The following morning, I walked around with my backpack and some van stopped and offered me a ride to Antigua and some candy. I remember somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice that sounded like Ma telling me “hell yeah, candy!!!!” The driver had just dropped off people to the airport and was heading back to Antigua and I guess every Gringo in Guate is trying to get to Antigua. Anyhow, sure worked out for me.
Antigua was absolutely beautiful, cobblestone roads, bright colored houses, ruins, giant local markets (craft and foods) and old churches. Basically Mom’s photographic dreams. The city is cradled by mountains and volcanoes and is green all year round. Alex and I met up and spent the night wandering around.
The next day we made plans and headed to Coban. Coban is a crappy little city, but 2 hours in every direction there were amazing things. It took all day to get to Coban from Antigua and we slept as a cheap little joint. I was very glad that I brought the mosquito netting as most hotels didn’t have screen and were too hot to keep the windows shut. This hotel cost 70 Queztales, or about $9 USD, and was decorated like a bad scene out of the 70’s. Getting to Coban was quite trying as well. We quickly realized that whatever time a travel agent gives you, add 50% and you’ll be closer to accurate. The 5 hour trip took about 8 hours and involved the driver getting lost in Guatemala city and taking a local shuttle from Rio Honda to Coban which was crammed full and stopped every mile or so. We arrived at about 8pm and every restaurant was closed with the exception of a couple shady local joints and a hotel restaurant. The lobby was much nicer and the food was good (meals cost about $3-5 per dish on average in Guatemala). We saw a giant poster about their day trips to the Lanquin caves, Cahabon River, and Semuc Champey (limestone pools) and struck a deal that if we stayed in their hotel tomorrow they’d cut us a deal on the trip (as it was the slow season there). We wanted to stay there anyways as our place was kind of a dung heap. However to illustrate how lovely the town was , after dinner and discussing tomorrows trip we headed out back to our crappy hotel to sleep. The cook, a sweet little woman named Wilma, ran out after us. She’d lived in Coban all her live and we first thought she wanted to chat, practice English, or something. But no. She wanted to walk with us as her house was near our hotel (she overhead us talking) and she said it was too dangerous to walk at 9pm by herself. She was super sweet and we walked her a block of her house. She told us not to come closer as she said it was too dangerous on that block (there was an open field across the street from her she seemed scared of). She literally ran a block. . .and I mean ran. . .this sweet slightly overweight grandma booking it like some scene out of a Kosovo war scene, head covered, hugging the building to try to stay hidden. Again, Coban was a shit-hole. We waited until she got into her house and heading back to our hotel a couple blocks away. It was then we decided to spend as little time as possible in Coban.
The next morning we woke up bright and early and headed off with 2 other tourists and a local school teacher on the tour. They fed us a meager breakfast and we drove 2 hours through mountains and coffee and cardamom planations to a hotel just outside Lanquin (small town near the caves and limestone pools) where the local guide told us about cardamom, and found other plants and spices to show us (including cocoa plants). Our local guide was a really nice guy knowing only shattered English.
Next we headed to Semuc Champey. It was one of the highlights on the trip. It started with a short mile or so hike to a lookout point, but almost all straight uphill. The river, straight down below, was murky, but beautiful, and went underground just before the limestone formations that bridged both sides of the canyon, and appeared after the pools again. The pools, fed by spring water, were body temperature and were like emerald glass.
The guide told us that the limestone bridge was formed when large rocks fell from either side of the cliffs and slowly the spring water from the mountain deposited limestone over them to seal the bridge to hold the pools and are still growing. We swam and jumped across the 6 larger pools. Alex cut her heel jumping as it was hard to tell how deep things were as the water was so clear. She toughed it out and after an hour or so of playing around we headed off to the Lanquin Caves.
