Guest Entry: Paxtoca’s Secret Waterfalls

The following is a guest entry by Michael Lewis:

This post is mostly just going to be photos, but here’s a little background. Paxtoca rests at the base of a small mountain. It’s not the tallest mountain around, but this mountain is pretty cool because it actually has a series of waterfalls. The only problem is there is a community upstream from the waterfalls that regularly dumps trash into the stream. There is also a laundry facility that apparently drains all of its water directly into the stream as well, without any treatment. The result is a lot of trash and piles of soap suds.

A few years ago the cooperative bought the principal land around the waterfalls. The association now wants to acquire the rights to the waterfalls from the cooperative as well as purchase some extra land around the waterfalls to create a nature reserve. Martín has great dreams for the space. He wants the community to value the waterfalls. He really wants to put in a filter to catch prevent the trash from the other community from coming down the hill, and to widen the existing hiking trails and build new ones so people in the community will feel like they can come and enjoy the waterfalls. Right now no one goes to them because they’re a little inaccessible due to the existing trails.

The one nice thing is that the University of Colorado Denver has sent a team of students every year for the last couple of years to plant trees to reforest the mountain as part of their Lynx Alternative Breaks program. The trees are still pretty small, but it is making a difference. Again, the association would like to reforest more of the mountain, but they only own a small part of the mountain. Ideally they would purchase more of the mountain for their nature reserve, but that would require a lot of money that they don’t currently have, so for now they’re just working with what they have.

Near the top of the mountain there is an overlook from which you can get a good view of the whole valley, and can even make out some of the more prominent features of Quetzaltenango, including the LDS temple.

 

One of the local churches (IDEC – Iglesia de Dios del Evangelio Completo) built a small pavilion that they call Montaña de Oraciones (“Prayer Mountain”) near the top of the mountain that they use for retreats and prayer services.