Mountain Khakis

Our good friends at Mountain khakis have hooked up the team at Old Town and sponsored us with their incredible line of Outdoor Utility pants and shorts.   Our guides are out most days and appreciate clothing and products designed and built for outdoor professionals.  This stuff is the bomb!  I highly recommend you get yourself in a pair of 'em and find out for yourself.

Voluntourism

Wanna get involved? We have teamed up with a couple different organizations here in Guatemala and abroad to help get travelers connected to the community. We can customize your adventure trip with Old Town Outfitters to head out into the campo and volunteer on different projects. Mountain bike a few days with us or trek into the countryside and stop off in a small community to get involved before moving on to the next stop.



There are any number of cool projects to get involved with around the country but one that we think is great is building high efficiency stoves in rural communities. These stoves were designed by the guys at Global Vision International, an international volunteer placement organization, and are said to not only reduce the amount of smoke in the house but uses up to %90 less fuel wood thus keeping our hills greener.



This stove below was finished by a group from Play It Forward, a U.S. based travel company that focuses on adventure travel with a moral compass. Voluntourism as it has been called is getting more and more popular. We are facilitate travelers to not only come and tour Guatemala but to give something back to the rural communities in which we travel.


Get in touch with us at www.adventureguatemala.com and let us help design a trip for you, get involved, get your hands dirty and get out on the trail.

Take time to Travel

Tim and Sue, friends of ours from the lively Harrisonburg, Va. area came down to Guate to hang on our home turf for a few weeks of riding. Seeing as they abused a group of us up there a few months back we decided that we wanted to have them here to try and get a bit of revenge. First, to level the playing field we made sure to have plenty of homebrew on tap to give us a leg up the next morning.



We spent a few days hanging in Antigua and riding each day to get a feel for whats around. There are any number of rides in the area so we tried to hit as many as possible. Just south of town sits Agua Volcano at just over 12,000 ft. The views from high up on the trails are second to none passing through old growth forest and flower fields on its way back down to the valley floor.



Antigua boasts a new ride on each new day. Most of the trails lead high up into the surrounding mountains and each side of the valley is distinctly different from the next. We are working on a project to circumnavigate the valley on a mix of trails, jeeps tracks, and chutes like this one below on the bottom of the Cielo Grande Ridge ride.



With tons of terrain nearby to play with some times its just better to hit the trail with some German engineering underneath ya. We headed out and made a big ole lap around the valley on the 650's and even managed to explore a new bit of trail that is going to make a beautiful 2 day ride out to Lake Atitlan. Stay in tune for that one as I'll be doing it soon on a mountain bike to see how it pans out.



A couple hours of stout trail climbing above Antigua lies one of the areas best kept secrets. Earth Lodge is an active avocado farm and travelers mountainside hostal that always makes for a good time. The good folks who run the place always make sure to take good care of us. The food is second to none and more than even a hungry cyclist can manage to get down the gullet. This is going to be a normal stop over for our new ride that will make a 2 day loop around the valley


Heading west we took off for a few days of riding at world famous Lake Atitlan. There is a pretty solid network of trails there that serve for most riders as downhill runs. However, we managed to find oursleves climbing trails and making new rides. It was a fresh change from the way we normally ride these rides and certainly puts the black in what we call a black diamond run. The scenery from the trails is absolutely stellar. There is hardly a ride that does not have a huge view to the lake down below.


Heading further afield we made the trek up to the high plateau of the Cuchumantanes mountain range. These are Central America's highest non volcanic mountains. The riding like the scenery is spectacular and very different here than anywhere else in Guatemala. The rocky trails offer up an experience much like that of East Coast riding. So Tim and Sue were once again in a good spot to show us how its done in the rocks. There's more than a few days worth of riding up there but we were on a mission to hit as many different places as possible. We mapped out a ride that would take us across the mountains into no mans land and connect to an area that likewise we knew would have great riding.

Acul is a sleepy little village nestled deep in the mountains that were once plagued by civil war and Guerilla patrols. Now the wars over and the area is opening up to mountain bikes. Our long time buddy has opened his family run cheese farm at the Hacienda San Antonio to tourists. We took advantage of the area and managed to find a new trail that I would venture to say has never see fat tires.


A parting glance from my room at the Cheese Farm in Acul

Gone Fishin

One of the best kept secrets about Guatemala is that the waters off the Pacific Coast are absolutley stocked with billfish. Some folks who fish the waters furhter north are happy to catch a handful of Sailfish or even see a Marlin in a single season.




This couldnt be furhter from the truth around these parts. This little stretch of coast line boasts some of the highest numbers hooked Sailfish and Marlins. Very few boats in the water means no over fishing and every racoon eyed fisherman that I run into has some outlandish story of the days legendary catch.



After hearing all the hoopla we decided to take a trip down to the Coast outselves and see if the crazy stories of 20, 30 sometimes up to 45 fish a day being pulled into the boat were true. We set it all up and headed down to Puerto Itzapa jumped on board the "Allure" that our Antigua buddy Kiwi Chris Captains.



