Trek Length: 6 days (2 travel days, 4 trekking days)
Price: Q1200 donation (Porter service available for an extra Q800 per person)
Trekking Distance: 60km
Highest Elevation Reached: 3870m (La Torre)

Our unforgettable six-day trip from Nebaj to Todos Santos promises to take you well off the beaten path, through 3 Mayan language zones and far from the reaches of any guidebooks (or modern roads for that matter). The trek will see you traverse the far-flung Cuchamatanes Mountains that hug the seldom-visited North-Western corner of Guatemala and will bring you up close and personal with the area´s rich culture that has changed little since the arrival of Europeans (first with their guns, then with their cameras). The scenery along the way is also as unique as it is spectacular, from lush green valleys to pine forests to barren, other-worldly plateaus.

Local families will welcome you into their homes, share a home-cooked traditional meal, and provide a warm, dry space for you to get some well-deserved rest. Interactions with the people of the Cuchamatanes might be an even bigger draw than the stunning alpine scenery. The region was one of the hardest hit by the recent civil war and memories of massacres and disappearances still weigh heavy in the minds of the locals. Despite this, they warmly welcome us into their communities and will often find the occasion to share with us their stories of personal tragedy.

We meet at the QT office at 7am and tuck into a hearty breakfast prepared by the volunteer guides.  After enjoying the food and coffee and tying up any loose ends, we head-off for the city´s main bus terminal and settle in for our first three hour bus ride.  In the town of Quiché, we have just enough time to use the bathrooms and devour a pre-packed lunch before transferring to the micro for our last three hour bus leg to Nebaj.  We set down in Nebaj at around 3pm, allowing plenty of time to explore the bustling market and to take-in the impressive town square.

As one of the three main centres in the Ixil-Triangle region, the mountain-ringed town of Nebaj with its bright traditional dress and solemn history is, in many ways, the perfect starting point for our trek. We´ll bunker down for the first night at Popi´s Hostel, a not-for-profit hostel that supports the local Mayan Hope project. There, we will be served a filling home-made meal before chilling out in the common-area and taking advantage of the last hot shower we´ll see for the next 5 days.

We eat a solid breakfast of hotcakes and fruit salad before the 8am ‘packs on’ call. Walking away from Popi’s, it is not long before we are out of the town’s gridded streets and climbing through green cow pastures. As the trail thins and the woods thicken, we wave goodbye to the now-distant Nebaj and continue over the rise to the Ixil village of Acul. This village was the site of a horrific army-sponsored massacre in the early 1980s with the church being the only building in Acul not to be burned to the ground. Paradoxically, the green fields and pastures surrounding Acul today make the village seem more Swiss than Guatemalan.

After a sobering break in front of Acul’s church, we follow a rickety dirt road out of the village before taking a long break at a grassy, riverside clearing for a picnic lunch. The rest of the afternoon comprises a winding ascent through pasture, woodland and scattered villages. At about 4pm we arrive at a tiny village wedged at the bottom of a steep, pine-forested valley that we will call home for the night. After some time spent either relaxing or playing some soccer with curious young locals, we can wash the day’s sweat off in a temascal (Mayan sauna).Warm and clean, we are then invited into the home of one of the dozen or so K’iche’ families that make up the village to share in a traditional meal. We can then either sleep in the school-building or outside under a sky that, with the absence of any nearby electric lighting, shines incredibly brightly.

 

We’re told that the start of Day 3 is the most brutal section of the Nebaj trek...and they might be right. We wake before dawn, put our packs on and head straight up the infamous Cerro Ochenta y Siete (eighty-seven hill): a sheer mountainside with the only way up being a series of 87 switchbacks (count’em, we have). Why would we do such a thing in the dark, you ask? Well, you might start to understand just after the climb when you’re sipping a hot drink and watching a beautiful sunrise over the forested mountains and valleys below.

After breakfast, we continue climbing until we hit the altiplano (literally: the high-flat) and stop for a break while taking in the spectacular views of the entire chain of Guatemala´s volcanoes sitting on the Southern horizon. The martian landscape of the altiplano with its warped limestone boulders (that actually originated from the ocean floor...of Earth), is unique to Central America and is really something to behold. For the next few hours of hiking, we share this roadless, prehistoric plain with no-one apart from the few scattered goat-herders moving their flocks between highland hamlets. A lonely pocket of pine-trees serves as shelter from the intense, high-altitude sun while we eat a picnic lunch and rest our legs. At the edge of the altiplano we descend a beautiful valley to arrive in the K’iche’ village where we spend the third night. A family kindly provides us a shelter for the night and, after a filling meal, we slowly slink off to our sleeping bags for some well deserved rest.

