Batful of Caves

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August 13
OK, so Cass threw up on the way to Semuc Champey. It was so funny. He gets car sick anyway, but he’s hyper-nervous these days and the road was the windiest, dustiest, deisel fuel-iest ever. He was TOTALLY suffering (in silence—I was so proud), but then he had to turn to me and say, “Mom, actually I think I am going to throw up right now. Yeah. I am.” So we pulled over and the guide was so nice and funny (“This happens every time. Don’t worry.”), and the Israelis were so enthralled with the event that they took pictures and couldn’t pull their eyes away from my Cassady, doubled over and puking in the bushes.

The road, by the way, from Coban to Semuc Champey: greengreengreeeeeen—it rains a lot there—spotted with stilted shacks, always with perfect laundry hanging, tin or thatch roofs, each structure seeming to just barely cling to the steep and verdant hillsides. You can’t see any roads going in, but there must be at least a burro path. The area is mostly plantations: coffee, corn, and cardamom, the scent of which, wafting in through the van’s wide open windows, sent me into such reveries of bliss that I think I may have to expatriate myself and set up a new life down here in the land of tiny dark people and handmade tortillas.

The weather: pure sun. It is turning into winter here, so it’s not hot in the mountains. People are dressed warmly: women, teeny and round, all wrapped up in gorgeous woven shawls and skirts. Men are teeny and skinny, always with a machete strapped to the hip. They walk slowly up and down these steep mountain roads, carrying enormous loads of wood or baskets of covered somethings on their heads. Sometimes a branch-laden burro shares in the toil, but every person is working. This is subsistence level survival. Beans and tortillas.

Finally, after a thousand hours of roads and potholes the size of the Mariana Trench and pithy conversations about God and hunger and jazz fusion, we crossed over the last rickety bridge and laid eyes on our destination. Uh oh. I have been searching for paradise all my life, and here it was. Semuc Champey is a shallow staircase of turquoise pools suspended on a natural limestone bridge. You see them best if you first hike up the side of the mountain to a mirador high above the pools and look straight down. But to get there—holy Christ. You’re clinging to the side of a dripping, muddy, jungle mountain, so grateful for the roots that offer handholds from jagged point A to perilous B. Our guide, Carlos, chatted the whole time, bragged that he could make it up in 25 minutes if he ran the whole way, which he did every chance he got, apparently. I loved the way he held the hand of an older Mexican woman in the group, not willing to let her turn around, knowing fully she could do it and that her experience at the top would surpass maybe even any other she’d had in her life.

Carlos. Able to joke fluently in five languages. Loved Cristiana! But he loved everyone else, too. Could not stop playing with Cassady, teasing him and threatening to drop him off the side of the cliff—no one was afraid. Everyone laughed, most especially my increasingly bold young man. When we got back down to the pools and dove in, Carlos was like a kid. Well, he is a kid—maybe 19 years old. And this is a guy who likes his job. I was flabbergasted to see that not everyone wanted to swim—again, the day was perfection—but Carlos led us and Cristiana to all the secret spots, exquisite jumping off points, natural rock water slides, underwater caves and waterfalls. Did I mention the color of the water? Turquoise so bright and clear, almost yellow-green at the limestone edges. And you could see to the bottom of all the pools, giant boulders and tunnels and the occasional fish. I dove down to the sandy floor and it was just like a swimming pool only fresher and clean and...new.

Back at the van, we bought handmade chocolate patties from a vibrant but grimy almost-toddler indigenous girl. The chocolate was unlike any I had tried before, deep and spicy and rich, but then I suddenly got afraid of bacterial infection, so we only ate a little. Carlos finished off all the patties with a grin and a knowing shake of the head.

What does he think of us? I know, it doesn’t matter, I’m just curious. Carlos is bright and energetic and resourceful and charismatic. If he lived in the States, he’d be a millionaire. But he loves everything about his scene here, and he’s perfectly happy. It seems.

That day ended with a trip to Las Cuevas de Lanquin, a magnificent maze of bat-infested caves. There were petroglyphs, a scorpion, dripping slippery paths lit by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling five meters above our heads. And the most beautiful part was that Carlos planned it so we could get out just before sunset in order to see the exodus of all the jillions of bats heading out for supper. Really great idea. Except that Carlos couldn’t stop goofing with Cass and pretending to throw scorpions at him and sneaking us back into the haunted dark corners that we were not out of the caves by dinnertime. This is pathetic me: “Uh, guys? Should we be heading back? It’s just about sunset...” But no, it was about the boys and their little fun. We were still pretty deep in the caves when we started noticing some darting shadows on the cave walls. Then one itty bitty bat sliced past our heads. More shadows, more bats. By the time we finally got back to the one teeny portal leading out, we’re like a bunch of squealing little rats escaping the flood, our cries mixing with what we imagined were angry bat screams. It was a riot in all kinds of ways.

I really should tell you about Rafael, but if I don’t stop writing right now, I’ll be accused of neglect and shunned by the light of my life.

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