The Mount Everest of Central America

On Friday, Matt and I made the journey down to Xela to attempt to topple the summit of the higest mountain in all of central america and is also considered the Mount Everest of Central america by some people, Volcano Tajamulco.

We arrived in Xela Friday night after taking 1 boat and 2 different chicken buses. Quetzaltanengo is such an amazing city, and I got a really good vibe from this place. After living in santiago for little over than 2 months now, Xela does really seem to have it´s shit together compared to this place. It just amazes me how guatemala is different from city to city. The people are different, the mentalility is different, and it´s as if youre visiting a totally new different country. After arriving at Quetzaltrekkers to check in, we headed out to the parque central for some grub. The first restaurant we saw was mcdonald´s, and alas the temptation was way too much to resist. Chomping on fries and a quarter pounder with cheese, I could feel my stomach smiling in delight as I broke my "no eating animals with four legs esp cows" rule. It just felt way too good. I may have even broken the record for fastest quarter pounder eater.

Saturday morning, we woke up wayyyyy early around 4:30 am to head out to our trekking site. There were about 15 or so of us that had signed up for this overnight mountain climbing adventure. Quetzaltrekkers is an interesting adventure hiking tour agency in that the guides are volunteers and in fact most of the proceeds gained from the hike go to a school for small children and a local hospital. What a great cause. So strapped with a huge ass backpack on my back with camping gear, the "spice kit" and various other stuff, we hopped on a pickup truck to the bus stop and took 2 sets of diff buses past san marcos to Volcano tajamulco.

We started the ascent around 1000. Needless to say, it was a pretty steep ascent and with the all the gear on our backs, it was pretty challenging. We made it just 200 meters just shy of the basecamp around 4 o clock and set up camp. This is where things got interesting as shortly after 6, it started to rain pretty hard. I was sharing at a tent with 4 others and things were pretty tight as it was, until around 8ish one of our tour guides informed us that the tent beside us had a leak and 3 others had to be squeezed in our tent. That made 8 people in our tent. I swear, what an uncomfortable night. To my right was a german girl, and to my left was an american girl from michigan. It kind of felt like a rapefest in there. Every hour or so, I feel a leg on my face, a kick to the groin, a butt on my hand... I didn´t sleep an ounce. I felt bad for matt, because he had an israeli dude who kept bumping into him. About every hour or so, someone would ask. What time is it. We all were hoping it was 4:30 am so we could get out of our fucking tents and just climb to the top. Finally morning arrived and we made it to the summit of Tajamulco and saw the sunrise emerging. In the western direction, we could see the lights of mexico out in the distant. In the East, we were treated to views of a chain of volcanoes as far as Antigua. To the south, we could barely see El Salvador. It was just an amazing view. I´ll never forget it.

After some campsite coffee we made the decent back and made it to Xela around 4 that evening. Matt and I hung out at a bar with the tour guides and some friends we made that were from New Zealand also on the hike. Supposedly it was the oldest bar in guatemala, however I doubt thats true. I also saw my first hot local guatemalan girl at the bar last night. She was too cute...

Well I´m finally back in Santiago now. I have 2 more weeks left. The plan is to see as much of guatemala as I can in the next 2 weeks. I might head off to coban and do some cave exploring next week. My parents are coming down to visit on October 5th and I think i´ll take them to tikal to see some mayan ruins. After that, the plan for me is to go to honduras to take diving classes for a week to be a certified scuba diver and from then on i´ll slowly inch my way down south into south america and finally into ecuador.