I learned a lot about transportation in Guatemala on this hike. We met at Quetzaltrekkers to make sure we had all the common equipment packed, 6 liters of water--4 personal and 2 for commons. (I carried 9 partly for the weight in my pack for training purposes and because I use a lot of water on a hot hike!) We had panqueques de chocolate, coffee and fresh fruit for breakfast. I never had chocolate pancakes before. I was surprised how good they were. We had a little mishap in that our tent was taken by one of the two earlier groups that left. That action led to a great deal of complaining and negative attribution by our guides, Kielly and Lien, delightful and dynamic young by the way. They had to have some of us unpack any tent stuff we had for that tent. Then they had to scrounge around to find appropriate tents and tent poles for our group. In the middle of doing this they discovered the tent had been moved from our staging room back into the equipment storage room. The good news is we now had the correct tent and we went through our first bonding experience. Kielly(from Wisconsin) and Lien (Belgium)had to do a bit of bad karma recovery, but not too much.
Our first mode was walking packing to a minibus. That took us out to the edge of town and the highway to catch one of the colorful chicken buses for an hour ride to somewhere. Kielly told us to bring anything of value onto the bus or that might fly off. I brought my trekking poles so they didn't fly or get crunched.. I also brought my camera. I noticed Kielly carrying two, 2-L water bottles. I discovered these fell into the "of value" as a couple of us lost water bottles.
After this 3rd mode of transportation we met up with our 4th, a "picop" truck to take us to the El Viejo Palmar trailhead.
