Guatemala week #5/6: Nathaniel's POV 🇬🇹

After leaving Mexico my expectations of the coming week where not very high. I knew that we were going to be heading through a notoriously difficult border and spending 5 hours a day for a week solely learning Spanish so you could say that I was not exactly hyped. To make matters worse the border crossing did not go very smoothly.

As we pulled up to the border two men (called fixers) tried to convince us to use their services to cross the border by trying to climb through the window (although, there is some suspicion that they were drunk)! Then, there was a big ordeal about copying some paperwork (dont ask me what paperwork, I was lost the minute my dad started talking about TIPs). And finally, after we crossed the border, we could not find a place to stay! Eventually, we found a nice house/parking lot that let us stay there for the night even though all the power was turned off by the government because a few people did not pay their bills.

When we woke up, we were pleasantly surprised by the scenery around us. There were multi coloured birds, thick jungle trees and beautifully vibrant flowers. My dad talked with the man who owned the place and he mentioned that there was a pretty little lagoon with a waterfall just behind his backyard garden. And so, after much persuasion, my dad convinced me and my groggy brothers to get our swim stuff on and hike down to the lagoon.

It. Was. Amazing.

The water was a beautiful turquoise, there was a cliff jumping and rope swinging spot and there was the small, but beautiful, waterfall. After spending an hour in the warm waters of the lagoon (I love writing lagoon, it makes me feel so mysterious :) we decided to hit the road and make tracks for Antigua.

Antigua is a very old place. It has more ruins than you have T-shirts and plenty of cultural masterpieces. It turns out that me and my brothers actually got to see more of Antigua than our parents because, after a very monotonous first day at Ixchel Spanish school, my mom decided it would be best if my teacher would do one (educational) day-trip per session. That worked out just fine for me and my brothers. We visited an art gallery, checked out a "sweet" chocolate museum, bought fruit at a famous Antiguan market for fruit salad and even bought lollipops at the local confectionery. Learning at the school was honestly way better than I thought.

One of the biggest reasons was that our campsite was that our campsite, was SWEET. First of all, it was called "Vagamundo" (which I constantly found my self repeating while I read). Secondly, the place was filled with old trucks, cars, vans and helicopters that had been turned into housing and decoration. And best of all, there was (and I am not joking) a pet Peacock. Sometimes we thought it was super cool, other times we wanted to wring its neck because of how loud it was (one time, we played female peacock mating noises and sent him into a frenzy for fun). The only questionable thing about it was that it had two Hawaiian-themed bars that brought in some "interesting" people.

On the last day of Ixchel, my parents decided it would be fun to climb one of the three volcanos in the area so my dad went to many outfitters and finally found the cheapest ones. My mom was a bit skeptical about going with the cheapest option but, in my dad's words,

"It will build character!"

And so, at 10:30 am, we set off to climb mount Acatenango and "build some character ".

The hike was horrendous. It was a steep incline for around 7 hours of climbing and tons of other hikers which created some tension. And, on top of it all, we had kind of crappy lunches (the benefit of going with the cheapest options). When we got to base camp we were so tired that we all plopped down in the tent and took a long nap... that is until Mount Fuego erupted.

It was insane! The volcano beside the one we climbed started rumbling and spewing smoke and lava everywhere which caused the ground to shake and ashes to fly everywhere. We ate dinner in the dark watching the volcano and prepared to summit the mountain in the morning.

The next day at four in the morning, we began the hike to the summit. It was extremely difficult because of two things: 1: it was very cold and we had just woken up so we very groggy and 2: It was even steeper than the hike up so as we got higher, we all felt extremely sick because of altitude sickness. I almost vomited at the very top it was so bad. But, the sense of accomplishment outweighed all the downsides which made it a very enjoyable time.

That about sums up the Guatemala leg of our journey, thanks for reading! And, as always, feel free to ask questions or give feedback!

Bye for now!

- Nathaniel Fast