Guatemala I: Livingston to Flores

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I took the boat from Punta Gorda, Belize to Livingston, Guatemala, another small Garifuna town on the Caribbean coast. In the streets of Livingston -- or really the street of Livingston -- the traditional Garifuna drum music can be heard and felt, Garifunas and Guatemalans and American hippies alike can be seen selling homemade jewelry and other handicrafts, and tapado, the traditional Garifuna soup dish of coconut and seafood, can be smelled. The town, like all of Garifuna culture, is very laid back, love-peace-music-and-pot sorta town, and has only a small amount of Gringo travelers walking. It also has a nice hostel (Hostal Rio Dulce), which is where I met Erick, a 29 year old accountant from Mexico City who spoke exceptional English. We got along naturally and brilliantly and spent the next five days traveling together.

After a big fish lunch, Erick and I decided to check out the Museum of Garifuna Culture to learn a little bit about these interesting and chilled-out people. We followed the sign to the second floor of a small office building-looking place next to a public playground, and entered the door to find that the museum, in it´s entirety and including the huge empty office desk at the entrance, fit into a single room smaller than the bedroom I grew up in. The exhibits consisted mostly of photos that were obviously printed out from a home computer on regular printing paper (and not even a good home printer at that), cut out using hand-scissors (by someone with a shaky hand), and glued (Elmers, I presume) on to different colored construction paper, with the overall effect of a 2nd grade history project. Accompanying the photos were captions in Spanish, and next to them were captions in a language that appeared to be Spanish translated into English via a free online translating service and that rendered the language unreadable. We walked around in baffled amusement and snuck back out before someone could see us and charge us an entrance fee, which I would have gladly paid, by the way, for the experience alone.

Later that day, while wandering around, Erick and I met a humble, young local guy who introduced himself as ¨The King,¨ as in The King of Livingston, and who told us to check out some bar with a weird name that would have live music that night and that we couldn´t miss because it had a big, bright Rasta-paint job of red, yellow and green stripes out front. So we did, that night, and the place was a dark, musty, local hole-in-the-wall Garifuna bar that was populated completely by Gringos, maybe 15 in all, sitting around low tables. It was a Tuesday night, and the town was basically asleep except for this bar, and I later figured that the only way for a bar to make money at such a time was to get someone like The King to round up all the tourists in town and get them all into to the same bar with the promise of live music and beer. Regardless of this letdown in the perceived authenticity of the situation, the Garifuna drum music was something to hear. The music sounds like African tribal music, and the drummers and players work themselves into a furious, cacophonous, trance like state of beating and yelling and dancing and convulsing. And one of drummers was playing on an actual turtle shell!

After the concert, King invited Erick and I and three others (two Israeli girls and a crazy French guy) to come to another bar with him where, he said, there would be some reggae music playing, but which turned out to be his friend´s house with no bar and no music. It was a pretty strange situation, the 7 of us sitting around in a circle underneath a tiki hut lit by a single dim light above our heads, passing around a dirty bottle of rum, in a foreign country outside the home of a strange friend of a guy who calls himself The King and who we thought was bringing us to a bar with live music. But The King was harmless, and we sat around and talked and got some pretty crazy insights into what its like to be The King.

¨I´m a simple street vendor,¨ he told us, describing his line of work. ¨The people want things, and I get ´em to ´em. Whatever they want, I can get it. But I ain´t no thief, no, don´t steal nothing, never have never will. But when something falls in my lap, I don´t ask questions either, I just take it and sell it. I got people all over bringin me stuff every day, don´t know where it comes from and don´t care neither. This is what I do.¨

¨So King,¨ I said, wanting more. ¨What´s the absolute craziest thing you could get,¨ I ask, ¨if I gave you a day to get it.¨

The King stopped and thought long and hard, then answered: ¨A motor... for a boat, or something.¨ Perfect. Answer.

That night, when we had returned from our night with the King still slightly intoxicated, Erick and I stood on the balcony at our hostel, overlooking the main street, which was dark and quiet at this hour, the town asleep. Every so often, a lone individual, or maybe a couple, would straggle by below us, stumbling home, probably, or maybe on way to some shadier business? We tried to guess where everyone that trickled by below us was heading: That girl is obviously heading to her boyfriend´s to break the news of her pregnancy, and he´s not the father. That guy is drunk and probably won´t make it home tonight. That kid needs to go to sleep, its way past his bedtime. And after over an hour of this, so did we.

