Day 316

Coban, Guatemala

In the afternoon it started raining. I tried to ignore it despite the fact that the rain was so heavy it disrupted the satellite signal. It was really coming down. A lot!

The owner started banging on my door and I came outside to find the car park outside my room under 6″ of water, and it was still raining. I changed, grabbed my keys and went to move my car. I opened the gate to find the way blocked by the owners land-rover. He wouldn’t move it either.

He then locked the gate! I was screaming at him to open it and move his car with no joy. Trying not to freak out too much I let him explain that the road outside was lower than the car park. I move everything off the floor of my car and prayed.

Pretty soon my room was flooded :p

I waited and moved my stuff into another room. This one was on the top floor with 6 beds :p After a nervous hour (and more rain) it finally stopped and it all drained away. Maybe it was time to leave.

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Day 312

Semuc Champey, Guatemala

I was at “the most beautiful place in Guatemala” but it didn’t quite seem like that. After my exhausting trip there I slept for 14 hours and decided I would go to the waterfalls of Semuc Champey in the afternoon. The weather conspired against me on that front as a black cloud rolled in and rained on us until late evening. The food in Las Marias wasn’t exactly inspiring, but then I had just come from a great vegetarian hostel. I was getting close to the magic 1,000 words learned but I guessed I wouldn’t get to Xela in time for the start of a Monday class.

Next day was lovely and after another disappointing breakfast I made up my mind to see the sights and push on over to Coban, the nearest big town, as soon as I was done. It was fun hiking through the jungle and swimming in the limestone pools. Very pretty, but not quite the totally awe-inspiring place I had been led to expect. Great view from the platform overhead though.

After I was bored with nearly getting lost in the muddy paths and slipping on the rocks and falling into a pool in front of all the other tourists :p I set off for Coban around 2pm. I didn’t get very far. I ended up giving a lift to a couple from Alberta, Canada to the nearby caves of Lanquin. It was another 9km of pain, even worse than the trip down. I ended up with brakes that were literally smoking and had to throw muddy puddle water over them.

In return for their lift, Joe and Jen invited me to explore the caves with them and it gave me another chance to get my post-swim feet filthy again in the sticky cave mud. The caves were pretty good but slightly spoiled by the huge signs they stuck all over the best parts and the unsightly cables strung all over the place. It was much more fun being scared with Vanessa in the Blue Hole cave in Belize. At least I managed to get a few decent photos this time. 3200 ISO and 2.8 aperture rocks.

After 20 minutes of squelching around we stuck around for another 2 hours waiting for the bats to leave on their nightly insect hunt. When they finally started coming out there were thousands of the little fellas flashing past our heads. Since I didn’t even know I would be coming I didn’t have my off camera flash charged but I did manage to get a few good shots. Bear in mind I took five hundred photos and 99% were complete rubbish.

Day 310

Semuc Champey, Guatemala

I had to wait to pass a couple of buses filled with curious locals to survey the damage. Somehow the genius of Bills repair had held. No oil was coming out and I could continue. At least until I hit another big rock.

Nothing was going to stop the sun from setting though and I was passing through local villages and ignoring the children shouting ‘Gringo’ to concentrate on the rocks jutting everywhere. By driving my wheels on the rocks I was managing to avoid them but with every knock I would diligently jump out and check to make sure I hadn’t knocked my weld off.

Pretty soon I was having to use my torch to do this and I was regretting my desire upon reaching Guatemala to be driving a rutted track through the jungle. I was asking any locals I met whether I was still on the right track whenever I could. There were very few turns since I was now following a track on the side of a mountain and praying I would make it.

The estimate of  1 1/2 hours to my destination was popular. That’s all I heard until I got to some unnamed village and the gas station attendant lowered it to 45 minutes. It seemed I was getting closer!

Finally I made it to the village of Lanquin and chose to push on to a guesthouse by the waterfalls. This meant another 9km of nasty roads but at least then I could relax. It was 9pm when I pulled into the darkened car park of Las Marias and got myself a dorm room on my own for Q30. I would worry about the lack of electricity the next day. For now all I had on my mind was sleep.

