Made it!

I made it! I'm alive! Quite the experience!

Here's how it went down. Stefan the Austrian and I caught a shuttle to Quetzaltenango (Xela for short) Friday afternoon. When we arrived in Xela, we went directly to QuetzalTrekkers, which is headquartered in this really skeevy hostel ... I mean this place was rough even by hostel standards.

All in all, I was feeling a bit off - I think this was due to Xela being about 2,600 feet higher than Antigua, the 4 hour shuttle ride on twisty mountain roads, and the group of guitar playing, weed smoking greasy gringos (one of whom was giving me the crazy eyes) in the hostel corridor.

One of the cool things about QuetzalTrekkers is that they provide you with all the gear you need if you don't have your own. After we geared up, we headed to Hostal Don Diego, which was waaay nicer than the one we had just come from. Unfortunately, I barely slept. I woke up almost every 45 minutes all night ... before I got up at 3:45am.

Back at QuetzalTrekkers, we loaded up with tents and food then took a 10 minute pick-up ride to catch a chicken bus to San Marcos. The restaurant we ate breakfast at in San Marcos has a pay restroom. You pay 2 Quetzales and the lady at the door hands you some toilet paper ... seems like a fair price :)

Our ride to the base of the mountain was in a shuttle, so everyone in our group got a seat. There were twenty four people in our group - an unusually large group - evidently because nobody really wants to go to Tikal right now. Some Mexican drug cartel has been wreaking havoc there - earlier this month they killed 27 farmers and I heard a rumor that they more recently stopped a chicken bus and shot everyone inside. Evidently the Guatemalan government has declared a "state of siege" (which seems to be some kind of martial law) in the province and the place is saturated with soldiers ... not an awesome situation.

Anyway, we had a great group which included three Brits, two Aussies, a French Canadian couple, one Kiwi, one Belgian guy, one Irishman, one Swiss guy, one girl from Singapore, Stephan the Austrian, and eleven Yanks. I thought that I was a seasoned traveler until I met this crew! They've been everywhere and they're still going!

Fifteen minutes into the hike, I'm wondering why I agreed to do this ... Not a good sign, right? Fortunately, I wasn't the only one who had never really done any mountain climbing before - it was also Chinyi's first mountain. We decided to keep an eye out for each other - noobs gotta stick together!

The trek up to base camp took me four and a half hours. My legs were tired by the time I got there, but honestly, the hardest part was breathing! The altitude was not doing me any favors. Neither was my giant backpack containing probably 30-40 pounds of gear.

From Stefan the Austrian, I learned that there's an art to packing and wearing these serious climbing/hiking backpacks. You want to pack most of the weight toward the bottom and make sure that it's well balanced. Then, when you put on the pack and adjust the straps, you want the weight to ride on your hips - not your shoulders. Who knew? I can attest to the truth of this as a quarter of the way up the mountain I didn't think I'd make it - my shoulders were in excruciating pain. But I adjusted the pack so that the weight was on my hips and I was golden!

The scenery on the way up was breathtaking! We literally climbed up into the clouds. Every now and again they would part and we'd have a clear view of the surrounding hills and villages. Really cool.

Lunch was served shortly after we arrived at base camp. Unfortunately, I got kinda sick and I don't think it was from the altitude. Some bean dish they served us gave me terrible indigestion. Next came nausea and a craaaazy headache. I couldn't eat dinner for fear of losing it so I got some tylenol from one of the guides and hit the sack pretty early. Surprisingly, I slept well! I say "surprisingly," cause the odds were stacked against me - it was really cold at base camp, it rained half of the night, we had a leaky tent, the zipper on my sleeping bag wouldn't zip up, and we crammed 7 people into what was probably a 5 person tent. I think this tent-overpopulation was actually a blessing in disguise. I was sandwiched in-between Chinyi and Stefan the Austrian - without all this body heat, the broken sleeping bag zipper might have let me freeze!

At 3:30 Sunday morning, we broke out the flashlights and climbed about an hour to get to the peak for the sunrise. The view was amazing! One of the Aussies brought a kite with him and broke it out :)

After breaking camp, we hiked back down the mountain. This was easier in that my breathing was less labored as we descended, but it seemed a bit more treacherous.

After lunch, we caught two chicken buses back to Xela and tramped back to QuetzalTrekkers through the rain. I'm so glad it didn't rain on us while we were climbing! That would've made it exponentially more difficult!

I slept soundly last night and now I'm back in Antigua! The only casualty of the trip was one of the rubber ear pieces from my headphones ... So frustrating to lose one of those! I thought I was saved when I found some extras in the trash of my hostel room (don't worry - I liberally doused those suckers in hand sanitizer) but they're too small for my ear :(

I'm happy to report that all my training on cerro de la cruz paid off! Taylor and Luke will be proud to hear that there was no laying on the trail gasping for breath, no crawling, no begging for the sweet release of unconsciousness! I wasn't even the slowest person in the group! Not gonna lie, though ... going up and down stairs today has been excruciating :)

This whole experience kinda makes me wish climbing the highest mountain in Central America was one of my life goals - coulda checked it off the list! Oh well ...

Also - thanks, Nealy, for the Columbia pants and the North Face shirt! I actually looked like I belonged in a group of mountain climbers!

On a sadder note, Stefan the Austrian headed back to Austria this afternoon. Gonna miss you man!