Day 33-35 – Acatenango volcano hike

Day 33 – Iximche and local dinner

We departed San Marcos with the aim of going to Antigua. We did not make it to Antigua. Yesterday at Yoga Forest we had been given the contact information of a guide who could take us up Acatenango, a volcano that has a view over the active volcano Fuego, which regularly has very small eruptions. We got in contact with the guide over whatsapp, Elvin Aprode, who kindly invited us to stay with his family for the night before starting the trek, rather than us driving into Antigua.

By the time we made it up the knobbly road out of San Marcos and went to a gas station, we noticed that our rear left tire looked rather low. The gas man checked and it was down to 15 psi (from 35), which is rather unfortunate as we had just filled up the tires before San Marcos. As it seems like a very slow leak, we’re leaving it for now but checking it each time we get gas. If it worsens, we’ll go to a “pinchazo” (a tire repair shop), which are VERY common in Central America. The roads here seem to kill tires.

We had lunch at a rather fancy place after noticing some rather out of place nice restaurants alongside the highway – many of wood with nice fences and in a swiss style with shuttered windows and flower boxes. We shared a typical Guatemalan stew – pepian along with tortillas with chicken. The pepian was rather hard to eat since the chicken leg needed to be dissected while in the soup, but it was delicious. We asked the server what there was to do in the area and he told us that we were close to the famous ruins of Iximche, the Spaniard’s first capital on arriving in Central America in 1524.

Iximche was rather small but set in a nice park area. Much of the ruins were covered in grass and were small in relation to what we had seen in Teotihuacan and Monte Alban, but the history was interesting and well-explained in the museum, which Viki glossed over due to uninvited bowel movements.

It was around 5pm when we arrived at Elvin’s house in San Jose Calderas. His father greeted us and guided us through the exceptionally small driving path through the front gate. Both side mirrors had to be turned in and there were millimetres to spare on either side. We were introduced to the whole family – Elvin’s mother, who worked exceptionally in the kitchen, and father who tended to nine acres of their own organic crops, along with some of the six children and the one granddaughter. Dinner was rather exciting because they had just taken the kernels off cobbs of corn and were preparing a big batch of masa (dough for tortillas). Elvin’s mother showed us and let us help manually make the dough using a traditional stone roller, a “piedra de moler”. She then made it into tortillas that we had with dinner and they were incredible – tasting like fresh, chewy corn. Along with the tortillas we had chuchitos (like tamales, they’re made of corn masa on the outside and filled with chicken and liquidy salsa and steamed in a corn husk) and tostadas with bean paste.

Day 34 – Acatenango Volcano hike to base camp

We awoke at 7am, had a shower, and then Elvin’s father took us on a little “agricultural tour” of their fields while Elvin drove in to Antigua to pick up Suemi, a Brazilian girl who would join us for the hike. They grew many crops, all without pesticides – different varieties of corn, broccoli, cabbage, squash, radish, amaranth, a variety of herbs, and a local vegetable covered in thorns that’s common in Guatemala. It was very lucky that we only had a group of three people as Elvin often has groups of ten to fifteen. We had breakfast – chuchitos and tortillas with salt and then began our hike up to base camp. It was a five hour hike, beginning through corn fields, progressing to jungle, and ending in the alpine around 3,600m.

Base camp overlooks Mt Fuego which has a small eruption every five minutes or so. During the day these eruptions appear as big dark clouds followed by a loud boom (because of the distance there’s a time delay between when you see and hear the eruption) and at night you can see the lava erupt out and form little magma rivers running down the sides of the volcano. It was an exciting experience and we were appreciative to have such good whether (as the last week had been foggy and rainy). At night we could also see the slow moving lava river flowing down distant Pacaya, the second of Guatemala’s three active volcanos (of 37 total).

Day 35 – Acatenango Volcano summit

Last night was cold, around four degrees celsius, but we were very warm in our Marmot tent and multiple sleeping bags (we hear that some of the tour outlets have over-used, outdated gear, but the gear and food that we were provided with was very good.) We unfortunately awoke to heavy fog at 3:45am (our designated start time to the summit to see sunrise) and Elvin told us to sleep for 30 minutes more and we’d re-assess. We all slept through until 5:45am and it was still foggy. Elvin told us that we wouldn’t have any view from the top and suggested we have breakfast and head down later. I protested even though he emphasized that there wouldn’t be any view and he finally said okay after I said that I just wanted to get to the summit. Viki’s tummy wasn’t feeling well and Suemi was tired so it was just Elvin and I. We went quickly, taking just half an hour to the summit through volcanic shale, rather than his anticipated 1.5-2 hours and just broke above the clouds, getting intermittent beautiful views over the volcanic range and as far as Lake Atitlan.

Back at base camp Viki and I learned that a dog had eaten the packed breakfasts that we brought up, so Suemi and Elvin were kind enough to share theirs (oatmeal with corn flakes and sweet local bananas). We descended, were picked up by Elvin’s father at the trailhead, and went back to their house for lunch (where we ate the squash that we had picked from their field the morning before). We showered and Elvin’s mother was kind enough to give us some tortillas for the road, knowing how much we liked them.

Finally, we had a shower, topped up our engine’s water supply, had a terrifying ordeal backing out of the narrow driveway from their courtyard, and drove the hour into Antigua. We’re now parked in the tourist police parking lot, which we had read about on ioverlander. You’re only allowed in if you have a vehicle with a toilet, but we pleaded with the guard and told him that we had a “tupperware toilet” in the van, so he let us through. It feels great to be sleeping in the van again, especially with the full protection of being in a walled police parking area.