This week’s travel dream: Trekking across Guatemala’s Highlands

It’s been at least 20 years since backpackers discovered Guatemala, said Mark Sundeen in The New York Times. But despite the flood of Western tourists who’ve followed in their footsteps, it still isn’t hard to get off the beaten path and be surprised anew by the joyful spirit of this land. This is, after all, “a country where a man in a cowboy hat will board the public bus and sell you a pink ice cream cone for 25 cents.” So on a recent visit, after briefly following the hordes of other sandal-wearing foreigners through Antigua’s cobblestoned streets, my girlfriend and I set out on a three-day highland walk from Quetzaltenango to Lake Atitlán.

Since the end of the nation’s long civil war about 15 years ago, Guatemala has become a safe place for exploring. Still, we chose to hire guides—two enthusiastic young Europeans who worked for a nonprofit called Quetzaltrekkers. Our first day involved a 13-mile hike across high, “sun-beaten” cornfields and down into cloud-wrapped forests where we passed weathered, machete-wielding woodcutters. We arrived around dusk at the “fog-laden village” of Santa Catarina, where villagers congregated beneath the makeshift roof of a church that had been split in two by an earthquake. Later, we sweated out our aches in a small Mayan sauna, then made our bed for the night on the tile floor of a decrepit municipal building. This was the real Guatemala, and I was thrilled.

The next morning, after breakfast at a one-table diner, we set out again, crossing a creek “shaded with alder groves and banana trees.” That night we stayed on the floor of a home owned by a villager named Don Pedro. We passed around a guitar while he entertained us with songs in Spanish and Quiche, a Mayan language. I expected that villagers would resent tourists. But Don Pedro told us of his hardscrabble childhood and how the arrival of missionaries, bringing medicine and irrigation, had solved the worst of life’s difficulties. A portion of the fee we paid for our hike supported the local school and youth home, and Don Pedro thanked us for this. “We love tourists here,” he said. I could get used to such surprises.

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