Saturday 6am I meet other hikers at the company’s office. Two chicas from spain and one chica from Germany, todos las four chicas! Our guide Jose is a 26 year old local boy. I know what Andi would say about him : the lucky bustard. But if he knew what Jose had to carry, a backpack loaded with tent, water, food and cooking gear over 35kg, he might change his mind. We set off on a local bus to get to the bus station, then changed to a chicken bus from Xela to San Juan then another chicken bus to the bottom of Volcan Tajumulco.
It’s my second time on the chicken bus, they don’t leave until it’s fully full. The seat is comfortable to sit two people, but in Guatemala they fit three. Now I know why it called " Chicken bus."
It took us two and half hours to get to the entry of the park, then we start to climb. The hiking itself is not difficult, but with my backpack over 15kgs, it’s pretty hard. We stopped mid way having our lunch. I knew Andi and Juan would come up this way, so I was keep looking back, hope they come in time I really missed him then (for the right reason).
The same place Andi took his photos, unfortunately we were about an hour earlier.
The "lucky" boy
After lunch the fog/cloud started to roll in. We also meet a big group of people from US - They are talking pretty loud, we could hear them from a distance. I preferred our small group and I practiced my Spanish as well.
After 4 hours hiking we got to the camp site. There was a big local group up there as well. We set up our tent a little bit further away from the main group so we can have our “tranquilo” camping for the night. We boiled some water for coffee and then Jose cooked us spaghetti for dinner. I was really tired, maybe because the altitude is very high at about 3900 meters so I went to bed about 7:30pm.
toilet in the camping site
Quarter past 4.00 am I heard Jose calling out: “chicas” so we all got up put our head torch on and started to climb the last 300 to 400 meters to the summit. It was dark and cold, my icebreaker leggings and tops saved me. Jose carried sleeping bags for us, we only took a little bit of water. I have to say it’s much easier not to carry big backpacks.
When we got to the summit, the sun was just about popping out of clouds. Although we aimed to watch the sunrise the weather conditions were not up to it. We can see the volcan next to us, but not Mexico and the pacific ocean, they are all hidden behind the cloud. We managed to take some photos then came down the camp for breakfast.
Walking back down was my reward. Firstly, my backpack was 5 kg lighter, I got rid of all the water and food, secondly, the sun was shining and the view was incredible.
Morning is definitely the time to be in the mountains to see beautiful vista. In the afternoon, you can only see cloud.
The trip to volcan Tajumulco is the highlight of my time in Xela, I really enjoyed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment