Volcán San Pedro

I spent another night not sleeping for fear of sleeping through my alarm. This hike left at 6AM, and was about the same elevation gain as Santa Maria. It was nice to walk right from town - only 100m from the dock - up through the town's cobblestone streets. Four of us were guided up the hike by Manuel: two Danish women, a Scot, and myself. Before long, the streets gave way to dirt roads, and the dirt roads to paths weaving through small homesteads.

Volcán San Pedro itself is quite a large park, and the trailhead began at a very new interpretive centre about 1km from town. The park protects the cloud forest that covers the slopes of San Pedro, and the difference between Santa Maria and San Pedro is quickly apparent in the volume and diversity of foliage. Stepping off the trail would result in your feet being consumed by the lush ground. Some slopes have coffee and corn farms that were grandfathered when the park was created, and they are sustainably run.

The hike turned out to be just as long as Santa Maria, and I was at the summit around 9AM. The view was not as spectacular as Santa Maria's (trees cover most of the top of San Pedro), but the view down to the lake and back to Santa Maria were enough for me.

From atop the summit, the geography of Atitlán is amazing to behold. The lake - 18km at its widest - sits in the bottom of a huge collapsed caldera. The rim of the caldera is almost 500m higher than the lake level, and the caldera is another 1.3km deep when you include the depth of the lake. Other volcano summits, including those that surround Antigua, can be seen to the North and South of San Pedro.

I had to hustle half of the descent, because I had stashed my bag at the guide office and it was closing at 1:30. One of the Danish women was having trouble on the way down, but we had enough time to exchange email addresses so we could possibly hook up in Honduras. I picked up the bag with enough time for a final swim in Lago de Atitlán, before catching the return boat back to Panajachel and an afternoon shuttle to Antigua.