Volcán Pacaya
The old colonial town of Antigua is most people’s first stop in Guatemala since it’s only an hour away from large and bustling Guatemala City. There are several volcanoes around, including the very active Fuego, but I only had time to take a fairly guided hike up the slopes of Volcán Pacaya. We didn’t go to the top but reached a viewpoint from where we crossed a 2014 lava flow.
Copán (Honduras)
This Mayan city-state is near the town of Copán Ruinas, and a paved path leads from the town to the main ruins with temples and the obligatory ball court as well as a subsidiary set of ruins. I was surprised to find I actually walked about 13 miles that day. Although the site had been occupied much earlier, the structures seen today at Copán date from about 425 - 820 A.D. Of all the Mayan cities of the Classic period, Copán is distinguished by the large number of well-preserved sculptures, including numerous stelae, and the display of writing on the Great Hieroglyphic Staircase. The secondary site that I walked to was Las Sepulturas, where the upper class, scribes, etc., lived.
Semuc Champey
Bruce and I drove up through the center of the country, and this was our first overnight stop. This rather remote gorge has become a favorite on the backpacker circuit. They are working on the road and will soon pave it, so expect many more buses, tour groups, and hotels in the near future. There is a great hiking loop which takes you up to a viewpoint from where you can look down on the limpid travertine pools for which the spot is famous. This is limestone country, and the Río Cahabón actually disappears for 350 yards under the limestone puente (bridge) upon which the pools are situated.
Tikal
Most people visit Tikal on a tour and are thus somewhat constrained, but we actually stayed in the national park (there are three hotels) and made a 12-mile day of it by visiting all the structures in the large restored area (but lidar reveals that the expanse of Tikal was about four times larger than what you see). Thus, we were in areas that were practically empty of visitors. Tikal was occupied in the pre-Classic period, but the structures that you see date from about 400 - 850 AD. (Mayans built the large temples on top of earlier structures, which they destroyed, using the rubble of older buildings as a core.) There are only about four pyramids you can go up, but we enjoyed bird watching from the platform on Temple IV and the Great Pyramid in the Mundo Perdido (Lost World). Spider monkeys seemed to be everywhere looking down on us, and the howler monkeys, difficult to actually see, were roaring from the canopy.
San Miguel
The attractive little town of Flores sits across a causeway in Lake Petén Itzá. By this time, Bruce had come down with a dose of Monte’s Revenge, so I took a lancha (taxi boat) across the lake to a town called San Miguel and hiked from there. First stop was the Mirador Rey Canek, from where I could see a larger portion of the lake and listen to the morning cacophony of black howler monkeys. I found a trail that took me to them. As they crashed around in the foliage above, some of them broke off branches and spitefully tossed them down at me. A sign on another trail directed me to the mysterious Arbol de Amor (Tree of Love), actually a large fig with many prop roots. Nearby was a new raised walkway, apparently constructed through the unrestored pre-Classic Mayan ruins of Tayasal, and not open to the public yet, but which I happily explored.
El Mirador trek (aborted)
After a rough pickup drive to the northern village of Carmelita, we met our guide, Angélica, and started walking. By this time, Bruce had more or less recovered from his intestinal disruptions. It’s 40 km to the large pre-Classic Mayan site of El Mirador (600 BC - 250 AD) with an overnight camp at the ruins of El Tintal. Angélica, a local Q’eqchi’ Mayan, was excellent at pointing out birds, insects, and flora, including medicinal plants. Her Spanish was deliberate and clear, making it easy for me to understand. The people of Carmelita had been chicle (for chewing gum) gatherers before trekking tourism offered a more stable income, and she pointed out the machete scars on manilkara trees that had been “milked.” As we got closer to El Tintal, we began to see looters’ trenches into low, jungle-covered structures: these sites are remote and excavations only began in the 1980s, but they cover a vast area and include several settlements, all attracting tomb robbers. El Mirador, in its time, was one of the largest cities in the ancient world.
We got to El Tintal, and other hikers were coming in from the other direction, having spent a couple of nights at El Mirador. They picked the ticks off each other and nursed their blisters. In the evening, we ascended one of the temple pyramids at El Tintal and saw, across a sea of tropical forest, the low rises which support the ruins of El Mirador and its satellite Nakbe.
That night the Revenge caught up with me (many times), and it was a ghastly, five-day endurance test on a mostly empty stomach. In the morning, I made the decision not to attempt the 23 km. hike to El Mirador. Bruce stayed with me, and the camp cook went off into the forest and came back with some waxy leaves with which she brewed a concoction. Then she leaned against a post and folded her arms. After only a couple of sips, I was retching uncontrollably for several minutes. The cook, who had not warned me, informed casually that that's what was supposed to happen. However, I don’t think the “medicine” had much effect on the bacteria flourishing in my intestinal tract, and I threw up all the antibiotics I had brought with me.
It poured with rain a couple of times, and the three days at El Tintal went by slowly. Other hikers came and went. The same group of 12 ocellated turkeys, a species endemic to the Yucatán, scavenged around camp. Coatimundis raided the trash pile, and there were howler monkeys grunting and roaring in the canopy. Bruce found a leech crawling up his tent. I was not improving, so we sent someone out to bring in mules. The next morning, we began heading back to Carmelita, but the rain had turned the main track into a quagmire, and the mules kept detouring on user trails that were less churned up. These were basically tunnels through the vegetation where my stirrups kept getting caught, the spiny palms kept stabbing, and a vine literally coiled itself around my neck. I found it easier simply to get off and walk!
Volcán San Pedro
We had headed back to Bruce’s house on Lake Atitlán in San Marcos La Laguna. By that time, I was feeling recovered enough, with sustenance being processed as normal, to contemplate a hike up the Volcán San Pedro (9,908 feet), one of three volcanoes on the lake. I took a lancha across the lake and then a tuktuk (three-wheeled scooter) to the trailhead. The trail was well-signed and straightforward, rising 4,000 feet to the summit area. I was hiking mostly in shade on the west slope of the mountain. It was a Sunday morning, and several small groups of Guatemalan hikers were coming down after staying at a small camp area below the summit. Volcán San Pedro is an extinct volcano, so the summit is forested, but views extend northward over Lake Atitlán, nestled in its vast caldera, and to the nearby volcanoes of Atitlán and Tollimán.
Reserva Rey Tepepul
By this time, Bruce’s wife Cathy had joined us, and we arranged an early morning birding hike with an Audubon-trained guide. This was also across the lake and before sunrise, so we took a private lancha to the town of Santiago Atitlán. From there, a pickup took us up the slopes of Volcán Atitlán, where we set out on a trail that traversed across slopes alternating pristine forest and steep plantations of canna plants, whose leaves are used to wrap tamales. The highlights of this birding hike were sightings of several quetzals, Guatemala’s national bird, and emerald toucanets.
