Cloud Forests, Lakes and Volcanoes

Cloud forests are just that. Well named. Jungles in the sky, with all the richness of the tropics, but none of the warmth. To begin with, it was silently ethereal; walking through the wet, cotton wool-like mist, along the slippery mud-path of a mountain ridge. You have to look where you’re going too. The visibility reached as little as four metres – if you looked at the floor, chances were your head would come into painful contact with a previously unnoticed low-hanging branch or creeper. All but one of the trekkers in our group had, sensibly, decided to take a heavy poncho. With their hoods and their cape-like folds draped over their backpacks and shoulders, they appeared from the fog and disappeared again like something out of Harry Potter (I don’t know the name of those ghost-things, and I don’t really care).

Yes, to begin with, it was ethereal. Then the thunder started; massive claps that sounded like we were sitting amidst the scattering pins at the end of some giant bowling alley. With the thunder came the rain. A small stream formed in a gully in the creases of my hood, pouring down in front of my face. My waterproof shoes quickly filled up, so that my feet were immersed, squelching with each step. I have to wear these socks tomorrow. The hostel best have a radiator.

The 'hostel' was a collection of 8x8ft concrete cells, which we shared with a group of Guatemalan road workers. They stood on the roof in the pouring rain, happily watching the women peel off their wet clothes through the corrugated plastic skylights. The floor was hard. The workers bashed out classics, such as Celine Dion’s Titanic Theme and The Winds of Change by the Scorpions, from their antiquated cassette-playing equipment. There was no radiator.


Having analysed the societies of the ancient Maya – or at least their overgrown limestone cities – the lives of the ones still about are starkly different (I assume). We trudged through their highland villages between Guatemala's second city, Quetzaltenango, and Lake Atitlan. The lucky families had one-room breeze-block dwellings built by the Red Cross. Not quite the magnificent temples and plazas of old... Today’s Maya are the poor,
down-trodden highland farmers, whose political interests are not served by the government because they can’t reach the voting stations and, in any case, the vast majority can’t read. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mayan campaigner, Rigoberta Menchu, will try to change that. But the reality is that those who vote in Guatemala are more likely to elect the former General whose military activities were an integral part of the indigenous killings that characterized the Guatemalan ‘80s.

Despite the situation of many rural Mayans in Guatemala, they seem, on the whole, to be happy. Legions of smiling, shouting children appeared from the fields of 4ft high maize each time we walked past. “¡Buenos dias!” and “¿Como estas?” replaced the standard third world requests for sweets and pencils. I peered into a small garden as I walked past on the path above. On the line were the traditional, multicoloured, intricately woven costumes worn by the Mayan women, drying in the intermittent sun. On the floor, a small child wearing only a ragged t-shirt happily shared the dirt floor with a pair of piglets and a puppy.



Lago de Atitlan was once referred to by Aldous Huxley as the most beautiful lake in the world. Why his word should be taken as being more valid than anyone else’s, I’m not sure. But many visitors seem, justifiably, to echo his words. It is situated in a vast volcanic caldera, produced by the collapse of an ancient magma chamber. The seismic nature of the region wasn’t lost on us. Sitting in a comedor in San Pedro La Laguna, I was annoyed to find that I had been brought a bowl of vegetable soup rather than the fried chicken which I ordered. But at that moment, a 7.2 earthquake hit a region of Guatemala about 100miles away to the west, and the soup spilled out of the bowl as it rocked across the table. It’s ok, I didn’t have to pay.

San Pedro, and also the larger town of Panajachel across the lake, has been full of gringos for about 30 years. That is because it is heaven-on-earth for a hippy. A sizeable population of bohemian Americans, Israelis and Brits, all with long beards, dreadlocks, and friendship bracelets around their ankles, wander the cobbled streets in a weed-fuelled daze. The local women do a tidy business sitting outside hostels selling basket-loads of ‘pan de banano’ (banana bread) to the hypoglycemic stoners. Life is, predictably, slow-paced. But the setting for that life is beautiful.