Laguna de Chicabal

This past Saturday I hiked Laguna de Chicabal with some friends from school. It´s a volcano that has a lake in the middle of it. It was amazing!!

The lake is sacred to the Mayas and you can find Mayans doing religious ceremonies all around the lake

This is one of the altars that they place flowers on

Me, standing in the middle on the volcano next to the lake

Part of our hike

The hike itself was 9km and I swear 7 of those kilometers were all up hill!!! To give you an idea of the steepness, those of you from Beaverton, it´s like climbing Weir for 7km!!! For those of you from Armenia, it´s like climbing my driveway for 7km! Yikes!!! I was sure sore the next day and today I am still feeling it. The first 5km we could have hopped a ride in the back of a pick-up to get to the actual trailhead, but our teacher, Javier, decided we should walk it! We were all tired and huffing and puffing by the time we reached the trailhead and just about died when we realized we had 2 more km to go! But, we perserved and it was totally worth it! So beautiful and tranquil. We hiked to the top of the volcano to look down on the lake and then climbed down 563 (yes I counted) very rickety, steep stairs to the lake itself. Coming back, we all decided that we would hitch a ride down the last 5km as it was raining and we didn´t want to slip and slide all the way down the mountain. It was a scary ride though as we all crammed into the back of a pick-up with Mayan kids and big machettes and garden hoes. It was a harrowing ride down the hill where my friends kept saying, we should have prayed for safety, which I in turn told them that I did first thing this morning, so we made it down safe. :)

This is my last week of classes before heading back to Lake Atitlan for 5 days before my dad and aunt arrive to spend 5 days with me. I can´t believe how quickly time is going.....crazy....