When planning my Central American trip I ended up with four weeks between the end of the first tour I booked in Guatemala and the beginning of my second tour in Grenada, Nicaragua. So how and where to spend that time? In investigating possibilities I became very interested in a trekking trip run by a Qetzaltenango-based non-profit tour operator named Quetzaltrekkers in the Cordillera Cuchumatanes, a remote mountainous region that's the highest non-volcanic range in Guatemala and Central America, definitely off Guatemala’s main tourist trail. The six day trip fit well into my schedule, beginning two days after my Volcano climbing tour ended in Antigua with a Sunday in between to go to the big market at Chichicastenango. Cuchumatanes, I later learned, means something like "joined together by superior force" in Mam, one of local Mayan languages.

Quetzaltrekkers runs many hiking trips in western Guatemala geared toward young backpackers with its very low prices and very basic accommodations or camping . My six day trip cost only 1300 Quetzales (about $175). Half of all the organization’s revenues go toward supporting a school for disadvantaged children, and the guides are all volunteers usually doing it for three to six months. That should give you some idea of how inexpensive travel in Guatemala can be and why it is such a favored destination for budget-conscious backpacker types. We had our group meeting the evening before the trip began. It turned out there were only four people on the trip and one guide, a recent Princeton University graduate named Andrew.

Our transportation when not on foot was all on public buses and shared vans called collectivos, and we got a reasonably early start on Tuesday morning taking a local bus through town to Quetzaltenango’s chaotic bus station to board what’s known to travelers in Guatemala as a “chicken bus”, the converted North American school buses that are the main form of public transportation in the country and sometimes include people transporting their chickens to market . A chicken bus ride is crowded, noisy, uncomfortable, and chaotic, with music blaring, people constantly getting on and off, vendors coming aboard at all stops to sell food or other items to people on the bus, and everything from preachers to snake oil salesmen peddling their wares. The elixir of life – take one of these each day and it will cure all that ails you from rheumatism to headaches to cancer to arthritis to female problems to kidney failure, specially formulated for the unique physical constitutions of Guatemalans! I think the last time I rode on something equivalent was in Ecuador in 1995.

After about three hours we changed transport in a town north of Chichicastenango named Santa Cruz del Quiche, the capital of Quiche province. From there to Nebaj we were on a collectivo, a privately run van that follows a fixed route and serves as shared taxi, one whose roof was piled high with our backpacks, two dozen crates of bread, baskets of fruit, and even a box of live baby chicks . The road dropped quite steeply several thousand feet into very dry country in the Rio Negro Valley before rising impressively another several thousand feet to Nebaj high in pine forested mountain country. After another two hours we arrived at our destination for the start of the trek the next morning, Popi’s Hostel in Nebaj.

Nebaj is one of three main towns along with Chajul and Cotzal that constitute what’s known as the Ixil Triangle, an especially traditional Mayan region inhabited by people who speak the Ixil language. The local costume is also very unique with most women wearing a headdress that includes multiple pompoms. The Ixil Triangle was the region of Guatemala hardest hit by the country long civil war between 1960 and 1996, with some of the worst atrocities against civilians of the war taking place in the area, mostly during the early 1980s under the presidency of Efrain Rios-Montt as the government and army considered the local population to be supportive of reel guerrillas operating in the mountains.  

Things are peaceful now around Nebaj. I spent the afternoon with a walk around the market, a short visit to the local archaeological museum, and some time sitting on a bench on the main square taking pictures of women in traditional costume while surrounded by young shoeshine boys desperate for my business.

We began our trek around 8:00 in the morning with a walk westward out of town into the fields and then up a winding trail to the crest of the ridge about 1,300 feet above Nebaj’s 6,500 foot elevation, a ridge that separates Ixil and Quiche speaking Mayan regions.