We wake just before dawn, pack our things and continue our descent out of the village to the valley-floor – about 40 minutes away.  The cascading river at the bottom provides a beautiful place to unpack the pot and cook-up a hot breakfast. The river’s aqua- blue limestone pools are perfect for a refreshing – some would say deathly freezing- dip. Either way, it´ll wake you up.

What goes down, must go up and, after drying-off and letting our breakfast settle, we get started on a steep climb out of the other side of the valley. The winding ascent (aka: ‘Agony Hill’) takes us through corn-fields, green pastures, rustic villages and pine forests until we emerge from the trees onto the second desert-like altiplano. From here, the next few hours are mercifully flat as we pass highland swamps and one particularly eerie village-graveyard. When we reach a small village with road-access, we buy some provisions and have lunch under the shade of a lone tree.

Towards the end of the day we arrive at the affectionately-named, ‘Hill of Terror’: the short, but very steep uphill section that ends the day´s hiking. Some hikers have got into the habit of racing up the hill – current record: 6 mins 56 secs. Wiping the sweat from our brows, we continue to a sealed road and take transport to the village of La Ventosa: our destination for Day 4. Arriving in La Ventosa, seemingly all the kids in town come out to greet us, as does the village-leader, Geronimo – who graciously invites us to wash up in his temascal, eat a hot meal and bed down in his family´s spare room.

Waking in La Ventosa, we settle into a hearty breakfast before stepping over pigs and chickens to start our ascent of La Torre: at 3870m, the highest non-volcanic peak in Central America. Geronimo occasionally joins us for the hike up the mountain and shares his tragic personal story of how the Guatemalan Army came into La Ventosa in the early 1980s and terrorized the town.

Taking a long break at the top of La Torre, we are treated to expansive views of the distant chain of Guatemalan volcanoes – from Agua, Acatenango and Fuego to Atitlán and Santa María all the way to Tajumulco. The rest of the day is spent negotiating the slippery Western slope of La Torre. The mossy, temperate rainforest in this area makes for a beautiful descent and we stop at a swimming hole set into the side of the mountain for lunch overlooking the Todos Santos Valley. The trail flattens out once we start following a river which takes us through pastures and cornfields before finally leading us to Todos Santos itself.
In Todos Santos – a Mam-speaking town famed for it´s unique traditional dress and beautiful mountain-setting – we have enough time to wander around the town and maybe grab a celebratory beer before the local family that we stay with serves up dinner.

 

Transport day. We get up early to get started on the 4.5hr bus trip back home to Quetzaltenango.  There is a quick change-over in Huehuetenango where we can have a bathroom-break and a bite to eat in the terminal before the final bus leg. We arrive back to the QT office at around 9:30am where we snack on some fruit, have a hot drink and enjoy a debrief with our new-found trekking buddies. After grabbing the baggage that you left in the office during the trek, it´s all hugs and emotional goodbyes as you set off for your next Guatemalan destination... or maybe just a bed and a shower in Xela.

Quetzaltrekkers is the only trekking outfit that regularly runs this trek and it is bound to be remembered as the highlight of any trip to Guatemala

Price includes: guides, accomodation, temascals (mayan saunas), 15 meals, snacks, water, all equipment rental, all transport and local trail -usage fees.

When: The trek is scheduled to take place every second Tuesday through Sunday (ie. once every two weeks). For details, check out our online schedule. If you have a group of people, an on-demand trek might be possible if you can contact us well in advance.

What to bring:*

• Large backpack
• Sleeping bag/ mat
• Light-breathable clothes for hiking
• Warm clothes for the night (ie. a good fleece)
• Comfortable shoes for hiking (ie. tennis shoes)
• Rain coat/ poncho
• Bathing suit and small towel
• Sun Protection
• Flashlight

*Don’t have all this stuff? No problem- we’ll lend you what you don’t have. Do have some of this stuff but don´t want to carry it anymore? Consider leaving it as an equipment donation! Quetzaltrekkers relies on the generosity of individuals and companies for equipment.