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The next day, Erick and I, as well as the two Israeli girls (Adi and someone) and the crazy french guy (Matsonga) took a 90 minute boat ride from Livingston to Rio Dulce, 90 minutes down the river, past cliffs and mountains and jungle on all sides, until the river opened up into the huge Lago de Isabel. We got dropped off at a lodge, which was located a few hundred meters from the edge of the lake, down a small rivulet, ducking under branches and vines as our small lancha drifted into the jungle and came upon a wood and straw hut built into the surrounding trees.

We got a dormitory-style bedroom with 6 beds, 2 floors, our own porch with tables and chairs, and included in the cost of the room was the biggest freakin spider I have ever seen this side of the Discovery Channel. I don't know if the picture captures it completely, but you could see his face, you could see the spider's eyeballs looking up at you, and its long, furry legs and enormous midsection with the pattern of another, even scarier face imprinted on it, two faces looking up at you from the same massive spider sitting on the nightstand next to where I would be sleeping that night. It was frightening and disgusting at first, then it was funny and amusing and picture-worthy, then it was frightening and disgusting again and I wanted it as far as away from my bed as possible. It was eventually taken care with the help of the guy behind the desk and a broom. The five of us got dinner at the little restaurant on premise, and sat around for several full hours, a native English, Spanish, Hebrew, and French speaker, all together and able to talk and share stories and ideas and philosophies using the common tongue of English. That night I slept surprisingly sound bundled in my pajama outfit consisting of long shirt tucked into long pants tucked into long socks, my bed surrounded by a mosquito net tucked under the mattress.

The next day Erick and I parted ways with the two Hebrew girls and the French guy and continued along the lake side in a micro bus, one hour down a dirt road, the lake flickering by from beyond the passing trees out the left-hand windows, until we got to a hot-spring waterfall called Finca Paraiso. We bought some oranges and potato pancake type things, piping hot, from a small mob of local children who ran up to us near the entrance, waving their home-baked goods to us, putting on their desperate, cute little faces and vying for our attention and our money. Without even saying a word i was able to instantly bargain my way from 3 Quetzales (40 cents) to two to one. I know a bargain when I see one, and for 15 cents, I´ll buy an orange even if I don´t want one.

The waterfall was wonderful. Hot water, almost too hot to stand under, poured off a wide waterfall and dripped down gnarled rock formations into a cool, crisp river flowing by underneath. Behind the waterfall, a small overhang created an area where you could sit in cold water up to your waist and yet be sweating profusely from the waist up, like a sauna. We spent several hours alternating between relaxing under the hot spring water, diving into the cold river, and sitting in the sauna. The whole thing was like a natural spa resort in the middle of the woods.

There were lots of people at the waterfall but almost entirely locals, from the looks of it. Several teenagers started to climb the side of the waterfall, where it was dry and rock and dirt and roots created a mostly-vertical path to the top. I followed them, thinking maybe there was a pool of hot water at the top, the source of the spring water, perhaps, a place to sit, like a hottub. That would be nice. But there was nothing of the sorts, and when I reached the top, maybe 35 or 40 feet high, I realized what the kids were doing up there: jumping. No, thank you. I started thinking of the last time I was presented with a jump this big, in the Dominican Republic two years earlier, in front of a small crowd of people gathered at the bottom, including my parents, and my two brothers, both of whom had just made the jump themselves. I got up, climbed up just like this, up the side, grasping roots and rocks and kicking dirt back from my bare feet. I got to the top... and froze. I could not do it. My body wouldn´t budge, it wasn´t going anywhere. Its irrational, I know, its perfectly safe, at worst you could land awkwardly and get a big red smack mark on your side. I just saw several other people do it, most younger than me, girls and children, even, but I couldn´t do it. After 10 minutes of feigned attempts, ``OK, ready? Camera ready? Here I go...Ok wait, I need a second,´´ I climbed down the side and made the pussie jump, from half the height, and walked the rest of the day with my head hung low and have regretted that day ever since.

