Last day of hiking. But it's a good one!

Now into day 5 of our hiking trip. We've done 45 kms (28) miles over the past three days of hiking and we're about to start on our last day of hiking. Day 6 is just a travel day to get us back to Xela.

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!

Tough hiking day...

But very rewarding. This is day 3 of our six day excursion with Quetzaltrekkers hiking through the remote western highlands of Guatemala. Check the two previous posts for day 1 and day 2!

Hiking the Guatemalan highlands (day 2)

Day two of our six day trip is actually our first hiking day. (Check the previous post for day 1!) We were told that our first hiking day would be not that difficult, with a distance of about 13 kms (8 miles). Only one problem with that.

Our Six Day Trip with Quetzaltrekkers. (day 1)

Here's the first installment of our six day excursion with Quetzaltrekkers. We're going to give you updates twice per day for the next few days so that we can get caught up! I hope you enjoy it!

Getting Ready For Our Next Hike!

You would think that we would be resting up for a while after the weekend we had. Well we did take a bit of a rest day. But some of it was spent getting ready for our next hike, the 6 day grand excursion from Nebaj to Todos Santos that leaves today!

Santa Maria Volcano Hike (part 2)

If you haven't already, you REALLY need to read part 1 of this report before continuing on with part 2

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2013/02/quetzaltrekkers-santa-maria-volcano.html

Okay when we left you last it was only 6:20pm. We had not had any dinner, preferring instead to try and stay relatively warm and dry inside our sleeping bags in the tent.

Quetzaltrekkers Santa Maria Volcano (part 1)

We originally came to this area to do a six day excursion offered by the popular "hiking for charity" organization here in Xela...www.quetzaltrekkers.com. We figured we had a few extra days and that we should use them up by doing a warm-up hike!

It wasn't long before we figured that maybe we bit off more than we could chew...

A little info about the city of Quetzaltenango (Xela)

We continued on our walking tour yesterday morning and had to make our way back to the ATM to try and get some more cash. We had decided to do the overnight hike up the Santa Maria volcano and it was going to cost another 300 quetzales ($40.50) each. Plus, we wanted to get enough cash to pay for our 6 day hike next week. So we were crossing our fingers that the ATM casino was going to pay out!

Men's haircut, only $2.00!

That's right, the going rate for a men's haircut at a barbershop here in Xela is only 15 quetzales ($2.00)! And for the first time in almost 30 years, someone besides Ruth cut my hair. Pictures to follow...

Some great news to share!

We have mentioned in previous blog posts that we've been looking for a job for this coming summer. We're too young to be called retired, we're not independently wealthy, and we've never worked in a position that offered a pension plan. But we don't mind earning a living when there's a light at the end of the tunnel!

Send cash!

In Guatemala, they use the quetzale as money. There are approximately 8 quetzales to one dollar. We've had to make a little cheat sheet so we know how much things cost. Our problem yesterday was that we needed some cash!

From the border to Quetzaltenango (Xela)

Okay, when we left you in yesterday's post we had just departed from the border circus. From there, we had two choices. There's a northern route to Xela, and southern route.

In to Guatemala!

Well, we made it! I won't go into detail about the whole day yet because I want to save some for tomorrow morning's blog post and then we'll get back on schedule with our regular morning updates.

Puerto Arista to Tapachula

We decided that it wasn't worth the effort to try and post the blog first thing Monday morning and that we were better off getting an early start and trying to be as prepared as possible for our Guatemala border crossing tomorrow (Tuesday) morning!