Volcán Tajumulco

Hello all,
Very quick post here. We climbed up the tallest mountain in Central America, Volcán Tajumulco. The dormant volcano is 4220m tall and until last December had never (recorded) had snow on top of it. We were luck enough not to have it snow on us because we would have been very ill prepared. To get to the volcano we took two chicken buses from Xela to San Marcos and then on to the small village just below Tajumulco (which I cannot remember at the moment).
The total of our trip came to 84Q (for the both of us), had we gone with a travel group of tourist we would have paid 800Q, so we did real good! The mountain itself was not that difficult to climb but the elevation got to us. Imagine that! We got up to the Saddle much before sunset so we had time to get camp set up and time for us to hopefully climatize to the higher elevation and less oxygen. My brain was hurting from little oxygen but Kyle was up for making it up the summit for sunset. Apparently what a sunset it was too! We slept through a cool night, I was fine in my clothes and 35 degree sleeping bag, but Kyle was cold and hardly slept. At 430am or so we were woken up by the trekkers heading up to catch the sunrise. Oh boy was it great, pictures to come, but they are something to see and even better to experience yourself!!
Well like I said short post, hope you all check out some of the photos I was able to post, cheers!!

Volcan Santa Maria by moonlight!!

Wow, lets just start there.
Last night, Kyle, a dude we met from Seattle named Damian, and I decided to do a moonlight hike up the tallest Volcano that is hugging Xela, Santa Maria is 3772m tall, so over 10,000 feet! There are a number of trekking organizations that would take you up the same mountain but some were going to wait until a full moon, which was in about 4 days? But we were not about to wait around, and we ended up saving a bunch of money (450Q vs 86Q for three people, I think we won). At any rate we talked to a volunteer run organization called QueztalTrekkers, and one of the guys-guides gave us directions on how to get up the mountain. Get a taxi to a small town outside of Xela, have him drop you off at the end of a road, walk up the road-path for about 30-45minutes then take a left at the spikey trees (yuccas)and then walk for about 20 more minutes until the trash heap, take a right and walk up the mountain! Easy as pie right? Good landmarks and a solid time schedule, but it all changes when your driver doesnt drop you off at the same place that the other Trekkers start from. So after wandering around the base of Santa Maria, where we knew we needed to head up, but couldn´t fine a trail, we had to back track and ended up stumbling on the right trail, we found the Spikey plants! and then the trash heap!
So after about a 2 hour delay finding the actual trail we headed up the mountain proper. And when I say up it was basically a stair stepper, with pointless switchbacks and lots of rocks in the trail to trip weary, tired, and headlamp trekkers.
The trail was not as bad as San Pedro but similar strain on the muscles. We reached the top after many breaks and battling through being light headed and dizzy, wow that will happen when you hike up to 10,000ft! And broke the trees to reach the summit. It was pretty spectacular in the dark but damn was it cold, wind made it even more chilly, and intelligent Jon had hiked up with shorts (along with all my warm weather uppers). So we froze at the top for about half an hour (good thing we didnt find the trail right away or we would have been up there for 2 hours freezing!) And then watched the sun peak over the horizon, over clouds, mountains, through mist and let it brighten up our day! The view was simply amazing and we got many pictures of the surrounding hills, mountains, sleepy Xela, and ourselves shivering in our ill prepared ´warm clothes´


As and added bonus we were actually looking right down on the most active volcano in Guatemala, Santiaguito. Which erupted while we were there on the summit of Santa María. There was also a group of people from Buffalo (university?) who had a infrared camera trained on the crater and we got to watch and learn a bit about this unique volcano. It has basically a lava plug that erupts with gases and ash about every 1.5hours and all that gas and ash shoots out from the ring around the plug, it was really cool to watch this from the infrared camera picking up the heat signature!
And then we hiked down. I dont know about all of you but I am not a big fan of the constant pounding on the knees and joints when you are down hiking, I would much rather do uphill, but we needed to get down so down we went. We finally reached the bottom and walked right on to a bus that was headed to Xela for 2Q! wahooo, much better than the taxi ride at midnight. And once we got into Xela, Kyle and I about fell asleep looking for food, we found a nice little place on the corner of Parque Central America and ate like kings for 18Q.
After that it was time to find our hostel again and hit the sack, we had gotten little sleep the night before so we will be trying to play catchup for the next few days I think.
Anyway that is all for now, (¡spoiler!)stay tuned for a few pictures in the next few days!
Love you all