So maybe I am going to do this. Redeem myself. One of the teenagers, the wild one of the bunch, climbed a tree to get even higher, and walked out on to a branch hanging out over the edge and made a leaping, leg-flailing, Tarzan-yelling drop. Then the next went, but not from the tree, just normal. Then the next, knowing that I was scared, I think because I was standing way back from the edge, shaking my head and saying ¨No, gracias, no tengo valor¨ when they prodded me on. He said it was easy, told me to just come take a look and watch him. I slowly shuffled up to the edge with him, a chubby, hairless 15 year old, and watched him jump. Without thinking, without considering, I jumped, and... it wasnt that bad. Not bad at all, pretty fun actually! I got highfives from the teenagers and went straight back up to prove to myself it wasn´t just a fluke, and did it again, even helped another kid who was scared to do it with me. Peace of cake. Got it. I felt I had really overcome something, was very satisfied with myself. But lets get out of here, now, before I start climbing that tree up there.

We left an picked up the next microbus that passed out way, and took it to the end of the line, another hour down the dirt road along the side of the lake, to a small, quiet, middle-of-nowhere town named El Estor. Because it was the eve of my birthday, Dec. 11, we decided to splurge on a nice hotel, a two-bed private room with private bath with a lake-side deck with nice views, for $10 a piece (that is a splurge in Guatemala). We explored the town, which had nothing going on, even for a small middle-of-nowhere Guatemalan town, except for a childrens Chirstmas play going on in the main square. We decide we will get some beers and head back to our deck and relax, figure out if there will be anything to do tonight to celebrate my birthday, and contemplate what the hell we were going to do in this town all tomorrow, on my birthday, when we have already seen the whole town and the nice view of the lake that it affords in the one hour of walking around we have just done.

We stop at a convenience store for beer, but they are out. We walk across the street to another, but they are out. Then another, also out. What is going on here? Either the town celebrated my birthday a day too early, or... We go into a restaurant down the street and up to the bar and order two beers, it doesn´t matter what kind as long as it has alcohol and was made through the brewing and fermentation of starches. The bartender informs us that he, too, is out of beer. Ok, something is wrong. He goes on to tell us that the town is all out of beer and is awaiting their next shipment, which should arrive in the next few days. It is about to be my birthday, this town is dead and dry, we must get out of here. But how?

There is no bus station in town, just a corner where every once and a while a small micro bus (really a big van, like the ones you used to take at summer camp when you were 14) picks up whoever happens to be standing and waiting at the corner and brings them back down the only road that leads into our away from town (which heads back to Rio Dulce, which is where we had just come from). At this point, we want to go to a place called Lanquin, which is geographically the opposite direction from Rio Dulce, and after an hour of investigative work, we find out that there are two ways to get there: One would be to backtrack the two and a half hours to Rio Dulce and then take a 7 or 8 hour busride around the other side of the lake; the other would be to take the microbus the ¨back route¨ through the mountains, a direct shot, the only catch being that it leaves just once a day, at three AM. As in three in the freakin morning. We are desparate, and despite the fact that we just checked into a nice hotel and despite the fact that it was already 10 pm and that bus would be leaving in a few hours, we buy the tickets and decide to go for it. So we get to sleep at 11 the night before my birthday, and at 2:55 am the morning of my birthday, my alarm sounds, hideous and screeching, and we jump out of bed and into the micro bus.

The subsequent journey that took place on this so called ¨mode of transportation¨ is one that I would rather not relive again, in body or mind. For the sake of my reader (if there are any left after my extended absense from posting, recently), however, I shall do so just this once.

At first, the situation seemed pretty ideal. Although we were forced to strap our bags to the roof (what if it rains?), Erick and I were the only ones on the bus besides the driver and his coworker, and so we spread out, popped in our headphones, kicked up our feet, and had the expectation of a quiet, comfortable, sleep-filled transport. Then the screaming began. As we sat on the street corner, still unmoved from our original parked position, the coworker, lets call him Ricky, began yelling, screaming really, into the otherwise quiet night: ¨Coban Coban Coban Coban Coban!!! Coban Coban Coban Coban Coban!!¨ Coban was the name of the major city on route, and the screaming was apparently to let anyone in a mile radius who might still be sleeping but who intended on taking this disgustingly early bus know that we were, infact, heading to Coban, and we would be leaving shortly. No cattle were round up, however, and we got on our way after what seemed like an eternity.

