Early to bed, early to rise! (day 4)

When you hike 18 kms (11 miles) in a day and you had been up since 4:30am that morning, it makes sense that you would go to bed early again. Especially when you're not sleeping well to begin with!

The problem is that we don't have the right gear! Some of our guides had these really nice lightweight blowup air mattresses. They're probably fairly expensive and wouldn't last very long if they were handed out to everybody. So they don't, instead they give out these durable foam "therma-rest" mattresses. They do the job of keeping you warm enough when you're lying on the ground or a concrete floor. But comfortable? Nope!! They should be banned!

And so it was another night of not very much sleep. It's a good thing we get some decent rest breaks through the day to have a snooze. But I tell you if we ever do another overnight hike like this we will be bringing our own decent quality sleeping mattresses!

Okay, so we were up at 5:15am on Friday morning, and had our gear packed up and ready to go by 5:45am. We set off down the hill towards the river where we were going to have breakfast.

6:30am getting ready for breakfast by the river.

A guy came by to water his horses. Okay you engineers out there...are these bridge supports due for replacement?? Good thing it's only a walking bridge!

We had a good breakfast but it was a little chilly! I kept my hat and gloves on! Soon we would be well warmed up though because we had a steep uphill climb that would also put us in the sunshine.

Another beautiful sunny day!

Lindsey, Lacey, Sara, and Ruth.

Some of the crew, taking a break!

The scenery makes up for the bad night's sleep. Well, almost!

These locals were on their way to a community meeting.

An hour and a half later, we had made our way to a little village where there was a tienda (little corner store selling snacks and drinks etc) so we stopped for a group rest break. As we were sitting there, this little girl came wandering down the path, quite far away. I tried to take a zoomed in picture really quickly and they don't always turn out. I like this one though!

Little Mayan girl.

She was actually heading for the store and her mother was following along. I asked if I could take her photo and she said that was fine. 

What a cutie!

The next section was kind of flat and boring. Almost like being in the desert, but it was still interesting how the landscape changes so drastically during our four day hike. Soon though, we had to climb "terror hill"!

Kevin.

Lots of work building those stone walls!

Colorful graveyard.

Taking a break before hiking up "terror hill"!

Here we go!

Not that bad. Still, it rose about 300 feet in about a half a mile. Good view from the top.

At the town of La Capellania, we hopped on a bus for the short ride to our overnight stop. It's a busy road so not worth hiking for the short distance.

Our accommodations. Ruth and I got a double bed! And a good night's sleep finally!

We stayed in the village of La Ventosa at the house of a landowner named Jeronimo. The property has a lot of different houses on it that seemed to belong to Jeronimo's extended family. In fact, one of his son's would guide us over the mountain the next morning.

We were also fed dinner at Jeronimo's house. 

Group dinner photo! From left,

Ollie, David, Neils, Wanda, Flurina, Sara, Ha, Lindsey, Tim, Lacey, Stefani, Ruth, Gitt, Rick. 

Kevin took the photo, so he's missing!

Dinner was mashed potatoes with vegetables and salsa and tortillas. It was actually really good, but I was really starting to miss having some meat with dinner. But, it was filling and it sure supplied a lot of replacement carbs!

Had a great night sleep, and we actually didn't have to get up so early the next morning. Stay tuned for the report on our last hiking day on Saturday...it's a good one!

Here's the hike route details...

http://www.mapmyhike.com/routes/view/176312626