Lago de Atitlan

Hello All!
This is going to be a short post, but stay tuned because I might get another post off in a few days!
We are currently in the City of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, its a hard name to say so most people call it by its Mayan name, Xela (shay-la). Much easier! Last few days we were situated on Lago de Atitlan. Basically this is a huge, cool, fairly clear lake that was formed in a crater of number of surrounding volcanoes. If you have seen Crater Lake think of this times about 10? Its pretty massive in terms of size and its pretty spectacular to look up and be surrounded by big peaks, volcanoes and Indian nose and shores speckled by villages surrounded by corn and coffee fields. This place is pretty amazing to be and it would have been easy to get stuck here, enjoying the views from the volcanoes, swimming in the cold yet refreshing lake, entertaining an afternoon wandering town or simply sitting on a roof top taking it all in.
We met some interesting characters in the hostel we were staying in (San Fransisco). One was an older gentleman who had been here many time and usually stayed for a number of months, had been to Cambodia and all over the world. Plays the horses on his free time and works on making his room more comfortable. He thinks he might buy a stove to put up in his room so he doesnt have to deal with all the people stealing and using the plates and dishes that he buys. Another older man is an old Carnival man, who´s job was guessing occupations, he must have been off his game because he was waaaay wrong with both of our occupations (computers guys i think he guessed?) Anyway there were some funny one liners that that old man said that I will not repeat here because they are not appropriate for all audiences, needless to say they left me laughing and scratching my head.
Apart from meeting people we did get up one morning, very early and climb up the nearest volcano, San Pedro (the name of the city too!) And reached the summit at about 830am! What a spectacular view but damn did my quads and calves pay for it. The hike up the mountain was literally straight up the dang thing, there were switchbacks but they were just for show, think of it as about 5km of stairs (I could be shorting the distance too) and these stairs dont really let up the whole time. But what a work out! And we could see some of the peaks that we were surrounded by in Antigua, as well as some of the peaks that we are hopefully about to summit near Xela!
Anyway we wanted to do more but decided to move on instead. The chicken bus ride out of the crater was spectacular too, such views and also taking a bus around road switchbacks that werent very wide is pretty amazing. A few times we had to stop mid turn, back up and go forward again to make the turn, pretty cool. Constant blurping of the horn too, blasting around tight corners not wanting to loose speed for the hill!
All for now, love you all!

PICTURES

Hello again all.
As I have said before there will be no pictures as of yet because I didnt come prepared, but Kyle has pictures and if any of you readers are interested send me an email at jb02nichols@gmail.com and Ill have Kyle put you on his shared list of peeps on Snapfish. I dont think all of his photos are labeled, maybe he is that talented, but he has something like 500 pics up and is willing to share his experiences with friends, so if you want...
HASTA

Past Civilized Guat City and into Antigua

Hola All,
Sorry to keep you all patiently waiting, I have a little bit of trouble getting my thoughts in order, and after reading a few other blogs I must say that my descriptions are lacking, so I will try harder this time.
We are currently in the Beautiful city of Antigua, once the capital of Guatemala, but no longer. The city is filled with color, indigenous people line the markets with their crafts, fruits and jewellry and such. The town is clean unlike most other cities we have traveled to, no trash in the streets or in the parks. I guess it is a tourist town but it also has a strong cultural aspect to it, the narrow cobbled streets are alive with colored buildings pressed against the sidewalks. There are people from every corner of the world here and many of them are coming for the beauty of this city. Some are more wealthy and consider this a vacation, others are more simple travelers, carrying all they need on there backs, willing to put a few bucks into the local community in order to get more out of their travel experience by learning spanish from local teachers. We have decided to learn some spanish too, and are in a home stay with a family that is hosting 5 others besides ourselves. We sit down for three meals a day, cooked by our mother, and try to speak spanish, although some of the others are not willing to fully immerge themselves and therefore more easily learn the language. There are some characters here too...thats all Ill say at the moment about that.
Lets see since the last post I should get you informed and learned about my-our travels. We did infact travel down to Rio Dulce. Took two buses to get there from Flores and we passed through some interesting hamlets, dirty and raw and Guatemalan. We changed buses in Poptun, which is a really cool name to say. And headed south to Rio Dulce through mountains and around fields of corn, coffe, bananas, and pines. We stayed at a place called Backpackers Hotel in Rio Dulce, a cool open aired establishement with an adjoining restaurant that served up some pretty mean quesadillas! We bunked up in their dorm and got a bit organized. The next morning we took a day trip out to Livingston, on the Guatemalan Carribean coast via lancha, smallish power boats that are the water taxis of this lake river system. The ride was amazing, I felt almost in a completely different world, travelling quickly over water, past bird filled islands, tiny towns on the water, tucked away in some backwater inbetween mangroves and reeds. We got to experience a sulfuric vent on one side of the river that pumped out HOT water into the river, such a strange thing to experience. We continued downstream to less occupied shores, more and more birds, pelicans soaring above or gliding three inches above the water, they remind me of what pteradactyls would have looked like. Accompanying the pelicans were White Herons, black cormorants, smaller white egrets, and more unidentified birds. Livingston is a Garifuna stronghold, people of Carribean and black descent are the majority here, such a change from Rio Dulce and further inland. We decided to checkout the siete altares (seven altars) that was 5km up the beach, basically a bunch of pools to dive into, cool and refreshing. They were an amazing construction of pools and falls, all over limestone rock, they looked like terracing in SE asia, like rice paddies but this was all natural. Back to Rio Dulce and we were headed out to Semuc Champey the next day. It was a direct truck that took us on the overland route again, over mountains, thru small villages, real Guatemala and all over dirt roads, it made for a bumpy and a bit cramped ride but it was beautiful scenery along the way. We got dropped off in Lanquín and had another truck waiting for us to take us 9 more km up to Semuc Champey. Look this up on google or something but basically it is the Rio Cahabon, flowing under a natural limestone bridge, while above the bridge is covered with consecutive cascading pools of turquoise and clear water. Such a beautiful site to look down apon from El Mirador and walking-swimming in all the pools was as refreshing as it was exhilarating. We got to see the Cahabon disapear into the cave at one end of the bridge and actually got to swim near where it punches through the other side, below the cascade of the pool water. Semuc Champey is also my favorite place name so far, soo cool to say! We stayed at El Portal while we were here and got to check out some caves by candle light too! It was awesome to be swimming one handed as you hold you candle up out of the water and try and not get it wet as the caves were filled with water and waterfalls! We got to climb up a waterfall in the cave via a rope, while holding the candle, hahaha, ok they put our candles out for this and relit them but it was still fun. Also some of the cave formations were spectacular, such a cool day!
And that leads us to right now. The collectivo ride from Lanquín to Antigua was halted by a stop in at Guatemala city, something that I will never need to do again. The guide book describes GuatCity as a city covering a flattened mountain range that is cut by deep valleys and canyons, this all together with dirty, noisy streets clogged with traffic congestion, smoke, fumes and more noise. 3.1 million call this home, I wouldn´t ever think of calling that home, but thats just me. We dropped a few riders off in Guatemala city and all got out to stretch our legs, the driver then told us to get back in the collectivo because it was not safe for us to be outside, so here we are in Antigua!
Hope all is well. more updates to come!!
Hasta Luego!