As we drove through and eventually out of town, Ricky kept his head and most of his upper body sticking out the front passenger window, and the yelling persisted. Who are you yelling at, Ricky, we are in the middle of the woods? I thought. Yet slowly but surely, the bus would come to a stop, or slow down to a quiet roll, and people of all ages, shapes and sizes (actually, all very short, because that is the Guatemalan way) began piling on to the bus. Before very long, we seemed to be at maximum capacity. Beside me was squeezed an entire extended family: mother, father (with cowboy hat on, mind you), 2 small children, maybe some aunts and uncles and grandparents thrown in the mix too, if i remember correctly. In the small space between the front row and the drivers seat stood 4 small children in a line, holding on to the seat in front of them, standing straight as arrows, legs together, bumping back and forth and up and down like a pack of fresh Crayolas in an earthquake. The view behind me was like the view from the stage of a sold out theater looking out over a supremely disinterested crowd, just heads with eyes and noses and hats and expressionless faces all around, some bobbing with sleep, some simply staring straight ahead, none with mouths that were moving.

An hour into the ride I counted 31 souls in a van with only 15 seatbelts. For six hours, the van sped down rocky dirt roads, through shallow rivulets and dense forests, up and down the sides of mountains, around hairpin turns, beside steep, deadly cliffs, over bridges and past dilapidated homes, the pathetic excuse for car lights illuminating no more than the small bit of road directly in front of the front wheels, the radio blaring one part traditional Guatemalan string music, two parts hideous static the entire time. For six hours, I sat crammed between a frigid window to my left and a small village of Guatemalans to my right, day pack on my lap, my legs tied in an immovable knot below me, gonads protesting harshly. For six hours, I twisted and turned and tried every conceivable body position that my restricted mobility would allow, none however preventing my legs, butt, back, and other extremities from being reduced to a numb, useless mess. For six hours, I systematically tested every inch of my skull for its softest, least tender and flattest part that could be wedged up against the battering window without causing a concussion, none working and none, most definitely, allowing me to catch any bit of the sleep I so desparately needed.

At 4:30 in the morning, while in the middle of the woods, our van came to a stop in front of a street suddenly fell of thousands of locals in traditional dress, the women in hand-weaved dresses and the men in near-cowboy getup. The crowd slowly parted, and for several minutes our van moved through this unexplainable mass. When Erick asked the driver, What is going on here, he casually responded, ¨It´s people.¨ And that basically summed up this whole experience: nothing of this was out of the ordinary for any one else on the bus but Erick and I. This was actually a mode of transportation, one taken regularly and without knowledge of how it is done in more fortunate places. This was simply routine part of life for all these people, and for me it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life (yes, maybe I´ve had a fairly comfortable life). It was truly a bizarre beginning to a brithday, howeve one that I would´t trade for anything.

Eventually, it was all worth it, though, when after 8 hours and an additional bus, we arrived at our destination, a tiny piece of paradise in the middle of the mountains of central Guatemala called El Retiro.

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El Retiro is a hostel/lodge nestled in a green and burnt-yellow valley just outside the town of Lanquin in the Alta Verapaz region of central Guatemala. Its wood-and-thatched-roofed cabanas and stone paths spread out along a hillside that falls down into a gushing, icy river, and are surrounded in all directions by misty, cragged mountain ranges, the silouhettes of pines lining their tops and the sheer cliffsides that make up their sides vailed in an extra dimension of drama by the constant, rolling fog that sits perched on and stuck between. A hammock is never out of sight at El Retiro, and the views from these wombs of comfort and solitude never dissapoint. Dogs and cats, chickens and roosters wander about the grounds, horses and cows can be spotted beyond the wooden fences surrounding the premises. The rooms are clean, the beds comfortable, the people common in spirit, the atmosphere relaxed nearly to the point of laziness by day, bouyant nearly to the point of debauchery by night, and the food... oh, the food.

