Can you put a price on stress? Well when travelling you certainly can, to get from A to B you have two main choices; to get the local bus (stressful) or to get an organised shuttle (relatively pain free). The shuttle is normally between 5-15 times greater in price than the local bus and is easy plus guaranteed to get there, normally direct (I use direct in its most loose form). If you take the local bus you will share your space with locals and livestock, this bus will stop whenever it needs to and you may have to disembark the bus at speed like Taryn* found out. Strangely these buses are probably more punctual than the English counterparts as the bus driver does not hang around even if you haven’t got your whole luggage and/or family off the bus. The only way to describe getting off one of these buses is in ‘The Crystal Maze’ when you only have 5 seconds to get out the room before they lock you in and your tight arse team do not want to use a crystal to buy you out….people probably wonder why I shout “To the Aztec zone” as I get off. So going from Panajchel to Chi-Chi (Chichicastenango) would have cost 50Q via the shuttle but instead we took the chicken bus where we had to change twice but this cost us 10Q so you see the price of stress in this journey was 40Q ($5)
*Taryn is the Canadian that I am travelling with at the moment and no I have not made a typo with her name but her parents may have made a K look like a T on her birth certificate. Taryn makes my Spanish seem amazing, even after teaching her some phrases she would still ask in English with me following it up with the appropriate words in Spanish. Taryn is now in SA where even less people speak English.
Chichicastenango is a town known for its traditional K'iche' Maya culture and for its famous market days on Thursdays and Sundays where many vendors sell handicrafts and the like. The manufacture of masks, used by dancers in traditional dances, such as the Dance of the Conquest, has also made this city well-known for woodcarving.
The sales pitch here was intense much like that of a window salesman telling old people they will die from the cold if they do not get double glazing. They would follow you round and would never take ‘no’ for an answer, some kid selling bags followed Taryn around for over an hour all throughout the deal was being thrashed out Taryn acting like she was a CEO for a big corporation never backing down until she got the price she wanted. I was sure that kid got the beating of his life when he got back home, I could see an anticipatory tear forming in his little eyes when I re-adjusted by belt! Sometimes you have to take a step back and realise that you are haggling over what amounts to 10 cents but after so long it becomes more of a principle trying to get a win under your belt from the many times you have been ripped off.
Next to the market is the 400-year old church of Santo Tomás. It is built atop a Pre-Columbian temple platform, and the steps originally leading to a temple of the pre-Hispanic Maya civilization remain venerated. Maya priests still use the church for their rituals, burning incense and candles. In special cases, they burn a chicken for the gods. Each of the 18 stairs that lead up to the church stands for one month of the Maya calendar year.
Leaving Chi-Chi both with bags bulging with souvenirs we had to get the bus to Coban with the road there being one of the best scenic drives in Guatemala, unfortunately half of the road is a hellish dirt track being stuck in a shuttle built for 14 people of short stature, 6ft 3” westerners were not in mind when they built these things. The scenery was amazing winding our way up and down the mountains viewing the populated valleys below, and this is one of the reasons I like Guatemala so much it provides dramatic contrasts between hot and humid tropical lowlands and colder and drier highland peaks.
Coban was a stepping stone; it’s a city with no real interest where we had to stay one night before embarking on another bus to get to our destination Semuc.
Semuc Champey is a natural monument near the town of Lanquín. It consists of a natural 300m limestone bridge, under which passes the Cahabòn River. Atop the bridge is a series of stepped, turquoise pools. The pools and scenery here were amazing; we hired a guide to take us around where he would show us the places to jump in. One jump was quite awkward having to jump half a meter out to avoid rocks which would be no problem but it was not flat so you could only get one push, I hesitated until there were some heckles coming from the group and alas I made it. The same people claiming it was easy all hesitated much longer than me when their turn came!
On route to Flores which is in northern Guatemala we stopped for lunch on route and this is where we saw the King-Kong of the spider world. Earlier that morning we had an incident with what seemed at the time a large spider in Taryn’s toiletries bag, for people who know me will understand my reaction, I did my best roadrunner impression and bolted out of the room. This spider in comparison was tiny so when I saw the ‘Horse Spider’ I was horrified, it looked as though it had been fed steak and steroids its whole life and at first glance I thought it had a tattoo, even now I can barley look at the photos. At first I got Taryn to take the pictures of it but as you learned in my last blog she is not one for taking photos, so I had to man up!
Flores is again a stepping stone for better things, it is an island but is far more interesting than Coban albeit another colonial cobbled street town. One of the highlights here was the Burger King across the bridge and the fact Taryn dressed in her Sunday best to go there and to the market. Some of the older locals in the market probably had a few years shaved off their lives when seeing Taryn in her chosen attire. The next morning we had to get the bus at 0400 to get to Tikal. Why so early? Well getting there for sunrise gives you the best chance to see some of the wildlife that inhabits the area. We got to see spider monkeys and hear howlers.
Tikal is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centres of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. The sites here date back as far as the 4th century BC however it reached its pinnacle during 200-900 AD where during this time it dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically and militarily. Some of the chiefs among this ancient civilization have had names that are not unlike the names celebrities give their offspring like First Scaffold Shark, Feather Skull, Great Jaguar Paw and Manikin Cleft Sky.
We headed to Rio Dulce (Sweet River) where there was not much going on and from there we went back to Guatemala City and Antigue where I was treated to a spectacular steak dinner. I have since spent the last few weeks chilling by the river back in San Pedro awaiting the right moment to tackle Mexico.
See you all in Mexico.
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