We took our first field trip on Saturday to hot springs in the mountains of Guatemala. We were the only two students who decided to participate in this outing, so it was just us and Nora, one of the directors for the school.

This trip proved to be interesting in many ways. First of all, to give some background,vthere were about 10 days of steady rainfall in this region just two weeks ago. This was unusual, even during the rainy season. Usually there is just a short period of time in the afternoon when it will rain. So, this tremendous rainfall caused many landslides in the mountainous regions. We had gotten an email about this (from the U.S. State Department… we had registered our trip with their travelers’ program) before we even left the States. We had called ahead to make sure everything was OK for us to still come to school and it was, but we saw a few places on our bus ride into Xela that we thought had probably been a landslide a few days before.

On this outing, though, we got to see the damage from the landslides up close. We passed through a town where we could see that the dirt had been piled at least 5 feet up the sides of buildings. There were bulldozers and dump trucks everywhere trying to clear the mud and earth away. Neither of us had ever seen the effects of a landslide, and it was sobering to realize how devastating this had been for the people of this region. When we got to the city of Zunil, we rented a truck and rode in the back up the rest of the mountain, where we saw even more damage from the landslides. Huge crevices had been cut into the sides of the hills where the mud and water had come rushing down. In these cracks were clothes and trash that had been washed away with the landslide. In many areas, the road was only one lane because of debris and dirt.

When we reached the top of the mountain, we paid our “turista” admission into the hot springs. Nora explained the temperature levels of the different pools of water—and we barely made it out of the lowest level. When they say hot, they are not kidding! This water was blazing! But it was also relaxing and fun.

There were three pools at the hot springs... you can see all the steam everywhere from this "muy caliente" water!


This was the "medium hot" pool, but that water coming in from the right was from the mountain, not the spring, so it wasn't nearly as hot in that spot.

We decided to walk back down the mountain (it would save the money on renting a truck, plus we wanted the exercise). The 9K walk down proved eventful as well. About five minutes from the hot springs, we came across a bull tied up to a rope on the side of the road. When we got close, we realized his rope was long enough to let him get all the way across the road… and when he turned and started running toward us, we concluded it would not be safe for us to walk by. Interestingly enough, the locals who were working nearby did not know whose bull this was, but affirmed that he was “angry” and it would be a bad idea to walk past. One of the young men suggested we “walk around” up a steep, heavily vegetated incline to our right. He bounded up the cliff like it was no big deal, paving the way for us. We made it up about 15 feet when we concluded this was a bad idea. We carefully (and quickly) descended and decided we would wait for a car to drive by. When a car finally came (about 20 minutes later), we flagged the driver down and had him drive slowly past the bull while we walked by on the other side. Very entertaining!

Here is "el torro" that kept us waiting on the side of the road!

We continued to walk down the mountain, and it started getting colder and cloudier. We were about 2/3 of the way down when a truck with other Americans (we had seen them at the hot springs) drove by and asked if we wanted to ride back to Xela with them. We agreed and hopped in the back. Then, not much further down the road, we were stopped by an excavator in action in the middle of the road. We sat that out for about 10 minutes before we could drive by. We decided that if these same roads were in the States, there is NO WAY they would have been open for people to drive on! But we’re glad they were, so we could have our first true Guatemalan adventure!

Delay #2: the excavator in the middle of the road.