At 7 oclock each night dinner is served under a thatched room down by the river, an all-you-can-eat, my-plate-isnt-big-enough-and-my-arms-not-strong-enough buffet, each day with its own theme (Mexican night! BBQ night! Pizza night!). All the guests at the lodge sit together at three huge, thick wooden tables, although at this point we have been there for more than an hour already playing cards and drinking beer and telling stories, because happy hour started at 5:30, of course. After our stomaches can take no more, simply no more will fit or I will seriously vomit right here right now, cards are played, more beer is drinken, bonfires are started, stories are told, games are played. When the bar finally closes, and then the fire finally dies down, the last of the straggler amble off to their cabanas to be woken, no doubt, by roosters crowing and dogs barking, when the light first appears.

El Retiro is a place where one can simply get lost for days, weeks, months at a time, and some definitely do (the entire everday staff is made up of travelers who decided to stay). I stayed for a full week, and after the second day there I never even left the premises. An example of a typical afternoon: I wake up, sit in my hammock, eventually brush my teeth and maybe take a shower maybe not, put on my bathing suit, wander down to get some breakfast before taking a quick dip in the icy river to awaken my senses, end up sitting with newly-made friends at breakfast and then not moving from the seat, literally, until lunch is served 4 hours later, eating lunch, still never having moved, and then maybe, at this time well into the afternoon, decide I am tired and go back up to a hammock to wait for nightfall, or go into the sauna and jump in the river after all. Then night comes and the cycle is repeated.

Anyways, I seem to have gotten just as lost writing about El Retiro as I did when I was staying there. Where was I?

It´s my birthday, and I have just arrived with Erick at El Retiro, eyes red, heds drooping, legs dragging, stomach growling. We sign up for an activity, caving, that starts at 4 pm. We eat some lunch and stumble off to our beds, for long nap, dead tired but excited from the prospect of El Retiro upon first inspection.

Late that afternoon, still my birthday and starting to becoming a looong day, we head off for Las Grutas de Lanquin. Our guide was a 15 year old that looked like an 11 year old kid picked up off the street. He took us up to the cave entrance, a towering wound in the side of a rocky cliff where a torrential river gushed out from the darkness. The inside was humid and warm and sticky with mud, full of stalagtites and stalagmites and rockformations many of which, as our sagely guide pointed out, resembled, some quite eerily, different forms -- a sheep, a virgin mary, a frog the size of a cadillac, a turtle the size of a kitchen, human faces, profiles of human heads. As we made our way through the cave, sometimes climbing rock steps with hand rails, other times climbing up twisted passages and sqeezing through tight gaps, the air above our heads began to fill with bats. At first, a small trickle of fluttering shapes past our heads in the direction of the entrance, first a bat here, then a bat there, but as time went by, and as the sun outside began to go down, the cave slowly came alive.

By a little before 6 oclock, we hurried our way back to the mouth of the cave and took a seat right on the threshold of where the inside met the out, a steady and thick stream of bats flying over our heads. At 6 pm promptly, the house lights that illuminate the entrance went out, and so did our flashlights, and a cacauphony of screeching and flapping suddenly filled the blackness around us. Only the strobbing of cameras revealed the thousands of dark forms surrounding us, each flash making me jump in my shoes, the scene then momentarily burned into our retinas like a ghostly vision. The bats flowed above and around us in a thick, steady stream, like being in a windtunnel where the bats were the wind and we were the subject being tested for aerodymanic effieciency. For 20 minutes, until we had had enough, we sat utterly engulfed by bats, somehow avoiding getting guana´d on or run into by one of the truly hideous creatures. It was a chilling, and strange birthday experience.

The next day we went on the ¨famous¨ El Retiro tour of Semuc Champey, a nearby natural wonder that is the reason most come to the region in the first place.

The day started with a trek, or really rather a swim, through another cave system, this one with only candles providing our light. A cave is a very different place under candle light. I can understand how the Mayans believed these caves to have hidden spirits, because under candlelight, (which is how I assume the Mayans of 2,000 years ago saw it) the shapes and forms surrounding you come alive, become animate, flickering and dancing about from the transient light source. The cave was a wet one and I spent a lot of time swimming in full pools of water, one hand behind me paddling, the other desparately trying to keep the candle above water. Fire was passed back and forth as candles inevitably went under with a sizzle. There was a truly scary part where there was a hole in the ground just big enough for a large man to fit through and where water gushed down it in huge torrents into the darkness below. We had to, one by one, back ourselves up to this little hole and, solely trusting our guides, lower ourselves down and plunge backward, water in our face and our destination unknown, into a tiny crevace whirlpool of darkness and water. I swallowed a lot of water and had a moment of panick, blind and over my head in swirling water, until a hand grabbed me and pulled me under the waterfall to dryer land.

