it’s too windy and dangerous right now.

Our hosts had invited us down to their house for drinks that evening because they had some house guests they thought we would like to meet. It was two women who had written a book about charity in Guatemala. One of them had lived in Kansas when she was younger and knew my home town. She now lives at the lake part time and Colorado part time. We all went through several glasses of wine, discussing politics, travels, and charity while the sun set and darkness descended.

It was a really pleasant evening, and they were all fascinating people who had traveled all over the world and met and interviewed incredible people. But it was getting late, and we had to get up early the next morning to hike a volcano, so we climbed back up to our own home and crashed.