Author: ajgaines

The past 2 weeks or so have been quite rough. I have been quite sick on and off but have tried to make the best of it. I spent a few days at a hostel called, “Free Cerveza” at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala to catch up with some old travel friends and to see the lake, which was absolutely gorgeous. The only way to get around the lake is by boat as it is all surrounded by tall sharp mountains and volcanoes.

I only stayed at Free Cerveza for 2 nights and on the last day I journeyed to San Pedro, which is another city on the lake where I hiked San Pedro Volcano with 3 other hostel-goers.

The volcano is inactive and the whole interior and exterior now are covered in luscious jungle. I actually found the hike up to be way harder than I was expecting. What I thought was going to be a 1 hour hike turned out to take over 3 hours just to get to the top.

After the hike I took a series of 4 “chicken buses” to get to Antigua, Guatemala. Chicken buses are old school buses that have been souped up to look like a drug dealer’s rolling pad. I’ve never experienced more intense driving in my life. Somehow the locals are able to stay put in their seats but I was never able to sit and relax because I was being thrown out of my seat at every turn.

I got into Antigua quite late, met up with the pals, drank some cuba libres and laid down for the night.

In the morning I woke up to experience the bright beauty of Antigua. It is an old and colorful city that gives off the impression that it is thriving and falling apart at the same time. It’s littered by old churches, street food, and stray dogs.

After getting settled in Antigua for a little bit I decided I would take some Spanish classes. My Spanish teacher was Carmen. This is her trying to teach me Spanish in the middle of telling me I’m her worst student. We connected well as teacher and student and would often spend the whole 4 hour lesson talking about life.

Carmen’s drawing of me

So far Antigua has been a nice relaxing city to focus somewhat on learning Spanish and hiking around. I arrived just after the Fuego catastrophe, and while you could still see the volcanic ash  strewn across the streets, you could never see any lack of determination in the people to accept the ones who were displaced and to rebuild.

I arrived in Antigua directly after the eruption of Fuego volcano. Fuego is known to be a very active volcano but the recent eruption was the largest in at least the last lifetime. The eruption killed many and displaced many more, many of which are now trying to make a new life in Antigua.

The volcano right next to Fuego, Acatenango just recently became available to hike again. The danger has kept many away from the hike, but it is what drew me in, so I decided to go against what everyone was telling me and booked a hike to climb Acatenango.

With the large eruption so recent there were very few of us willing to do the hike. Me and an Irish dude, Sam, had our guide Lucas to ourselves. It was the first time Lucas had done the hike since the eruption and he told us many stories about how he was on Acatenango the day it happened. It was pitch black due to the ash and raining rocks from the sky. One of his friends had his leg blown out with volcanic rock and the other got hit in the head and is still recovering. Here he is being an absolute champ and showing us some local flora.

The hike was a bit rough, but after putting one foot after the other for long enough you can make it anywhere in life. Throughout the hike Lucas commented on how different things were after the eruption, areas that didn’t have rocks before were now covered. Each bush you touched would shake with a puff of volcanic ash. At base camp we could see the recent carnage on some of the tents and tarps that were set up.

At base camp we got an absolutely spectacular view of Fuego and every 10-20 minutes we would see a pretty decent eruption. You could feel the earth shake a little beneath your feet with each one.

The hike took two days. We the second morning we hiked up from base camp to the top of Acatenango. It only took about an hour, but I only brought shorts and two light jackets that did nothing against the moisture. I used my Alaska winter training and pretended I didn’t feel it while I secretly shook on the inside.

In the morning we did not get to see Fuego from Acatenango because of the fog. As we descended the mountain back to base camp the fog began to lift and we got a good view of Fuego. At this point I flew the drone over there and he was promptly swept away by the wind. I’ve been in mourning now for two days.

During the trek we got to hear our guide’s personal story about the major eruption. There had been a man that he described as, “loco,”and 400 pounds who had repeatedly told people that he was told by God to go kill himself by jumping into the fires of Fuego. He attempted twice and was brought back down by guides and returned to his family. The third time he went up he was seen naked and eating horse poop. Somehow he survived the night without clothes and either fell or jumped off a cliff on Acatenango across from Fuego. Lucas had been going on the rescue party to bring back his body the day Fuego erupted and killed so many. Many attribute the strange occurrence with the man to the reason that the eruption happened, or at least with such fury.

Last night the me and the crew headed to the nightlounge to drink tequila and put off saying our goodbyes for a few more hours. We played a pretty raunchy phone game called Picolo or something along those lines. Our fitting nicknames were Chad, Weasel, Bro Job, and Boulderdouche. We also moved onto a raunchy game of large jenga afterwards. The tequila flowed and Troy made it all the way until 10pm before he passed out drunk.

After the rowdy night I crashed into bed and was woken up to say buy to the crew as they are continuing onto Semuc Champey and I’m going to stay here longer and probably head back to Belize soon. It was quite sad but after a little more sleep I was ready to put my Indiana Jones hat back on and head to the ruins.

Today I went to Yaxha, the other major Mayan ruin out here. A lot of the structures look the same as Tikal, but it’s much more overgrown by wildlife, which I actually thoroughly enjoyed. The whole day we had spider and howler monkeys jumping around overhead screeching and shaking the trees. We also saw a buttload more toucans, a scorpion, and a tarantula. I ended up being far more enthralled by the nature than the ruins. During the tour the guide mentioned a tour of something called “El Mirador” which are more Mayan ruins which can only be seen by a 5-7 day hike through the jungle. I instantly pulled out my bucket list and added this.

Eventually we had to head back so I jumped on the bus and went directly to my favorite tacostand in Peten to get me some tacos.