The Climb of My Life

My alarm blasted at 3:30 a.m. this morning. I had already been lying with my eyes open for quite some time, paranoid that my alarm wouldn’t go off. I gathered all of my stuff and the Spanish speaking tour driver picked me up at exactly 4 am and then we picked David up. It was still dark out as we drove up a bumpy dirt road. The moon and stars were bright and the car jumbled us around like candy in a piñata up a windy road. I could tell the road has to be constantly rebuilt from washouts. I don’t know if there is access up here during the rainy season. We past some small towns and finally made it to our destination. I really had NO IDEA what I was in for.
We were introduced to our guia (tour guide). The first thing that I noticed was the large machete in his hand. He stuck the machete in his pants and said, “Mi nombre es Peachy.” Peachy had a thick black mustache and wore a beanie, and an old sweatshirt. Before we left, our driver told us that we would have to look him up on Peachy’s cell phone when we needed to be picked up because Peachy could not read. At that moment I felt like we were a bit vulnerable given that we were in only God knows where, in the dark, with “Mr. machete man.”
Immediately we started our assent up the mountain with our head lamps on. With almost every step our feet sunk under a loose mixture of dirt and sand, which made it more difficult to climb. We passed several small farms growing corn and other crops on the sloping mountain side. I remember wondering how people got the crops down once harvested. The sky began to lighten as we walked and the sun casted beautiful shadows through the giant trees and vines around us.
After about an hour and a half of hiking at a severe incline I asked Peachy how much longer until we reached the top. I was already starting to breathe hard and my legs were feeling the burn. He said 3 or 4 more hours. Peachy told us that few tourists hike this because it is so strenuous and few do it in a day. I felt like it was as if I had been asked to do a little run that turned out to be a marathon. It was a Saturday, the most popular day for tourist activities and we didn’t see anyone climbing that day other than ourselves. After a short break, I sucked it up and we started to climb again. As we climbed and the altitude changed, so did the landscape. We went from farmland, to jungle, to cloud forest, to sparse trees, to nothing but ash and rocks at the top.
David and I saw a base camp and thought we saw the top about a mile in sight. We celebrated by jumping in the air and saying, “We are almost there. We are almost there!” My legs were pretty shot and my breathing was heavy. After our little celebration, Peachy said that that was not the top, we still have a few hours to go. I really questioned whether I could do it, but we pushed on.
The incline got even more steep. The weather had gone from warm to extremely chilly. The wind was whipping hard and it reminded me of waiting on the chairlift at the top of a mountain. We past the timber line at around 12,500 feet and the landscape started to resemble the moon with only rocks and dark sandy ash covering the ground. It looked like we were on the top of the world. We could see the tops of about 5 volcanoes, all sitting slightly below our altitude.
The last part of the journey, David and I stopped about every 30 feet because we were breathing hard from the altitude change and our legs had no energy left. Peachy, around 50 years old I’d say, made everything look effortless. To keep us moving he would walk ahead of us. A few times he looked like he was napping on the trail. As soon as we met up with him he would take off again. Once Peachy was at the crater of Catenanga he called for us hurry. We saw some big plumes of smoke coming from a nearby volcano (Fuego, I think). It took every ounce of my strength to run towards Peachy to get a better view. I saw the volcano explode, but didn’t get my camera out in time. Plumes of smoke and ash went into the air and then slowly drifted away like big clouds. It was AMAZING! We literally were on top of everything. There was a dark grey crater at the very top and some vents around it releasing hot air. We could walk all the way around the crater and see each of the volcanoes.
David wanted us to wait at the top for a few minutes to see if there was any more volcano activity from a nearby volcano (our volcano was considered dormant). I wrapped myself up and laid down in an area shielded from the wind. I closed my eyes for about 2 minutes and when I opened them we were in the middle of a cloud with almost no visibility. I was in awe of mother nature. That’s when we decided it was time to head back down the mountain.
Since the ground was so sloped and very sandy-like, the easiest way to get down was to do a gallop down the mountain side and let each foot slide in the sand several feet and then pray that you didn’t slip. Peachy could clear a mountainside this way in a matter of minutes. It was amazing to watch. The decent was thrilling and I could really put into perspective how much we had climbed in elevation. About 6,000 feet in all. Towards the end I fell several times and got a little scratched up, but we did a gallop for about two hours down the mountain at a pretty quick pace.
Once we made it back to the farm area, I saw how people harvested their land. Several people were carrying huge loads on their back. Peachy said they were from the nearby town and didn’t speak Spanish, but a Mayan dialect. As we past we would nod our heads to each other. There were little kids too, probably 7 or 8 years old with a pile of logs on their backs. The towns use wood to do all of their cooking. I really wanted to take a picture because I saw several guys riding bareback with machetes and families with HUGE loads on their backs dressed in Mayan attire, but I didn’t want to be “that tourist” that pulls out my camera and flashes the camera it in their faces so instead I took a mental picture.
Peachy took his machete and cut down a tree (while he was waiting for us) and then threw it on his back to bring home to his family. He told us his story along the way and once we got down to wait for our pickup after we had found our driver’s name on his phone. Peachy has two wives and 7 kids. I guess it is normal in the smaller towns for men to have more than one wife. He was missing part of his thumb which he had accidently cut off during his sleep (because he often sleeps in the brush with his machete). To meet us he had walked for over an hour in the dark from his town. We gave him a tip of 50 Quetzals, which is about $6 in U.S. dollars. Many people only make $1-$2 per day so he seemed pretty happy. As we drove off in the tour van, I saw him throw the large log on his back and march down a trail. Once we started our drive back, the majestic Catenanga came into view. We had hiked for over 8 hours, about 17 miles, and had ascended 6,000 feet. I know my body will remind me of that tomorrow. What a day! The climb of my life!