These caves are still the sight of Mayan sacrifices (animals). The caves were unlike the tourist caves in the US as there were no real paths and they encouraged you to touch the stalactites and wander a little. The floor were covered with Guano (bat poop) which made it super slippery. The caves ceiling was dyed black from the soot from the candles from the Mayan rituals. We climbed up some small holes covered in guano and eventually got back to the entrance. We washed our hands off a little and headed back to Coban. We got back to our nicer hotel ( as agreed for the tour discount, but still only $18 for the night). Although we got back around 7pm, everything (including restaurants) was already closed down around town. Our room had no hot water, so we spent some time getting a new room. They gave us some giant family sized room, and they even brought up our dinner from the restaurant below (the only place still open to eat). We washed off the layers of guano and relaxed.
The next morning we took a local bus back towards Antigua. We jumped off the bus 1 hour south of the town at the Queztal cloud forest reserve. We hiked around (again straight uphill) and looked for the elusive Queztal (national bird). We didn’t see any wildlife beside a couple of smaller birds (the rangers explained overhunting wiped out most of the land dwelling creatures and the Queztals usually only were active very early morning.). None-the-less, it was a beautiful cloud forest and a fantastic hike.
We flagged down a bus heading to Guate and ended up taking a taxi from Guate back to Antigua as it was such a hassle trying to get from one bus station to another in the capital as no one seems to tell you anything right direction wise. Plus crime is a huge problem there as well. The buses and shuttles drove like a bat out of hell as they were all paid by passenger, and not by the hour. The buses would careen through each turn and seemed to go on 2 wheels with every corner. People also passed at anypoint, regardless of oncoming traffic or visibility.
When we arrived in Antigua, we stayed at the hotel Alex had stayed with her nursing group as hotel had held one of our bags there (to make traveling easier with only one bag) and it was a little family owned place (plus we were the only guests there as it was the slow season).
We relaxed a bit and toured around the city. We traveled north on a Tuc-Tuc (small 3-wheeled vehicle that barely could go uphill carrying us) to the neighboring town of El Hato, which was the home of Earthlodge. Earthlodge is a active avocado farm owned by 2 hippies in the middle of nowhere. There were no roads to it, only a small dirt path, and they served up family style meals with a beautiful overlook of Antigua. It was very relaxing escape from the bustle of the city.
Alex and I also did a volcano hike. Little did we know it was the 2nd largest peak in central America at 14,000 feet. Before the hike, I fed a local dog a crumb of bread, and he followed us the whole way up (to get scrapes from lunch). Unlike trails in the US, it was basically straight up, which when added to the thin air altitude, made it very arduous to hike. The morning had clear skies, but right when we summated it got foggy. Even so, we could hear the neighboring volcano de Fuego (of fire) erupting (which sounded like thunder almost). It was erie hearing an erupting volcano up close but not being able to see. The guide also warned us a giant storm front was approaching and may hit during the hike (which it didn’t). We also had a local guide named Leon. He was 64 years old, but didn’t even break a sweat throughout the whole hike.
On the crater of the volcano, if you dig in the sand about 6 inches, the sand is too hot to hold. I guess for overnight trips they would bury breakfast to heat it up before eating. On the way down we jumped down the step sand slopes. I did a flip by accident as the backpack makes balance harder and got a couple of scrapes. Once we got down to the tree level, we swung on vines. At the bottom of the hike we were exhausted, but our shuttle driver forgot to pick us up so we had to wait an hour for a new driver to make it to the pueblo (roads were all washed out so most people wont drive you up there.).
Back in Antigua we perused the markets, went to the only movie theater (free if you buy drinks) which was basically a boot-leg version of pop movies (we saw 2012, but the quality was really poor), we saw some belly dancing where I translated the entire movie “17 again” to Alex, and ate some really good local foods. Alex bought the hotel owner some flowers on our last day as she cried and told us to come back again.
Flying back worked out perfectly, although I was on standby I got on the same flights as Alex and arrived on time in San Francisco. Now I’m starting my internship at Furst & Pendergast and getting back into reality. The week in Guatemala was incredible. It felt good to be back in a jungle, but for now it’s the concrete jungle for 2 months, lets hope I survive.
2 comments:
really nice pictures Ben. The bird video is pretty hard for me, but my gut reaction is that it's a grackle species. Seems to act like one. Did it have a funny shaped tail, like a V-shape?
didnt see a tail. Just saw it walk around on the roof with its head pointed straight up in the air.
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