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| It's hard to take a picture from a speeding van |
But then we got to San Pedro and started to feel uneasy. The village is small, right by the lake and below the impressive volcano of the same name. You can go hiking, take a kayak or water ski or just hang around and do nothing. Which is what the majority of people we met were doing. Most of them were either very young or very old hippies, or partying Israelis in their early twenties. We soon understood why there were more signs around in Hebrew than in Spanish or English.
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| Unfinished roofs of San Pedro |
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| Michal/Yochai, a little help here? |
The place had a very strange vibe and we just didn't feel like staying. The surroundings were pretty and the little walk we did in the afternoon around the village and the lake were nice but it was enough for us.
And so the next morning we were ready to move on, again. We wanted to get to Quetzaltenango, or Xela as it is called, a city closer to the Mexican border and truly in the middle of the volcanoes land. The tour agencies in San Pedro charge the extortionate price of 16 euros for a 3 hours ride, and so we decided to go on a little adventure and try to find the transport ourselves. The initial boat ride across Atitlan was definitely the highlight of the journey.
And afterwards it was just a bus ride after another. No fancy buses, all of them were the so called chicken buses, old American school buses that get revamped and serve for much longer than they are supposed to. We saw them in both Honduras and Guatemala and were hoping to avoid them, but there was no time to be picky. To get to Xela we ended up taking five different chicken buses, our backpacks sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the roof, us sitting or standing squeezed among the big local ladies. It cost us just 5 euros and as an experience it was priceless. That said, chicken buses are by no means a safe way of transportation, if you don't get killed by a crazy driver (we were constantly sliding off our seats every time the bus entered a curve at 90 km/h), there's a chance you'll get robbed as armed attacks happen often on these buses, or so we were told afterwards. So if you go by a chicken bus, know the risks!
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| Wanna a ride? |
Xela offers very different atmosphere than Antigua or San Pedro. It is far less touristy, it doesn't feel as fake as our previous two stops, we were finally in a proper Guatemalan town!
We walked around a bit although it wasn't too easy as the entire city center was blocked by dozens of police cars. Eight policemen were killed the day before in a small town near Xela and an official funeral was taking place just when we arrived. The motive of the shooting wasn't confirmed yet but everyone was talking about the drug mafia. A bit of Guatemalan day-to-day reality.
We came to Xela for one specific reason - to climb a volcano! You can choose an easy hike to several viewpoints of some of the many volcanoes in the area, or conquer Tajumulco, the highest peak of Central America (excluding Mexico). We agreed on a compromise, the 3776 metres high Santa Maria volcano, recommended for spectacular views from its peak. As hiking alone is deemed dangerous, we decided to go with a local guide.
We started hiking at 5.30am to get up before it'd start to get too hot, according to the guide we had 4 or 5 hours ahead of climbing up ahead of us. Despite its height, the volcano looks like a big hill from below, covered almost completely with vegetation. It wasn't too complicated to hike, tiring but not difficult, with some nice views of the valley below. We were not alone on the trail- it was Saturday and local Maya people were going up to pray. I felt like the biggest loser trying to catch my breath while the grannies were passing me in their thick skirts and flip flops!
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| It didn't look so hard from below... |
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| We couldn't keep up |
All the hard work was supposed to be rewarded with the magnificent views all the way to Mexico. Well, this is what we saw.
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| Only slightly disappointing |
We stayed a while waiting for the clouds to leave, but in the end we gave up. At least we got to see the locals' improvised mass!
We weren't too sure whether having a guide was really necessary. When we were climbing up, there were so many people around and everybody very friendly, we figured the stories about armed robberies were just tales. Until we met a group of hikers accompanied by two policemen with guns, and until a group of men approached us trying to start a conversation and our guide got veeeery nervous and steered us away from them. And he started to tell us about the last time he got mugged on the peak of this very same volcano, mere 5 months ago, by two masked men with pistols who robbed everybody that was up there at that moment and who threatened to shoot him in the leg just because he didn't have any valuables on him. More horror stories of violence followed and needless to say, we walked the last part of the trail super fast, scared of every person we met on the way. Another strong dose of Guatemalan reality...
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| Our guide, Federico |
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| And when we came down, the sun appeared again |
The stories of constant corruption and ever present violence left us pretty sad. Guatemala was beautiful, with gorgeous landscapes and historical sights and friendly people, but is far from being a happy place.
We are ready to go back to Mexico, to one happy place we know of there - San Cristóbal, one more time!
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