Day 7: Another frikken mountain

Saturday, January 9. (How do you like the new fancy look? Nice, huh?)

Saturday morning, the one precious day of the week when a student can reasonably expect to sleep in, I was up well before the crack of dawn to seek adventure and really sore legs. My roommate and I went to the school at 3AM to meet the other students foolish enough to climb Santa María.

That triangle, safely in the distance where it belongs, is Santa María: whopping big volcano. It is the 5th highest mountain peak in Guatemala, and the 7th highest in Central America at 12,375 ft. (For perspective, Mt. Rainier has an elevation of 14,417 ft.) Santa María had been dormant for centuries until earthquakes started in January of 1902 and it exploded in October. It was one of the largest eruptions of the 20th century. 20 years later new eruptions began, and a lava dome formed in the crater from the 1902 eruption, on the south-west side. This side dome is called Santiaguito, and is still active today.

Quetzaltenango is at an elevation of 7,640 ft. That still leaves 5,000 ft to climb in one day. The idea of starting at 3 in the morning was to reach the summit in time to watch the sunrise and see lava glowing in Santiaguito.

We started out on a dirt road with a slight incline. We were a dozen students, our TA, 2 guides, the bus driver, and 2 policía to make sure we didn't get mugged. After only five minutes we norteamericanos were already panting for breath. I'm going to blame that on the elevation and lack of oxygen, and not on all of us being out of shape. For the first 2 hours we kept our headlamps pointed at the ground, watching out for horse poop and potential ankle-twisters. The scenery was lost to us, it was too dark to see anything. The sky gifted us with a few shooting stars, but for the most part we were too busy watching the ground to admire the ceiling.

Dawn crept up behind us, bringing with it morning fog that overpowered the lights of Xela far below.

At this point I really don't know how we're still smiling. Mountain climbing is hard work!

It gets cold at night, cold enough you need a coat, but it doesn't frost. As we climbed higher, however, tiny ice crystals crunched beneath our tennis shoes. After it melted in the sun it made for a slippery hike down.

We passed several rocks with the name Paco spray painted in orange. One rock said "fin." It lied. We were no where near the end. Eventually we did get there... and it looked like this.  

Somewhere out there by that line of clouds is the Pacific Ocean.

 

 

The summit is up there. After reaching the summit we spent an hour just below it, watching the smoking lava dome Santiaguito.

And then...

We interrupt this volcano to bring you... a dog. It probably has fleas. 

A picture of everybody taking pictures.

Aaaand me! Are you happy, Mom?

Me and my partner in class, Morgen. Santiaguito has settled down in the background.

And then it stopped being settled. That's two eruptions we saw! The second time was later in the day so there were a lot more people around watching. 

On the summit there were two Guatemalan brothers camping. They now live in the US, but they come back home to climb volcanoes. One of them talked to us about the surrounding mountain peaks, volcanologists, and some of the customs of the indigenous people. Santa María is a sacred place to the Maya; at the top we found bouquets of flowers left there by indigenous people. As the day wore on more and more people arrived at the summit, many of the women wearing the traditional Maya dresses. 

One consequence of this place being frequented by so many people, Guatemalans and tourists alike, is that even at the top of world there is so much garbage. The man we talked to said that even though the volcano is sacred to the indigenous people, it's mostly them who leave behind all the trash. Guatemalans in general are litterbugs, but the man thinks that the indigenous people don't have "a sense of the permanence of plastic" because, historically, all of their garbage was biodegradable. Corn husks and things like that don't stick around for centuries.

We arrived at the summit at about 8AM, after 4 and a half hours of climbing. After an hour's rest, we headed back down. The hill in the photo above is El Baúl, where our CASPmates who didn't want to suffer through climbing a frikken mountain spent their morning. Apparently, there are long slides at the top, and they brought pieces of cardboard to slide down on. 

In most of Latin America it is extremely rude to take pictures of people without asking, especially of children. In Guatemala's past there were people dressed as tourists who would take pictures of little children and then later those kids would be kidnapped. This father asked me to take his picture.

We passed a lot of people heading up the trail while we were going down. They wore ordinary clothes, as if climbing Santa María is an every day normal activity for them. Meanwhile we were carrying water, snacks, and sweat absorbing headbands and almost dying. As I said before, many of the women wore the traditional dresses. There were old men and women, sleeping babies being carried by parents and big siblings, and bouquets of flowers, all going up the mountain.

The lower elevations, which we were previously blind to at 3:30 in the morning, were lush and green. The first stretch of the trail is also used by farmers and their poopy horses.

Viewed from the beginning of the trail, that's the thing we climbed. I had an orange ice cream bar afterwards, and it was the best ice cream I've ever had.