Sometimes hiking means scenic mountain towns and a nice view.
Other times it’s setting a 2am alarm to walk through a warzone.
After 11 hours, 7 forms of transport, and many questionable ‘chicken buses’, I’d finally landed in Quetzeltenango, Guatemala. Known locally as Xela, it sits off the main tourist path, surrounded by volcanoes and greenery.
Tired, hungry, and groggy, I arrive at my hostel. As I approach the front desk, a German named Victor spots my climbing shoes and immediately asks me to join him for a sunrise expedition up Central America’s tallest mountain.
He was leaving tomorrow.
We’d just met.
Sure.
What could go wrong?
After a good night’s rest, we threw our bags into storage and made our way through a chaotic series of vans and chicken buses to get us towards our mountain.
What should have been a 3 hour journey took closer to 6.
But here we were, at our hotel, in the middle of nowhere.
An old man with a high pitched voice greets us and shows us our dark, don’t-touch-the-unprotected-wiring room. He tells us we’re 7 minutes late and the restaurants have all closed, but he’ll call the ladies across the street and see if they want the business. Thankfully they open for us, and Victor and I walk over.
Enjoying an incredible meal, the woman running the restaurant chats to us for a bit, and asks what our plan is. We tell her we’ll be doing a sunrise hike of Tajumulco, to which she’s surprised.
She tells us 3 hours ago there was a territory war skirmish.
Her restaurant was shot at, some cars too.
Sorry, what?
Nothing like a good meal with a side of gang conflict.
Voicing concerns over whether what we’re doing was safe and if we should turn around and call an Uber back now, she asks us to wait.
She calls a friend in the army, stationed at a nearby outpost.
He says it’s safe now and that he’ll be ‘looking out for us’.
Not exactly comforting.
Heading back to the hotel, we ask the old man with the funny voice if he knew about the shootings. Yeah, of course, he casually says, as if it’s a standard occurrence.
But don’t worry, he assures us.
“The shootings usually happen on this side of the mountain. You’ll hike the other side!”
Great…
Note that this is all happening in Spanish, and while Victor knows what’s going on, I’m only picking up enough to be concerned.
Victor and I decide that gangsters like to sleep in, especially after a big day of shooting the rival gang, and so we set our alarms for 2am and say good night.
Alarms blaring, we get dressed, brush our teeth, and put on our best innocent gringo looking faces.
Walking by headtorch, we make our way up the road and onto the volcano beginning our hike. It’s just us on the trail with the exception of a few loud and angry dogs we had to scare off.
After an hour of walking, we hear the rumble of motorbikes approaching. Not the thing you want to hear in gang territory – hopefully it’s just some local farmers coming home at 3am? I tell Victor to kill his torch, and quickly drag him with me behind some bushes.
We crouch in silence as they pass us.
No idea who that was. No clue if it was necessary.
This is probably where a reasonable person would have turned around.
We kept walking.
Eventually, we see those same three bikes parked up the trail. We assume the best, and that it’s some fellow visitors planning a sunrise hike, and not a group looking to rob some early morning gringo hikers.
With our fast pace, we soon see three lights in the distance. I’m ready to throw my phone and wallet into the forest to find later.
Victor calls out ‘Hola? Amigos?’. We get a friendly tone back, and timidly approach.
Three very nerdy teenage boys are in front of us. Hallelujah. Turns out we were all convinced we were going to get robbed!
Quickly making buddies, we were super thankful that yes, they were amigos. Phew!
Further up the trail, we see other groups hiking for the awaiting sunrise.
Finally making it to the summit, we enjoy the beauty of morning, greeting us and our new friends. Sharing snacks and a view, alongside our valuables happily still in our pockets, I’m glad I said yes to the forward German man at the hostel.
Thankfully we made it down without reason to jump behind any other bushes, and proceeded to get out of town as quick as possible.
Walking through a warzone wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. But here we are.
Hikes aren’t always a questionable life decision, but when they are, at least the view is worth it.
