Guatemala
The most colorful Country on our Expedition so
far...
Hints & Tips of travelling by car and of course:
Our Volcano Expeditions....
Guatemala is the most impressive country that we have passed so far during our
ongoing Expedition since May 2002.
It hosts 37 (recognised) volcanos on a
territory of only 100'000 km2 with currently 3 Active volcanos
"Pacaya", Sta. Maria (Santiaguito) and Volcan de Fuego.
Still, at the
same time we many times forgot about our hobby "volcanos" and we
started to read and learn about the countrie's past to find explanations for sad
phenomens like indigenous people running away when they see our truck,
cocacola-trucks being escorted with armed guards, big ghost factories along the
way, the incredible damage to the nature, the many rubbish dump sites along the
roads and most strongly, the tremendous poverty of the people in all parts of the
country. By now we could write a book about what we read, heard and
learned.
The most beautiful thing after our 8 weeks of going across Guatemala is our
rememberance of the kindfulness, gratefulness, the interest, modesty and
heartyness especially of the indigenous people in the mountains. The hardest
thing is realising the perspectiveness of the many intelligent young people and
the kids who many times are 100% involved in the families process of survival
with no chance of an education or a better future.
We figure out that is not easy for an organised standard turist to get into
the lifes of the indigenous people off the beaten track. Our car, the
inherent mobility and our strong will to directly find and support local guides
and farmers instead of the "city-all-inclusive-offer-packages" to
climb the volcanos, got us closer into the reality of the real life of the
Guatemaltecs and after these two months we started to fall in love with our many
possibilities to support local economy, exchange knowledge and experiences and
especially with our ability to make people smile or enjoy a happy moment with so
little effort.
Click here to get to our
stories, Guatemalas history, people and the incredible colors of this beautiful
but painfully poor contry...
Click here to get to some
useful/important hints & tips when travelling with Your own car in
Guatemala...
Guatemala's Volcanos
Volcano Infos &
Expeditions....
Of the 37 volcanos in Guatemala at present we learned about 3 currently
acitve ones and we climbed all of them. At the same time Guatemala offers the
possibillity to almost drive up to or climb many perfectly shaped and incredibly
beautiful volcanos that offer tremendous views of the
beautiful environment around them such as volcan Atitlan, Agua, Acatenango and
many more.
Unfortunately there is not a lot of information available in the Internet
about the history, hiking possibilities and the current status of Guatemala's
volcanos and the information that we found in most travel books is old and
inadequate. Follow this link to get some
actual infos about Guatemala's currently active volcanos, how to best climb and
experience them with supporting local (real competent!) people instead of mostly
foreignly owned expensive tour operators from Guatemala's bigger cities.
Click here to to get to our
Guatemala-volcano-Expedition"
- site....
