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Published: March 5th 2009
Time to get busy and see some stuff
This time we treated ourselves to a direct shuttle bus heading to a town called Coban, yet strangley we had the whole shuttle bus to ourselves (we kept thinking, somethings going to happen, but nothing ever did.) We arrived to rain, which is what makes Coban primarily a coffee growing town with many fincas and historically many Germans. We stayed at Hotel la Paz which was fabulous every corner you turned was like a David Lynch set!! We woke in the morning to a heavy mist which later turned to torrential rain, quite normal in Coban which sees 300 days of rain a year!! Who'd want to live here? Well many people do, and it was in Coban that Karen had her best vegetarian meal yet and where else but in a steak restaurant!!! People in Coban were really nice, we had many chats with people, a local man who had made his fortune in pizzas in America and had now returned home to set up a (guess what) pizza restaurant, adorned with gold chains and gold knuckle dusters, he seemed like a nice guy and gave us some free
side orders!
We walked in the torrential rain to an orchid farm, where a lovely man with well worn hands showed us hundreds of varieties of orchids from the national orchid of Guatemala to an orchid as small as a pin head. The owner also had a a quiet word with us about not wearing our old army gortex in Guatemala, as it was dangerous. Ooops...We decided to keep it on as it was still pouring. Walking in the rain we headed for the local museum, which was actually really informative, although very small it had a interesting selection of artefacts many strange anamalistic hybrid pots which could pass as contemporary ceramics.
So next day we headed out of the cloud forest of Coban for Lanquin, where we visited Cuavas de Lanquin an eary quiet cave full of huge stalagmites and tights.. and what was amazing was we were the only ones there. At 6pm we returned as while we were walking around earlier the bats were sleeping, now they were awake, oh my god they were awake, there were millions of them. As we stood in the mouth of the cave, a 3 x 3 metre entrance
Nobody around at all
Spooky - the place was so quiet.they swooped and swarmed, all you could hear was their wings making a very fine sound, like a whirring. Truely Amazing experience.
So on New Years Eve (in the morning) we headed for Semuc Champey; A set of about 20 cascading limestone pools of aqua marine mineral spring water. BEAUTIFUL. Underneath these pools rushes a furious underground river which emerges roaring from the ground besides the lower pools. Well this was a great day... our skin soft and feeling all invigorated we decided "hey" we'll walk back to Lanquin. Two and a half hours later and having said Hola to every familly and kid in the valley (which was very nice) we arrived at El Retiro (the hostel) in need of a beer and ready to eat a anything. After a few hours of eating and drinking rum, we sat on our veranda taking turns in the hammock with David our new friend from Austria (who was starting a teaching job in Guatemala city in a few days) appreciating the moment and talking about how lucky we all were.
NB: Massive thank you to David who saved the day when the banks decided to be open but only serve
people who had an account with them.
So the next day we all headed back to Coban and sat in a cafe drinking Coban coffe and eating puposa (an El Salvadorian snack of a round maize dough pocket filled with cheese and bean and what ever else thay have, spinach, meat. SO we said goodbye to David ready to start his new life in Guate and off we went north toward Tikal.....feeling good about the new year.
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