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Published: November 14th 2008
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we got a little more adventure than we bargained for last weekend. we had to try the new guides out on our existing treks, so ben, jen and i went to investigate an old trek near volcan santiaguito (most active volcano in guatemala....erupts every 45 minutes or something like that). qt used to run the trek, but it is too dangerous in the wet season (which just ended) and no current guides know the route. the qt board of advisors were worried that the trek has become too dangerous during any season, so our trip was designed to try and find the route and investigate the concerns of the board (those concerns being a collapsed bridge, another bridge with rotting wood that people could punch through, fires in the bamboo forests, flash floods, landslides, and lack of water).
we found a vague set of trek notes and were on our way. the trek starts from viejo palmar, what used to be a village before some lahars destroyed the place. now, people get trucked in to harvest coffee and other things from nearby plantations, but nobody lives there. that being so, no busses run directly there. we got on a chicken
bus, asked to be dropped at the road towards viejo palmar. when we got off, everybody looked at us like we were nuts. even more so when i flagged down a pickup truck and negotiated for him to take us to the ruined village (later we would learn that i negotiated to pay him about five times more than we should have). rode in the back of the truck through hot humid jungle (look up trumpet trees...they´re awesome), got dropped at the village which is litterally split in two by this huge gorge created by the lahars. not much is left, but two halves of the old church sit on oppisite sides of the gorge. crazy.
we easily found our way to this great swimming hole, then through the plantations, jungle, and over a indiana jones style bridge to our lunch spot. spirits were high (as were temps...we weren´t in 8000 ft above sea level xela anymore). notes after lunch stressed not missing a creek bed that we were suppose to walk up. as a result, every creek bed we came across we macheteed our way up, usually only to pop out some place and realize that a trail
had been running five feet away from us the whole time. we´d get back on the trail, find another creek bed. this machete mania lasted all afternoon. we realized we were lost, it was getting dark, so, defeated, we returned to our lunch spot (which took about a half hour, ignoring all the damn creek beds). set up camp just in time for it to start pouring. guess i should note that camp was in a flash flood river bed. granted, it would take a hell of a flood to reach where we were, but it was really raining. we´d take turns getting out of bed to moniter the river. middle of the night the rain had stopped and the river hadn´t risen, so we finally got to sleep, exhausted from a long hard day and a long terrifying night.
woke up the next morning when some guatemalans shouted at us from the bridge....¨wake up gringos, don´t you see the sun is already shining?¨ i loved that.
we were planning to return to xela, but as we lounged around at breakfast we discussed a final creek bed that we hadn´t tried, inventoried our food, and decided to stay
out an extra night. said creek bed seemed like it was a long way from the lunch spot and thus unlikely to be the one we were looking for, but it actually was only a 45 minute hike (we wasted so much time hacking through the jungle). after travelling this creek bed for a while, we found our next landmark and celebrated (very very prematurely). shortly after this landmark there was no sign of any human ever having been anywhere near where we were. the jungle was much denser than ever before. but we could hear mighty santiaguito erupting which gave us the (false) notion that we had some idea as to where we were heading, so again we picked up the machete. it´s hard to describe the rest of the day. it was essentially spent desperately bushwacking through endless jungle trying to find any place where we could see anything. at one point we randomly ran into a campesino, which was a miracle, we were so far from any trail. he told us to follow his trail, which ended up being crazier than our own. eventually we decided to leave it and after about another hour finally got to
a place without plant life.
of course, the reason there was no plant life was that it was all destroyed by the volcano, which we were much closer to than we had anticipated or wanted. we were standing on top of another huge gorge, which ran right to the base of santiaguito. on the other side of the gorge the hillside was smoking. the noise from the eruptions shook the ground, and we could clearly see huge flaming rocks rolling down the side of santiaguito. it was sooooooo cool. and likely pretty stupid, too. we decided to eat lunch here.
for some reason, we still thought we could find our campsite. we followed a lava flow to this part of land that looked less vegetated. it wasn´t. when it became just as dense as before, we finally admitted that we were absolutely fucked, and did our best to follow machete marks all the way back to real trail.
didn´t think there´d be a chance of getting back to xela that night, but right when we got to the trailhead a pickup (loaded with about 20 people) was leaving. they stopped for us, laughed when we questioned there
reaching lahar gorge
santiaguito very close, blocked by those clouds being enough room (10 more people were picked up after us), and charged us 6 quetzales (we´d given the random dude two days before 25 for the same trip). we were happy that we´d stopped at a little pool just before getting back and washed off all the ash we were covered in...otherwise no chance anybody would have talked to us....dirtiest i have ever, ever been. right when they dropped us at the main highway, a xela bound bus appeared, and happily stopped when we flagged them down. we wern´t surprised when this bus broke down....nothing about this trip was going to go smoothly.
two nights ago we got a different look at santiaguito. we climbed santa maria (a taller, dormant volcano that sits right above santiaguito) by the light of the full moon. from top you can see santiaguito erupt, plus the entire techtonic plate of guatemala (which means all of guatemala´s volcanoes). watched the sun come up, the volcano erupt, and went back down. we took 28 clients...i think it is so funny that people sign up to climb a 12000 foot volcano and are surprised and unhappy to find themselves walking uphill. still, everybody made it
and had a good time.
i got to practice my first aid skills when this guatemalan campesino got bit by this stray dog that had summitted the volcano with us. it was pretty crazy and almost ruined my day...i can´t stop thinking about the inevitable infection and possible rabies due to lack of health care. at least the bleeding stopped.
going to try and put up pics!
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Todd
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A Desert Holiday?
Those later pictures remind me a great deal of Priscila, Queen of the Desert. Exactly why did you have those clothes on while standing atop a volcano?