Sure enough its not but a few minutes after we drop the first lines that we land the days first catch, a nice sized Mahi Mahi that the crew swiftly filetes up for lunch in a couple hours. Now ordinarily a few missed hooks on sailfish back home might dampen ones spirits, but here in Guatemala seeing the lines zinging out to sea every few minutes I knew that there would be plenty of time to hookmy first fish.

The crew were amazing and showed me the secret to hooking my own fish. It wasnt long before I had my first Sailfish on the line. After a fun fight we pulled her up into the boat so I could get a picture with the little cutie.


After a full day of fishing and beer drinking we managed to pull in nearly 40 Sailfish. If you work the math on that over about a 7 hour peroid that comes out to be something crazy like a fish every 10 minutes or so!!

So next time you hear the crazy story of how good the Sport fishing is off the coast of Guatemala, you'll know its not just another ole Fishin tale. Come down see for yourself.

-Mateo

Mountain Bike Magazine 2009

We've done it again! Another magazine turned believer. We had the lads from Mountain Bike Mag down here to ride last March and as per usual, they were blown away. They tagged along on one of our tours around the country with a Canadian Based Company called Sacred Rides.

Magazine ran an 8 page spread showing some of the best of the riding around here in the valley and out at Lake Atitlan. hey but dont listen to me. Go out and buy yourself a copy and hold it tight.

Tackling the RING OF FIRE

This November a group of 11 brave souls came to Guatemala to tackle seven of Guatemala's most impressive volcanoes. We at Old Town Outfitters like to call this trip the "Ring Of Fire" as we summit 7 summits, three of which are spectacularly active cones.


This is the view looking east from atop Santa Maria volcano at nearly 3,600 mts. back across many of the volcanoes we have already summitted. You can see in the distance all the way back to the volcanoes of Agua, Acatenango and Fuego in the Antigua valley a well as the peaks that ring Lake Atitlan.



The hike up Pacaya volcano get us with in Marshmallow roasting range of an active flow. This is like no other place on earth! Pacaya is the kind of place that is made famous by programs like National Geographic. After Pacaya we head out the summit the dormant sentinel that looms over Antigua, Guatemala, Agua volcano. Agua, is a long hard hike but the summit offers up amazing views from Guatemala City to the Pacific Coast.




From Antigua we head out for a 3 day 2 night summit bagging trek up the sister volcanoes of Acatenango and Fuego. These are Guate's premier trekking peaks. We load up the gear on porters and head up to the summit of Guate's third largest peak of Acatenango, 3979 mts. After taking in the views from atop this monster we head to our exclusive campsite for a night of lava fireworks from Fuego's active cone. Just because Fuego is active doesn't mean that we are going to shy away. The next day we wake up and head down to the saddle between the two and hed up the knife like ridge on Fuego and get within a few hundred meters below one of Guate's most active cones.



With the volcanoes of the Antigua valley behind us we head out to Lake Atitlan to climb San Pedro. After this hike we take a welcome down day to rest sore legs at the hotel La Casa del Mundo and take a soak in the wood fired hot tub there. Although we would have loved to stay at the lake a bit longer we still have two more volcanoes to summit. Our next objective is Santa Maria volcano with neighboring "old faithful" Santiaguito Volcano.


Santiaguito is Guatemala's youngest and smallest volcano. Don't be fooled as it super active belching out plumes of lava and ash every hour or so. After Santa maria we head out towards the Mexican Border and climb our last mountain and Guatemala's largest Tajumulco 4220 mts. This trip is an amazing way to get to see our amazing country and enjoy trekking in a comfortable, safe and enjoyable way. We set up all the logistics arrange all the porters and do all the cooking so you only have to hike and have a good time.
Get on board and we'll see on top of one of Guate's volcanoes!
Mateo

Old town is working to Re-open Acatenango

Acatenango is Back! After nearly 8 months of being "off limits" to hikers due to the "extracurricular activity" of some unsavory locals, Old Town Outfitters has re-opened our hikes and treks to the volcano. Its been a lot of hard work to bring it all together but the opportunity to spend the night on Acatenango at nearly 13,000 ft. and see Fuego do its thing makes it all worth the while.





Over the past year we have been involved in working with members of the local community of La Soledad at the base of the volcano to try and create a management plan for responsible community based tourism in the area. Our goal is to make the area a safe place for tourist to enjoy while at the same time incorporating the community into the master plan.


We believe that as the locals there at the base of the mountain become more involved and incorporated into the development of the park they then will work to keep the area clean, green, safe and beautiful for the days to come. We have been working hard with the good folks out there to build trail, clean and repair campsites, and implement resource officers.



Because we believe that the community is the key designing and maintaining a successful management plan we are employing them as our resource officers who will accompany each and every Old Town Group on the Volcano. This is not only a plan to inject tourist dollars in to the local economy but while on the mountain we will be working to raise awareness of the Environmental issues associated there.



Proceeds of every tourist we take to the volcano will remain in the community by means of development projects. We have organized several projects in the local school to ensure that as you spend your tourist dollars to enjoy a safe and fun experience on Acatenango or Fuego Volcanoes that you will also be helping to kids of La Soledad have the chance for a good education.

See ya on the trail,
Mateo