Climbing the Volcano

Sunday morning we woke up at 4am (Very difficult!) and walked to the nearby Parque Bolivar just before 5am to meet our lift for a trip to the Volcano Santa Maria. On Friday during our break from class, Sarah and I had gone for a walk around the block and stopped in at one of the travel agents to look at tours. Back at school we talked about it with another student, Silvie and she was keen to come as well so we headed back after class and booked in with a group. There are many Volcanos around this part of Guatemala, I was hoping to climb Volcan Tajumolco which is a two day trip and is the highest mountain in Central America (4211m). The guy we spoke to said there hadn’t been any trips there for a couple of months as there were problems with access through a village and it was too dangerous!! But he said maybe next week it would be ok….. Right! Might pick another one.

Santa Maria is close to Xela and has a great view of the area. It is dormant, last erupting in 1902 but has an active vent forming a new volcano next to it which can be viewed from the top. The walk up takes 4 hours and is a difficult climb but we were game.

So we got to the meeting point and there was a taxi waiting with our guide. A 20 minute drive took us out of the dark city which looked very different under the cover of darkness, piles of garbage on the street corners awaiting collection and the street dogs scavenging through them.

Arriving at the end of the road we alighted and met with the others who were coming on the walk. There were 10 of us in the group from all over the world, UK, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Israel, USA and of course Australia. It was 5.30am as we started off and we could see the Volcano silloetted against the sky with some cloud sitting around the top. Hopefully when we get up there it will be clear. It didn’t look too difficult from there. (Naïve fools!) Starting altitude, 2500m.

The road ended and we followed a cow path up the hillside for a while between fields of Corn until the fields gave way to woodland. It wasn’t difficult going and as the sun came up, we felt some achievement as the valley behind us was getting more distant. After an hour or so we stopped for a break just short of the slopes of the volcano, having conquered merely the foothills. The group was split into two so the slow folks wouldn’t hold back the speedy ones. Guess which group we were in!
While we were having a break we were greeted by a couple of mutts which we named scab-dog #1 and scab-dog #2. They were quite good natured and obviously saw us as a source of food. They were from the village below and were very fit considering they followed the first group to the top of the volcano and then joined us for the trip back to the village. Probably their daily routine!

The speedy group quickly disappeared into the distance and after another half an hour climbing apparently Sarah and I were holding back the slow group so they ditched us as well. The path was quite steep and was stepped. We were up well over 3000m at this stage and with the thin air and steep path it was quite hard going. My pulse was at 140bpm and Sarah thought hers was higher so we were taking it fairly slow with frequent breaks. After what seemed like an eternity climbing higher and higher the trees thinned out and we could finally see the top of the mountain. By this stage we were completely surrounded by cloud so no view of the valley but the mist blowing through the trees was pretty cool and spooky.

Finally at almost 10am, we dragged ourselves on to the top of the mountain to join the others who were taking a well earned break. Surprisingly the slow group had only beaten us by 15 minutes! It had taken us 4 hours and 20 minutes to walk almost 8km climbing to a height of 3770m AND THERE WAS NO VIEW! We had a bit of a rest and took some pictures of the clouds. The fast group and most of the slow group took off back down the mountain with us following shortly thereafter.










The trip down was easier but still took 3.5 hours to get back. After a while everyone’s knees were screaming so although we weren’t taking frequent breaks it was still slow going. As we neared the village we passed people working the fields. I was impressed with the progress of a couple of men we had passed at 6.15am who were ploughing a field by hand and were still at it!
The trip back through the fields took forever as we were all exhausted. Sarah got cranky with me at one stage when I pointed out that we were being outpaced by an old man using an axe as a walking stick and carrying a heavy load of wood on his back.
Finally we arrived back at where we started at 1.20pm. Almost 8 hours, walking 16 km from 2500m to 3770m and back and we were absolutely spent. The taxi trip back into the city was a quiet one and we walked from the park painfully back to the apartment, did very little the rest of the afternoon and went to bed at 7pm.

Woke the next day very sore but with quite a feeling of achievement.