Hola de Flores

Hello All,
Sorry for the long time inbetween posts but we have been busy and while there are internet connections in most places we stay it has not been our top priority to get on the web and look around. I have been keeping tabs on myself by keeping a small journal, basic day to day stuff. We are currently in Flores, Guatemala, which is on a great big lake and is actually an Island *flores is* We are in the Northern part of Guat, called the Peten. Yesterday we went to check out the ruins of Tikal, by far this was the most spectacular of the ruin sites we have checked out thus far. Huge mountains of stone, temples, acropolises, more temples, pyramids, lots of spider monkeys, tucans, etc. Anyway all of this tucked away in the deep Jungle. Such a spectacular site!
But I guess I should get you all caught up from Tulum, this will be a quick rundown. From Tulum we headed south, to Belize, crossed the border, always some little story there. Basically they drove us to the boarder, made us all take out our bags, go through customs and then pack our bags back on the same bus. And by bus I really mean, old school bus from the states, BlueBirds. From the border we swung down to Belize City. Getting there at night was a little sketchy and we probably did not pick the best location for our hostel. BAsically right downtown in the worst part of town, but the room was cheap, and that was about it. Ate at a chinese place that night, it felt like we were in a prison though, Bars on the store door and Bars between the counter and the sitting area, a rough part of town. Next day we Shipped over to Caye Calker (pronounced Key, Kay, Caye...anyway you want really) Spend a few beautiful days there, did some snorkeling on the reef, saw turtles, rays, nurse sharks, bunches of fish and lots of coral. Heaps of Fun!! hopefully got some pictures too. From Caye Calker we headed inland again to San Ignacio, and rented a car after a day of struggling what to do. All the adventure packages out of town were very expensive. Renting a car was too but we had more freedom. Got to see St. Hermans Cave and Blue Hole Nat Park (not the Blue hole in the Ocean off the Reef) and hiked around in the jungle for a bit, Went to the Cockscomb National Park or refuge or something, in an attempt to spot some mammals , mainly looking for a Jagaur!! or some Monos, but didnt see either. Then from there we headed up to the Belize Zoo which is near Belize City, saw a whole bunch of *wild* life, all had been rescued so it was a good story. Anyway got to see a Jaguar, and man they look powerful and Majestic! Also saw more critters but more on that when I get back. Then spend the night in San Ignacio again and headed for the Guatemalan Border the next day. Now here we are in Flores and we are about to head south to Rio Dulce I think unless Kyle and I change our mind for like the 17th time today.
Love you all, and miss ya,
Malaria Monday, two weeks in and 8 to go!!
Jonny