The view from the top of the world is spectacular.

It’s a long day trip, from San Marcos, to climb Cerro de Oro and get back before dark. Especially when I overslept and woke to my friend banging on the front door at twenty ‘til nine and didn’t have time for tea.

There are two boat rides: the ten minute hop to San Pedro, and then a mile long walk through the village to the other enbarcadero where a bigger boat makes the 40 or so minute chug along the coast and deep into the cove where Santiago tumbles downhill to the water’s edge in a mass of concrete painted in bright colors and topped with the shining white of the cathedral dome, like a star on top of a raggle-taggle Christmas tree.

We walked fast between the docks, only one overly aggressive dog needed to be beaten off with the piece of bamboo Derek carried, only to find we had a generous 45 minute wait before the big stonka-stonka style diesel boat would push back from the dock.  Plenty of time for breakfast: tortillas con pollo with hot black tea.

A baby rocked in a hammock to the side of our table, snoozing soundly under the watchful eye of her eighteen year old sister. A three year old (who swore to me she was five) climbed into my lap, handed me a pencil and instructed me to draw on the back of a piece of trash paper: “Uva! Elephante! Hammocka! Desina la bebe! Mi hermana! Ello!” she barked, pointing at the people in the room.

We ate on top of the boat, the Santa Maria, talking loudly over the vibration of the engine belching black smoke out the back. There is no better place to ride than on top of a boat and I never miss the chance to lay back and watch the colours change as the sun reaches higher and the clouds paint the mountains in purples and blues rising out of the liquid sapphire lake into the Mayan blue sky. The view here never gets old.

Cerro de Orro is the smallest of the volcanic structures on the lake, its not technically a volcano, it’s a “parasitic lava dome” that was formed thousands of years ago on the northern side of Volcan Tomilan. It’s about four miles from Santiago right on the coast.

It’s a nice walk through tiny villages and we didn’t see another foreigner the entire day. We walked through the dusty streets of Chuk-Muk, a dismal collection of identical concrete buildings with orange roofs that the government has built to house those left homeless in the wake of the massive damage inflicted through torrential rains and deadly mudslides when Hurricane Stan came ashore in 2005.

Little children peeked out of curtained doorways and toothless women smiled and waved as we treked past. Men in embroidered pants held up by woven belts reclined against enormous piles of spent coffee hulls waiting to be spread as compost in the coffee groves. We walked fast, talked a lot, and kept looking over our shoulders for a pick-up truck to hitch a ride in.

It’s a simple matter, catch the driver’s eye, hold your arm out and motion with your hand.  They stop as quickly as they can, maybe a hundred yards ahead of you, and then back up fast. Hop in, pound on the cab roof twice and they take off again at not-quite-break-neck-speed.

It’s a fun way to travel, wind in your hair, hemmed in on all sides by little Mayan folk looking at you out of the corner of their eyes, surely wondering what two gringos are doing skimming along the untraveled side of the lake with only a water bottle and a bag of bread. It’s best not to dwell too much on the increased odds of death and how hard that would be to explain to the insurance company.

It’s an 1860 meter climb from the base of Cerro de Oro to the top; about 5580 feet, which is a pretty good climb, especially when we’re already at a mile above sea level. The path is marked with splashes of white paint on the rocks and winds it’s way through coffee plantations and scrub brush mixed with tall forest growth.

I have only one pair of shoes along on this trip, and they’re not hiking shoes, they’re open toed sandals which have broken once and I’ve re-glued; nor do I have hiking pants. I took a little ribbing from my friend who sarcastically suggested I get myself some proper Northface gear, but I assured him that women have been doing all sorts of adventurous things in skirts for centuries and climbing this little hill isn’t even that much of a challenge.

We celebrated at the top with a slice of bread and half a bottle of water, taking turns getting our pictures taken on the highest possible rock and then screaming as loud as we could to hear the echo reverberate forever back and forth between the mountains around the lake. The only person up there with us was an old man on the other side of the hill chopping firewood and listening to an audio book on the boom box he’d carried up for the purpose.

Down is always harder than up. My shoes were quickly swapped for my bare feet after I peeled my right shin and bruised my left knee cap. We got lost, about three times, trying to find our way back to the road since we opted to take a “different path” down. It was steeper, rockier, but also filled with interesting characters cutting enormous rocks in half with mauls and old men tending coffee plants, cactuses in full yellow bloom and one very happy little boy, sitting in the middle of absolute nowhere, under an enormous Swiss Family Robinson style tree, grinning from ear to ear. “That’s a GREAT tree!” I said to him, he only responded with a bigger grin.

We made the five o’clock boat from Santiago with plenty of time to sit and have a little more bread and a celebratory beer. Of course that meant we’d missed the last boat from San Pedro to home, as that one also leaves at five, so, when we climbed down from the roof of the boat at the dock we climbed straight into the back of another pickup truck for the long, windy ride around our end of the lago.

The truck backfired in every few seconds, so loud that the Mayan ladies yelped and dogs went scurrying into doorways as we passed. All of these trucks rattle in a way that doesn’t inspire confidence by North American standards, but something about this truck took it to the next level. Derek and I joked about it as we hung on for dear life, and then…

Half way through the twisty-turny cobbled streets of San Pablo (the town closest to ours) there was a BANG- THUNK- CRASH and we jerked to an alarming stop. For one instant, the world was silent. The wide-eyed onlookers crouched down. The driver got out. The men piled out of the back of the pick-up truck. Everyone was crouching, looking beneath the truck bed, shaking their heads. “That’s not good,” I heard Derek announce in English. The axle had broken right in half and was laying in the street.

We paid the driver the full fare to San Marcos, even though we hopped a tuk-tuk for the last few miles. Clearly, he was going to need it.

The gate creaked open and I walked into the garden just as the sun set, tired, but happy. Every muscle hurt. My knees were both bloodied. My face and neck were a little sunburned, but Cerro de Oro had been climbed, I’d looked down on the birds, yelled at the top of my lungs and added yet another perfect day to the bucket list.

If you come here, climb it.