Next we jumped off a pendulic swing tied to a branch of a tall tree hanging out over the breathlessly-cold river outside the cave, all bodily functioning shocked into adrenaline mode upon impact. We then took innertubes and floated down this icy river for a half hour, where I promptly lost all feeling in the lower half of my body. A steep, one hour hike took us to the top of a mountain and provided us with a birds eye view of Semuc Champey, a collection of stepped, turquoise pools of fresh water flowing from pool to pool over a natural limestone bridge, underneath which the river flows in huge torrents. Words can only describe so much, but my pictures might help. We then followed the trail down the other side of the mountain and spent a while swimming about the cool waters, jumping from pool to pool off small waterfalls. At the end, where the water on top of the bridge falls dramatically down 50 feet to rejoin the waters of its mother river, our guide took out a rope ladder, tied it to a nearby rock, and we descended down the waterfall and into the tunnel where the river rejoined the open air. This experience is highly recommended.

The next day Erick departed, his trip being only a three week break from work. His job, however, is bringin him to Johannesburg, South Africa in a month to stay for a few years, so really his adventure is just beginning. Hopefully, I can make it to South Africa while he is still there.

The rest of the week was spent, as described above, lazying about the El Retiro lodge of a cast of fellow travelers from England, Holland, Israel, Germany, Italy, Australia, Canada and of course the States. Finally, feeling reenergized and more than anxious to get a move on, and having only a few days left before I was to meet my brothers in northern Guatemala, I took a bus from Lanquin back to Coban to see what the capitol of the Alta Verapaz had to offer.

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Sometimes crumby weather can be nice, and sometimes the most most unassuming things can be the most alluring. My first day in Coban was a dreary one, and after settling in to my new sleeping location and putting on my rain coat, I took off to explore the city. Coban is a big, bustling, dirty city whose streets are mostly nameless and rarely correspond to provided maps. It has a big market that was even bigger on this last-Friday-before-Christmas that I was there. I bought some tiny trinkets, took some photos, and ate a sloppy plate of tacos on the street, squeezing my water between my legs, holding the plate of make-it-yourself tacos with my left hand and digging through the mess of tortillas, meet, beans, rice and coleslaw with my forkless right hand.

I then walked to the top of a big hill on the outskirts of Coban, not knowing what was on on top but wanting to see what the view would be like. On top was a stucco, pastoral looking church painted completely in white. Behind it was an old graveyard. The paint was peeling and weathered out of existence, the huge stone and concrete gravemarkers were sinking into the ground and crumbling to pieces, and the whole place was overgrown with vegetation, weeds and shrubs growing all around and even on top of and coming out of the gravestones, enveloping them like a slow swallow from the earth. It was early evening, the weather was overcast and the light soft, cold and diffused. A cool mist stood silent in the air, and a balmy dampness pervaded from the hours of rain that had preceded and just recently passed. It was quiet, almost serene, except for the faint sounds of the city beyond and below. I took some nice photos and searched the graveyard for hidden gems. The whole thing would not have been so nice if the weather had been warm and sunny and if the place had been on the tourist map.

Back at the hostel, I ran in to the crazy French guy I had traveled with 10 days earlier. Central America is a small place. We hung out together, got some food and whatnot, and the rest of my time in Coban was fairly unassuming. I took a 6 hour bus northbound out of Coban and arrived in Flores the evening ahead of when my brothers would be meeting me there. Hostel after hostel was full, and, unwilling to pay 70 Q for a hotel room (thats 9 dollars, mind you) I settle for a very shady, very dirty 30 Q room. There was no hot water, no window, and bugs in the bed. the linoleum tiles had gone through hell and bad, and walls peeling. I shook the sheets off and sprayed them with bugspray and slept fully clothed on top of the bed sand pillow. This is not a recommended experience. I learned that what comes out to a few extra dollars is worth having a clean place to sleep in any circumstance. I awoke, and spent the day more or less waiting for my brothers to arrive.