Day 310

Semuc Champey, Guatemala

The girl, Kara, I had spent the day sitting in the bank and fixing my brakes on Monday with still hadn’t come back from Tikal. I was slightly concerned but I really had to leave. I pointed out this information to the good people of Los Amigo hostel and after another spell on the Internet got my stuff together to leave.

Another week gone, another set of doors close and others open. I had finally met some Swedish girls, a pair of cousins from Uppsala who were studying in Lund. They wanted me to come on their 3 day walk to some ruins to reduce the price. I regretfully declined and of course now wonder if that was a mistake. I bet they see a wild Jaguar! :p

It would be $100, not too bad but they were returning via Tikal and I had no major desire to see it a third time. Thinking back these were my forth and fifth Swede I had met in 10 months, one in Puerto Escondido, one in San Cristobal and the girl I freaked out in the phone shop at the very start of my trip in Toronto. At least it would give me more chance to speak Spanish.

I would be needing it for the next leg. After assuming Kara would be coming with me to the waterfalls at Semuc Champey I had neglected to post a notice to see if anyone wanted to come with me. I probably should have gotten my oil pan welded but the road all the way down was the main highway number 5, it would have to be paved right?

The first part of the journey was fine, I got some gas and directions out of town. I took a slightly wrong turn but firing up my laptop and good old Google Earth showed me I would join the road I really wanted soon. My power converter were all broken now so I suspended the laptop and listened to dodgy Guatemalan radio.

The road was good, the best since the US really since Guatemala has mostly avoided the horrible custom of covering their roads with speed bumps. There were a few around, but nothing compared to Mexico. I made good time, the distance wasn’t that great and I made it to the half way mark at Sayaxche after about 2 and a half hours. I took the green goddess over a little ferry too, which was fun. They were moving 3 cars and a gas tanker around with a couple of outboards.

I crossed a rickety bridge at Sebol and the asphalt gave out. So much for the paved highway all the way south. The road was dusty but flat and clear. I would have to be careful about my oil pan though. I tried to turn on my laptop to recheck Google Earth and learned it hadn’t suspended and was now nearly dead. My first bit of bad luck.

I bumped down the dusty track passing a few cars and trucks and saw a box in the road. I big one that must have just fallen from the truck I had passed. I pulled up and found it was a box of 14 packets of Corn Flakes. The big 600g boxes. I reached down and pulled it onto the front seat. It barely came through the window. Nice find. Shame I didn’t really like cornflakes :p . 100 meters down the road I found a starving dog nosing around another 3 big boxes.

I chucked them all into the van, emptied a box for the starving dog and continued south. What was I going to do with 56 boxes of Cornflakes? It  was 33kg of the stuff. If only they had been Branflakes I would have been much happier. I guess I could sell them, give them away to the locals, eat some or make some chocolate cake things. I started following a beer truck and hoping that would start dropping some of its produce too

My musings about what to do with my sudden windfall was interrupted by a small truck zooming past me but then being blocked by the beer truck. There was a kid in the back sitting on a load of boxes of Corn Flakes. He looked at the pile of Corn Flakes on my front seat, shouted to the driver and they pulled over. I did the same.

He jumped out and started yabbering on in rapid Spanish which I could barely understand. I understood the word ‘Career’ or ‘Job’ though. He didn’t even wait for me to speak but opened my door and started  grabbing the boxes. I really wasn’t prepared to argue with the guy, and why would I. My slight good fortune would be nothing compared to the grief this would get him into.

I told him he was lucky (I doubt he would get so much compliance from a hungry local) and shook his hand before driving off on my way. I was now hoping this was going to give me some good karma for the road.

The road was getting worse. Someone else had obviously noticed this and decided to spend a few billion Quetzals to get it fixed. Only a few miles after losing my breakfast, so to speak, I came to a bridge which was closed. I gathered they were repairing the road, or at least making it half decent and no traffic could get through now until 6pm. It was 4.30pm and I had just missed the 2-4 slot to get through.

What could I do? I pulled into the shade, dropped my hot water bottle into the nearby stream and had to wait for an hour and a half. I tidied my car as usual, checked the oil, tried to fix my power adapter, studied a few Spanish words, hoping the local truck drivers who also pulled up to wait wouldn’t decide to rob me.

