It takes two hours to reach Chichicastenango, and about as long to master its pronunciation. The market wasn’t quite how I imagined it. I had pictured some sort of large square or open area full of stalls. In fact, it was a series of very tight streets, more like Brick Lane, mainly emanating from the obligatory central Catholic church. The local Quiche (pronounced kitsch-ay) shamans are entitled to perform their rituals in here alongside the Christians. Any God will do in a crisis, just like in New Orleans where all the Gods have a Christian saint and an African voodoo name. That’s how the original slaves continued to practice their own religion – by attaching their own paraphernalia to that of the Christian church. Their masters were none the wiser. Bartering is traditional here, and the price of an item is likely to lower as you walk away. We have a pretty clear idea of what we want and manage to get it all: a jade necklace (which passes the scratch test), an obsidian mask-head with conch inlay which will sit happily on the shelf with my moai from Easter Island, a colourful Guatemalan bedspread and some ethnic belts for my daughters. We complete the operation and quit the hubbub in less than an hour, and retire for a well-earned beer.
By an extraordinary coincidence an ex-colleague of mine walks through the bar where we are drinking. “What are you doing here?” etc…. It seems to happen more and more. We leave Chichi, as the locals call it, and drive to Pana (Panajachel) on the shore of Lake Atitlan. We descend to the waterline to soak up the full vista of a large lake flanked by three classic volcanoes. The hotel, the Posado de Don Rodrigo, is nice enough, if a little on the ‘Butlins’ side of things. There is a waterslide linked to the swimming pool, which increases the child screaming volume by 50%, and there is piped circus music playing in almost every corridor. The main street has more than a touch of Ibiza about it, and hippies and backpackers are very much in evidence, as are the hawkers trying to peddle necklaces and fruit juice. We find a reasonably secluded spot to soak up the rays for a few hours, whilst reading and scanning the volcanoes on the far shore. We resolve to climb one of them the next day.
We stare up at the mountain. It is about 5,000 feet high and we are already at an altitude of about 3-4,000 feet. So if you got to the top, you would be about 9,000 feet above sea level. Our guide sets off at a rapid pace, for a trek that is due to last about 3 hours, to the summit. After 15 minutes we are panting and wheezing or, as a friend of mine would say, “sweating up like a scouser in Dixons”. We plough on for an hour or so, taking more and more frequent breaks. It’s not the legs that are struggling, it’s the gasping for breath. That then makes your head pound. We are reasonably fit and the exhaustion is certainly disproportionate to the effort. This is soroche, or altitude sickness, in a mild form. You are okay if you stand still, but any activity can hurt more than usual. If you fly into La Paz, Bolivia, at 6,000 feet, you are greeted by oxygen tanks at the airport. If you carry your bags up three storeys, as I did, you are wheezing like a good ‘un. I felt slightly pissed the bulk of the time I was there. But climbing a volcano had made this far more unbearable. Half way up, we called a halt. It was 9.30am. The volcano had defeated us in an hour and 15 minutes. We had climbed 2,500 feet and the view over the lake was breathtaking, but so was the effort. Still, we paused to enjoy the view at 7,500 feet above sea level and then enjoyed a considerably more pleasant descent. The boat back was direct, so within 15 minutes we were back enjoying a well-earned beer in Panajachel, technically defeated by topography, but not unhappy. At least we tried, and the view was a significant step up from that of the hotel bar.
The volcano in question is one of seven that surround the lake, some dormant, some active. There are many theories about their origin, which are recorded at the local Lacutre Museum, or the lack lustre as we christened it. Inside is a lot of pottery excavated from the Lake. Either it was part of their religious ceremonies to chuck it all in, or they were simply throwing it away. There were also detailed descriptions of tribal feuds and movements. The English translations descend into farce when outlining the “revolting quiche” and how “great amounts of quiche attacked their neighbours”, which I suppose is a form of culinary excess. But the most helpful explanations concerned the history of the volcanoes. Basically, the whole area of the lake used to be one massive volcano about 15 miles across, called a cauldera. After a massive eruption extruded so much material, it eventually collapsed under its own weight and formed the lake by diverting the three local rivers to pour into it. Remaining magma then had to find its own route to the surface, resulting in the surrounding volcanoes.
The result is a lake that humans have been attracted to ever since. Whether they will be good guardians of it is another matter. Erosion and environmental pollution are running out of control, and there are now 100,000 people living on its shores. High rise developments are springing up, and tourism is adding to the pressure. One disaster already occurred in the 50s when predatory black bass were introduced for sport fishing. In a move as short-sighted as the introduction of rabbits or cane toads to Australia, the bass promptly ate all the chicks of the flightless Atitlan Grebe, thus rendering the species extinct. The lake nevertheless remains a thing of great beauty, and a perfect place to sit for twenty minutes with a beer and watch the dramatically shifting sunset against a volcanic, watery backdrop.
On to the next spectacle. A gang of American teenagers are taking photographs of themselves swinging off a monkey vine and making Tarzan noises. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, says their guide. “Why not?” “Because the needles are poisonous”. We bludgeon our way past further throngs of tourists treating the place like Disneyland or Thorpe Park – venues that would suit their approach infinitely better. I note with dismay a number of discarded plastic water bottles tossed off the path into the jungle. Twenty people are crowded under a tree, slack-jawed at the sight of a solitary monkey. If you lot shut up for a few minutes you might see some more! Going up and down these structures will certainly test-drive your vertigo tolerance, particularly when there is nothing to stop you plunging over the edge (there are no rails here at all). We scrutinise the seven temples that are ingeniously orientated to line up with the sun’s shadow and thus accurately reflect the seasons. Some areas are under restoration and there is so much to be done that it would certainly be worth a return visit in 10 or 20 years time, because there would be twice as much to see. We finish up at the Central Plaza and acropolis, where it takes very little imagination to feel what the place might have been like 2,000 years ago, painted red and bustling with Mayans.