08: The Hike from Hell

Here’s the problem, when you come from the most amazing place (e.g. Portland, Esalen, Mexico, etc,) my natural inclination is to compare everything to that place. For the purposes of this story, my comparison is Mexico because I’m now sitting in Guatemala and longing for Mexico. 

I had not planned on visiting Guatemala, in fact it wasn’t even on the list of possible contenders. It wasn’t something I researched or had even heard that it was cool / interesting / a place worthy of visiting. But turns out, for many this is the place to be. After 4 weeks in Mexico I wanted an experience with less cars, less exhaust and less pollution. I wanted to be surrounded by the beauty of nature or at least in a place that you could breathe fresh air with ease. 

I landed in Guatemala City and immediately took a 1.5 hour bus shuttle to Antigua. Guatemala’s most popular and most touristy town. No big surprise, I wasn’t the only white person that was doing the same. To be fair, I was warned about this by a friend I met in Mexico City. She mentioned that the streets are filled with the same like minded white people searching for what everyone is searching for - the quintessential Central American city that is authentic yet has no other tourists yet has just enough western amenities that make it accessible and easy. Well if Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway AND Wendy’s are what you’re looking than Antigua has got it. 

You don’t need to eat Taco Bell to have diarrhea in Guatemala.

The city itself is adorable even if you’re surrounded by tons of white people and fast food chains. But it was missing something, it just wasn’t Mexico. And to be fair, I’m sure Mexico has it’s fair share of fast food chains, they just weren’t in the center of the historic city where it felt like an ancient building had been repurposed for American fast food restaurants. 

Antigua was just a momentary blip on my travels further North to attend a 10 day Yoga/Meditation retreat at Lake Atitlán, aka the nature part I was looking for. I was only in Antigua for 3 nights which felt like more than covered a decent experience in the city. There wasn’t that much more to see or do. 

From the same Mexico City friend I had heard that the day hike to Pacaya a local volcano was well worth my time and money. As my Portland friends can attest, hiking isn’t really my thing. For starters, I’m not particularly good at it. I’d far more prefer just walking but walking up a hill, and specifically steep hills just doesn’t make any sense to me. I get the whole “reward at the end of hikes”. Hopefully that reward is a breathtaking and worthwhile view. Then again, sometimes they aren’t. And sometimes, the hike is so torturous that anything would have been better than doing it. Welcome to my Hike From Hell. 

I booked the hike on Friday night when I arrived in Antigua for the following day. The gentleman at the hostel assured me it was 1. an easy hike and 2. my Nike’s would be sufficient to hike up to the top. Great, I thought. I didn’t know anyone at my hostel yet nor did I want to wait to make friends to postpone this hike so I figured I’d go at it solo with the hope and intention that maybe there would be interesting people on the hike with me. There were two options to book - the 6am or 2pm hike. 2pm hike would also include sunset on the volcano and who doesn’t love a good sunset? So, 2pm it was because who wants to wake up at 6am for a hike?!

What was the real start to the hike was my lunch with my new “24 hour” friends. I met 6 women who had just finished an overnight hike to a different volcano. Eagerly I asked them how their experience was. Without fail all 6 women said some sort of form of, “I think that was the hardest hike I’ve ever done. I would never do it again. I would never recommend it.” Well then, I’m screwed. I feverishly looked at the internet and found 2 random travel blogs - one said it was really hard, one said it was “doable”. Neither made me excited for the afternoon. Perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad I thought, or hoped. 

2pm Saturday rolled around and a shuttle van picked me and my new 23 friends up from hostels and hotels around town. The drive was 1.5+ hours outside of town with whom I’m sure is a “safe” driver but with 24 people packed in a van and taking hairpin turns at 60+ miles per hour just wasn’t exactly my idea of a great ride. Perhaps the ominous start to the Hike From Hell I should have seen coming. 

The one tip I am beyond grateful for in reading those blogs was that you can “rent” a hiking stick. Once we arrived at the start of the park our bus was inundated with locals trying to rent us a stick or a “taxis” to get to the top. My first problem was that I got off the bus and was immediately nervous about being the uncool kid with a walking stick. Everyone else was saying, “It’s only 3 hours roundtrip , how hard could it be? I don’t need a stick.” Luckily after a quick bathroom stop, I changed my mind and this was literally only one of two good things to come out of this hike. (The other was a lovely new British friend who also thought that the hike sucked.)

I should have guessed what was ahead of me if the locals were trying to sell you a “taxi” up to the top. And by taxi it was really just a horribly treated, let’s say abused horse that was forced to walk shitty tourists up and down the mountain while they were being beaten by their owners. NO THANK YOU! 

And it didn’t get better from there. A number of people immediately got on the horses, I refrained for all of the above mentioned reasons. But also, I had it in my mind that I was going to do this hike and if it killed me I was going to get to the top of that damn volcano and it was going to be glorious. 

