The remote village of Chuatuj in the limestone karst section of the altiplano is one of the highlights of Quetzaltrekkers’ popular five–day hike from Nebaj to Todos Santos, but hikers didn’t previously know much about the lives of locals there.

Thanks to a chance encounter between the volunteer guides who lead the trek and the villagers of Chuatuj, that lack of knowledge is now much smaller  —  and the villagers’ lives are now a little easier, thanks to a solar panel donated by Quetzaltrekkers.

Conrad, a Quetzaltrekkers coordinator, said Chuatuj has no road access so everything has to be brought 1200m up from the nearest town by foot or by mule via a set of steep switchbacks.  

“Some guides were passing through there earlier this year and spoke to some of the men, saying we’d like to help you with a project,” he said.

“There were a few ideas and we settled on the solar panel for their community building. We asked them various questions about what they needed and what size was required and all this technical stuff. We gave them a few options and then they chose the one we ultimately bought, which was Q5100.”

Quetzaltrekkers’ main goal is to lead treks to raise money for a school for about 160 kids in Xela and a safe house for more than 25 kids, but the charity also wants to contribute to the communities it hikes through, Conrad explained.

“We told them we’d need to have a fundraising party so we could buy it. That party raised about Q2500 and then the other half came from our budget for community projects.”

Aisling, a Belgian nurse who is one of the volunteer trekking guides, said she found the village fascinating because of how different and difficult life seems there.

“They’re a very tightknit community because they’re in a very remote area by themselves so they need to lean on each other,” she said.

“I don’t know how they make money. One of the men we met with had seven children and they all left the town. He’s supported financially by all his kids but he doesn’t have any way of earning money that we could see.”

Similarly, the villagers had little idea that the hiking groups that passed through occasionally were raising money for a Guatemalan charity rather than just being rich tourists.

“It was interesting that they spoke quite a bit about money, like what jobs we had and what we earned and what our flat back in London cost,” Aisling added. “They probably saw us as much more comfortable and financially stable than them.”

When the time came to deliver the solar panel and associated battery and transformer, the Quetzaltrekkers crew was accompanied by Guadalupe Pos Sacalxot, the teacher who 30 years ago founded EDELAC, the school and safe house that Quetzaltrekkers was created to fund.

Conrad said the villagers mostly speak K’iche, the local Mayan language, rather than Spanish, “So it was really nice to have Guadalupe there because he could speak to them in K’iche and talk to them about the [Quetzaltrekkers and Edelac] project.

“They weren’t aware that our hikes had a charitable aspect,” he added.
From the village of Xexocom, where the road turns into switchbacks, the Quetzaltrekkers team was met by the villagers with mules. The battery and transformer were put on mules but the solar panel, spanning about two metres, had to be carried up on foot by the men.

Once at Chuatuj 1200m higher, the solar panel was installed and then the village held a celebratory lunch, Aisling said. “The mayor said the whole town was super grateful and very very happy for our help.

“The school, the community building, and the medical building don’t have any light. A few months ago when I spoke to them they had some kind of medical issue, but they had no light to be able to deal with it so they were insisting they really needed it. They were very grateful to finally have it.

“We all had lunch together to celebrate the project. Every house organised something for us. One provided a temescal, one boiled hot water for us, one gave us the beds to sleep on, and one prepared lunch, so everyone showed how grateful they were.”

The solar panel project is just one of the extra projects organised by Quetzaltrekkers.

After a storm wiped out a village water supply on the route of another hike, Quetzaltrekkers organised for repairs. A refrigerator was also bought for a local school to stop food spoiling. Toy drives and reforestation projects were other ways the Quetzaltrekkers team sought to give back to the communities they walk through.

The latest fundraising party raised Q3000 to repaint a school in the village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, after a request by the daughter of the comedor proprietor who feeds hikers on the Quetzaltrekkers’ Xela to Lago Atitlán trek.

Conrad said it was important to help the communities they walk through.
“We can’t support every community every time, but it’s nice in situations like these that we can do something that will last for a long time. It’s nice that it’ll benefit the whole community.

“The people in the village were very happy and very grateful. They were hoping if next year we could help with another solar panel for the school. Guadalupe was very keen on that and he said his dream in the future was for us to return with a bigger project like a school or something.”