2017 travel

April 8th to 25th

On saturday april 8th, with Isadora we went to Quetzaltenango (nickname: Xela, pronounced Shei-la) in Guatemala. A full day of travel, with the time to get to Tapachula, the mexican border city, cross the border, and take two buses in Guatemala. We were introduced to the chicken buses, common way of traveling in central america: old US school buses, painted with bright colours, that go from a city to another. Not very comfortable, but very efficient. We stayed 3 days in Xela, little colonial city, we were hosted in couchsurfing in a dance studio, and we visited the surroundings: the Chicabal lake, that is located in the crater of an inactive volcano, and some hot springs (but no photos in the water…)

On tuesday april 11th, we took a chicken bus to San Pedro la Laguna, on the lake Atitlán. There we met friends of Isadora, that were managing a hostal, and we celebrated the birthday of one of them, Leo, that same night. I stayed 6 days in San Pedro: Swimming in the lake, hiking the San Pedro volcano, visiting the villages around the lake.

On monday the 17th (I waited the Holy week to be over, because being the main vacation period in Latin America, traffic gets horrible and it’s much more difficult to travel), I said good bye to Isadora after 5 weeks and I went to Antigua, a nice colonial city. I had heard about the volcanos around that city and the possible hike, and on tuesday I went up the Acatenango volcano (inactive), the third highest volcano of Central America with almost 4000m, and from which one can see the Agua volcano(inactive) and the fuego volcano (active). I was with a group of 10 people and 2 guides, and we spent the night camping at 3600m, woke up at 4am to climb the last 300m to the crater, and watch the sunrise. I was happy to have my own gear(warm clothes, tent, sleeping bag) because I wasn’t cold in the night, ulinke some of the others that had the gear that the organizing company was lending. From the campsite and the top, we could watch the volcano in activity, very impressive. We didn-t have the chance to see much lava though.

After climbing down on wednesday, and some walking around Antigua, I went on thursday the 20th to Semuc Champey (I cheated and took a touristic shuttle to save time. It was still a 9 hour trip, it would have taken me 2 days with public transport). It’s a beautiful natural site with waterfalls and natural pools. I was there first on friday morning, and I had the place to myself for a while, before the tourists came.

In the afternoon, I explored some caves close to the waterfalls. I didn’t take pictures, because there was a lot of water in the caves. We only had candles for light!

I went on the next day to Rio Dulce, from where I took a boat on the day after on the river of the same name, and on the way we saw a bird island, an aquatic garden, and a canyon, with hills full of forest on both sides of the river.

The boat took me to Livingston, in the guatemala carribean. There live the Garifunas, people that descent from african slaves. The village can only be accessed by boat. There are some nice beaches (though a little dirty) and waterfalls.The specialty is the “tapado”, a delicious fish & coco dish.

On thursday april 22nd, I went from Livingston to Honduras, with a break in my last stop in Guatemala: The mayan ruins of Quiriguá, which have the highest stelas known in the mayan world.I got there at the opening time and had the place to myself again (I like this trick).

I’ll tell you about the rest of central america in a future post!