I would have gone fishing but the milky water was polluted with soap powder. The truck drivers washing directly in the stream weren’t helping either. How can they be so short sighted. The sun sank lower and lower and my window for making it to my destination shrank.

At 6pm the cones were moved and I now had a choice between the safety of driving slowly verses the danger of being forced to drive at night. I also had my oil pan to consider which was basically being protected by some hard chewing gum. After a minutes drive I realised they weren’t sealing or improving the road, they were building a whole new one by blasting half the hillside to widen it.

Ignoring the waving construction workers I picked my way across the rocky road, cursing the day I didn’t buy a 4WD. I suppose I could go back but the guy manning the blockade told me it was only 1 1/2 hours to Semuc Champey. I was 3 hours away from Flores. I decided to continue.

This probably wasn’t the best decision. I soon came to the most recent part of the roads construction, a steep section of blasted road that was mostly flat but not quite. My first ginger attempt at it was unsuccessful and I backed up to consider my options. The middle part had several large rocks jutting up, waiting to bleed my oil out so I went up and chucked them out of the way. I was still going to be in serious danger of losing all my oil again.

With one of the workers cheering me on I got back in the car, put it in low gear and gunned the engine. I would have to make it in one shot, it wasn’t so steep that I couldn’t make it, the danger was stopping or tearing the bottom off my van in the attempt.

I really should have had my camera on video mode :p

I picked up some speed and hit the rocks at a fair pace, I could hear them smashing all over the bottom of the car and I wondered, not for the first time, what the hell I was doing. It was 10 seconds of sheer hell, I just kept my foot down and prayed to the gods of Karma that I wasn’t going to spending the night in the jungle.

Day 309

Flores, Guatemala

I dug out my backup from Dec and Jan to make another copy and decided to play around with a few.

Day 308

Flores, Guatemala

My car had been making some scrapping noises in Belize when I was driving with Vanessa, seems like the brakes were on the way out. Stupidly I only just thought about getting them fixed since I was always giving lifts to people. I had a very hot day over the bridge with the crazy ex-punk Kara alternating trips to the garage where they had my car jacked up fixing the front brakes and to the local bank with the Western Union office. Kara was in an even worse state than I was over the weekend when I was down to only Q6 (less than a dollar) and only 97p showing in my bank account.

My own fault for not remember to transfer some money before I left Caye Caulker. At least I had some emergency dollars to fall back on, Kara couldn’t even afford water and she had a bad hangover on Sunday. The hostel is now filled with people I don’t know, mostly Dutch and English so I think I will be moving on very soon.

Los Amigos is a great place to hang out and take a few days to process my photos, it might be perfect if it had free wireless Internet but then I wouldn’t get anything done as I would be either surfing or lending my laptop to other people. I had some problems uploading my last few entries to my blog using Live Writer, which is how I write all my posts offline, but upgrading to WordPress 2.6 seems to have fixed it. It also kept the layout of my blog the same which didn’t happen the last time I upgraded. I messed around with the layout so much that getting it to look like it does now would be a major pain.

I spent some time playing with Photoshop too, trying to figure out how to watermark my photographs. You can see the results above which will be the standard from now on. I need to drive some traffic to my site and its no good taking a good shot and then no one knowing where to go to get some more.

Got up at 2.50am to make it up to the ruins in Tikal for sunrise. We wandered through the awakening jungle by torch and moonlight past looming stone structures half glimpsed in the faint light.

We climbed up to the wooden platform above the layer of mist that carpeted the jungle and our group was the first to arrive. There would be no visible sun rise today.

Shortly after we got to the top it started pouring down, you could hear and then see the wall of rain advancing towards us. Thankfully we knew about the little platform hidden around the other side where the workers haul up stone to restore the temple so we sheltered there with the guide, while a hundred other people got soaked. It cleared for a great view and then we wandered the ruins stopping occasionally for creepy crawlies the locals would let us play with for tips. I really don’t like big bugs, especially ones that can nearly kill you, but happily Katrijn was fearless and a good model.

