Climbing the Volcano at Chicabal

Friday we arrived at the school at 7:00 a.m. to depart on two twenty person buses to a national park near Chicabal, an inactive volcano that now has a holy Mayan lake in its center. The bus took us through the countryside of fertile, green, terraced fields, many of corn on curvy and sometimes mountainous, sometimes valley roads. Eventually we reached a mud hill with huge crevices from heavy rains and the bus could go no further. From there we embarked on the most difficult hike of my life. Two hours up and two hours down on virtually a vertical path. On a scale of one to ten, we gave this hike a 10. We could have used some hooks and ropes. On top of the incline issue, the ground was of two consistencies. Primarily it was the consistency of wet, grey modeling clay and secondarily, of tiny bits of soft limestome like gravel. Try scaling a vertical surface made of that for two solid hours and then descending while leaning back and trying to prevent a fall. Often we could not help but run down as it was too difficult to go slowly being so steep and moist. One strategy involved a slow trot from side to side of the path rather than straight down. Once we reached the top of the volcano we had to hike down to the holy lake which, upon arrival, quite frankly, looked strikingly similar to Ragged Mountain Reservoir. Don't think that will seem quite such a difficult hike in the future after Chicabal. I did mention the difficulty of not falling, right? Well, many of us did fall and one mother along on the trip broke her arm and had to fashion a sling out of her jacket and descend the vertical incline for an additional hour before we reached the bus home. Upon arrival at the hospital, despite the xray showing a clean break in place, el medicos wanted her to go under general anesthesia and spend the night in the hospital. Our leader and she decided, no gracias and opted for a wrap and sling and a second opinion. We were so exhausted upon arrival back at school at 2:30 that most of the students watched a movie for the first two hours of their classes and then, after attempting to teach for another hour, the teachers called off school because everyone was falling asleep.