Once the hike started it was full on. Honestly, I wanted to quit. And something in me was determined not to. I thought about all the times in my childhood my Dad took me down difficult ski runs that I wasn’t quite skilled enough for and I gave up, took my skis off and walked down. I thought about Rachel Havens and Julie Powers and what badass hikers they are. I thought about all of the people who couldn’t even hike this because they were physically unable to. I thought about Mary Estes and meeting her in India or Nepal and I didn’t want to let her down if she were with me. I thought about my friends who are hardcore hikers and about Jamie Beckland who recently hiked the Appalachian Trail and questioned his sanity and also thought about what a legend he is. I thought about Jehanne Bowen who is an ultra marathoner and runs on trails...FOR FUN. (WHY JAY, WHY?!?!) I asked the universe why I was on this shitty trail and that there must be a better reason for it than this misery. I thought about how epic getting to the top would be. I found every last ounce of willpower that I could muster to get to the top of that damn volcano. 

I’m going to cut to the chase here. I made it. But I was literally the last person to the top. DEAD LAST. I have no idea how long it took me, it’s supposed to be a 1.5 hour “easy” hike. That was the worst hikes of my life. I would walk maybe 5 minutes and be dead tired. Gasping for breath and sweating profusely in the humidity and heat of Guatemala. I want to blame of the difficulty on the elevation, but I don’t know if that’s actually real. The trail up to the top was filled with horse shit and the awful path had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It was uphill the entire time. It wasn’t particularly pretty either. There was only one crappy look out point with limited views only made worse on the overcast day I made the trek. 

I'm so "happy" to be hiking. (Also gotta represent Oregon!)

One by one my fellow hikers were picked off and succumb to their own desire for the easy way out - they rented the taxi. They suffered long enough and eventually the small cost of comfort overrode the reality that this hike was hard. For over an hour I was followed by one lone man with his horse. You could say it was demoralizing, because it was. He followed me because he thought I would quit and I would want the taxi - because that’s what tourists do. 

I went at my own pace but it wasn’t easy and it sure wasn’t pretty. I couldn’t breathe, I was exhausted, I was in pain. Every 20 minutes he would look at the pain in my face and the sweat dripping off of me and ask, “Taxi?” Each time I said no. And each time he asked, my anger towards him increased. Each time I heard those words, “taxi?” made me more determined to hike my ass up to the top of this volcano. Didn’t he get it by now? Didn’t he see that I was NOT going to fail? Wasn’t he impressed that I wasn’t giving up? No. He didn’t care because he knew that many more before me and many more after me would give up and get the taxi. 

Finally, it was the last straw. I was close to the top, I hadn’t seen the hiking guide or any other fellow hikers in over 30 minutes. It was getting more difficult as I was getting closer to the summit. His final, “Taxi?” sent me over the edge. In my broken and very angry Spanish I told him, “I’m going to die before I take a Taxi.” (Something like, “Yo voy a morir antes un taxi.” 15 seconds later I turn around and he silently vanished finally getting the clue that I wasn’t interested in paying him any money for his abused horse ride.  

Then reality hit. I was alone. Like really, really alone. A little fear overcame me. Partly because of another horror story where a friend was robbed at gunpoint while hiking a volcano in Guatemala (Don’t worry Betsy! It’s fine! I’m totally safe.) Also being on a shitty hike in Guatemala and being alone is scary. Even if I knew that eventually I would see other people. It was another 30 minutes to hike to the top.

Drenched in sweat, exhausted and overwhelmed by the enormous effort I was ill prepared for I made it. At the top, I expected to be blown away by the view and it was…just ok. I don’t know, you can be the judge of the view from these iPhone pictures but honestly, it’s not like I’ve never seen volcanoes before. Also I live in Oregon and grew up in California. There are some insanely beautiful hikes, landscapes, mountains that I could easily compare this to. So once at the top it was an epic let down considering the effort required to get there. 

Once at the top, you hike down the back side to the lava field where you roast marshmallows and get corralled into this hut where they are selling lava souvenirs. And it didn’t get much better from there. I was accosted by an aggressive Argentinian man who asked me who I voted for as President. The 4 Irish bros on the hike were listening to trance music and drinking beers the entire time. The guides weren’t actually guides, they just stood there. 

Finally the time came to head back down the mountain. Sweet relief! Up was bad enough, I wasn’t looking forward to the downhill decent. At the same time, the sun was setting fast. It quickly  became dark. The hike back was, in a word, ok. Definitely easier to walk down than up although my knees were feeling it. No one got taxis down the hill so the group stayed together for the most part. The end was quite uneventful. It was pitch dark out by the time we reached the bottom. Everyone packed back onto the bus for the treacherous ride back to town and that was it. 

Did I finish this hike? Yes. Would I do it again? Nope. Will I keep hiking on this trip? Maybe. 

- M