The rain came again when we reached the van for the journey back. Perfect!*

* Perfection was achieved by not dying on the way back. Everyone fell asleep, not including the driver, but he had a go. I sat watching him rubbing his eyes and constantly blinking when I woke up and offered to drive. He bought some Coke and got it together but it was scarier than climbing a 50m temple.

Barton Creek Outpost, Belize

How not to eat a chili.

The beautiful Natalie.

Chilling in the Jungle.

Tarzan’s toilet with a monkey voyeur

There is Tarzan!

Just relax Katrijn. A bit more….

We went to check the car and get Eva’s bag.

Katrijn had a wound on her ankle which she was trying to keep dry. Luckily she had a strong man around!

Nice place to park.

We didn’t dare cross this.

On the way back we stopped to chat to a local girl called Chariot who was from Florida.

Eva tried to charm me into losing.

Eva left early so Katrijn and I amused ourselves by switching positions on the camera.

There was no shower. It was …. fresh!

Flores, Guatemala

In Flores we wound up staying at Los Amigos, only Q30 in the dorms and they also do vegetarian food. Nice.

Franco, one of the Los Amigo hostel parrots.

Spanish study time. Te quero! :p I have a vocabulary of about 700 words now and am looking forward to going to Spanish School.

Later on that afternoon I drove Katrijn, Felicity and Charlotte up to Tikal to get our tickets for the next day and to watch the sunset. We had to motor up to Temple IV in order to get there in time, not that we ever had a chance to see it, but the guards would kick us out if we didn’t hurry.

As soon as we started walking back, the heavens opened and we got drenched. It stopped as soon as we reached the car. Hey ho.

Flores, Guatemala

No breakfast for us, Katrijn and I set off early for a very sweaty walk back to the car. Once there we found that Bill had patched up my leak with some JB Weld and we poured in a quart of oil and held our breath. It seemed to hold so in went another gallon and we ran it for 5 minutes. It was already roasting so didn’t take long to get very hot. It seemed we would be able to leave that day.

I took a few photos of Bill and his wife Katherine since they wouldn’t take anything for their trouble. I found out Bill is from Hendersonville in North Carolina, the place I spent my very strange thanksgiving last year. I promised to send them a copy once I got Internet access.

We left their little slice of heaven and drove gingerly along the rutted track, inevitably we snagged a few rocks on the way and each time I hopped out to survey the potential damage. Luckily I was careful enough to make it back to the paved highway, from now on it would be plain sailing.

We gave a lift to a local into San Ignacio which was much closer than I thought and we decided what to do. It was 11.30am by now and San Ignacio didn’t look that exciting. We had some lunch, worked out a few financial sums to make sure we had enough cash and headed towards the border. Hopefully we would be in Flores sipping beer by the lake very soon.

It was only 9 miles to the border and it didn’t cause any major problems. I got myself stamped out of Belize, canceled my car importation, paid my $37.50B and drove over no mans land towards the Guatemalan border. You have to drive through a building that sprays your car which proved completely ineffectual as by the time I had the windows up it had sprayed mostly the air in front of my car and little else.

No visa was required for me, I stood in the line behind a tiny Guatemalan lady and paid Q10 (€1) for my 90 visa. Next I did the paper work for my car which required my title and a copy of my title and passport. It cost Q40 which was payable at the nearby bank and I was given a sticker to place in my window. A border guard checked my paperwork and after paying a further Q50 cross the bridge we were in Guatemala and I was on country 5 of my trip.

The roads were worse than Belize which seemed strange and half of the trip over to Flores was on a rough, but mostly flat dirt track. I was just happy to get through the border in only an hour and relived my oil pan was still holding out.

I still wasn’t driving through the deep jungle I was hoping for, most of the roads look pretty much alike, houses and shops every once in a while and the usual hazards of dogs, horses and motorbikes. Flores was only a couple of hours away and a major tourist stop. It sits in the middle of a lake and we were early enough to check into one of the best and most popular hostels, Los Amigos.

We met Eva in the street and decided to give the tourist stuff a miss and spend the next day chilling out. I had ten million photos to process and lots of blog entries to write. Seemed like this was the place to do it, and when that was too boring I could go and visit the mythical city of Tikal. More ruins…. I think my last for a good while!

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