When I was 20 years old, a friend and I spent six months traveling the Pan-American highway through Mexico and much of Central America. The first place we landed in Guatemala was Ixchiguan (icks-chee-gwahn), a tiny village in the northern highlands. We had a contact who was posted there as a Peace Corps volunteer, and he had agreed to host us for a few weeks while we explored the area.
With little more to go on than two names, one of a town we couldn't pronounce and the other of a guy we'd never met, we jolted our way up from Tapachula, Mexico on one of Guatemala's venerable "chicken buses".
Hopping off the bus in Ixchiguan, we discovered a windswept, dusty village consisting of a few dirt roads straggling up the hillside, with mud-walled homes clinging tenaciously to the dry, barren landscape.
At over 10,000 feet attitude, nights were frigid. During the day, the sun cut mercilessly through the thin air. Nearby volcano Tajumulco--at nearly 14,000 feet, the tallest point in Central America--stood proudly above a smoky valley, where wood fires burned to both heat the morning meal and beat back the chill of the night.
Together, my friend and I made up two thirds of the entire "gringo" population of the region. For three weeks we hung out, hiked and road motorbikes to other nearby villages, and even spent a windy Christmas eve camped just below Tajamulco's cratered summit. As two young travelers getting their first taste of adventure in a foreign land, we were in heaven.
Now, some 42 years later, I wanted to see Ixchiguan once more--a bit of a trip down "memory lane," if you will.
A quick check of iOverlander, the app we use for locating campsites, showed only a blank map. As far as we could tell, no other overlanders had spent the night in Ixchiguan. We would have to be the first.
From Acul, the route took us through the dramatic, folded-up landscape of the Guatemalan highlands. Picturesque Mayan villages were scattered through the undulating terrain, perching on hillsides or nestling into deep, river valleys.
Like the drive to Acul from Semuc Champey, the distance wasn't great--just 137 miles--but the travel was projected to take nearly six hours. Assuming we didn't get lost. To break up the drive, we stopped for a night at Huehuetenango(way-way-tay-NAHN-goh).
Huehuetenango is on the north-south Pan-American highway, and has a famous Mayan market on Thursdays and Sundays. Arriving on Monday, our timing was poor, but after setting up camp in the parking lot of a nice hotel and restaurant on the outskirts of town, we jumped in a cab for a quick tour of the town center.
After so much time in the remote countryside, the bustle of the city was a bit disorienting. We felt exposed and oddly insecure. After just a quick glance around, we jumped back in a cab and retreated to the comfort of our hotel...parking lot.
The next morning we continuing following our Google-maps-inspired route westward, first to Sipicapa, then Tejutla (where we managed to dead-end ourselves in a narrow back street alley), then finally to Ixchiguan.
After 42 years, Ixchiguan, like much of the area we had traveled through, appeared to be thriving, if not exactly picturesque. In fact, at first glance and looking through the eyes of a tourist, the town seemed rather dreary, in spite of the nicely cobbled road.
When we arrived, an electrical company was stringing new lines through the town, and we had to park the truck until the road re-opened. This gave us an opportunity to look around.
In spite of the considerable build-up of newer block buildings, one could still see vestiges of Ixchiguan's earlier years.
More often than not, however, the buildings were newer, some even colorfully painted. Ixchiguan's future looked brighter than its past.
The town center had a pretty church, although when we first ventured by, we had to step over a passed-out Mam Mayan sleeping off his drink. In fact, as we roamed about town, we saw numerous comatose indigenous men sprawled face down in the gutter. If Ixchiguan was interested in attracting more tourists, clearly they had some cleaning up to do.
Following a search on the internet, we located a new, modern-looking restaurant and event center. Famished from the drive, we stopped in for lunch. The owner was extremely gracious and was quite excited to have a couple tourists. The business had only been open for a few months, and I think we were her first foreign guests. For that matter, on this day we were her only guests.
During our meal, we mentioned that we needed to find a place to spend the night. Without hesitation, the owner not only offered a flat spot behind her restaurant to camp, but she put her entire staff at our disposal for anything we might need.
I asked the owner about the economy of the area. When I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of ongoing construction, as well as newly paved roads, the owner explained that many locals work abroad and their remittances are a huge part of the economy. As for the rest? "We grow potatoes and carrots."
Later we took another stroll about town and stopped in at the cemetery, where we found three young kids playing a gleeful game of hide-and-go-seek. As they ran around the tombs, their laughter echoed through the yard. I think the dearly departed must have been smiling, if they could, to hear such joy in what is usually a somber place.
After dinner, with the hopes of seeing the night glow from nearby Tapachula, Mexico, the restaurant owner and her high-school aged daughter offered to drive us up to a broad pull-out on the road to the nearby village of Tacana.
Clouds eliminated the view to the north, but we did get a nice starlit view of the volcano, our first real glimpse of the mountain since our arrival.
The next morning Karen and I woke early and headed back up for the sunrise.
After breakfast we packed up and bid farewell to our wonderful host. We offered to make an entry for her restaurant in our travel app, iOverlander, so that future travelers might benefit from her hospitality, and she enthusiastically agreed.
When we arrived we had zero expectations about what we would find in Ixchiguan. Once again, we were happy to discover yet another welcoming village and to pioneer a new place for fellow overlanders to stay.
Epilogue: A couple weeks later we happened to mention our experience to an American who was a long-time ex-pat in Antigua. His first remark was "Ixchiguan? That's a....strange...place...to...visit." I told him I had been there decades earlier and was curious to see how it had changed.
Smiling, our friend then "clued us in." He said that Ixchiguan was in fact, one of the points of the "opium triangle" of Guatemala (the others being Tacana and Tejutla) and that the main cash crops were poppies and marijuana, not potatoes and carrots.
A bit of Googling confirmed this fact, and revealed an ongoing battle between Mexican cartels over the land, with efforts by the Guatemalan military to eradicate the crops and restore order to the region.
This wasn't the first time we had ignorantly and blissfully stumbled into a little town with a sketchy history. Somehow, I don't suspect it will be the last!