Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 43 - Xela, Coban, Lanquin (Guatemala)

After a tuk tuk ride to the bus stop to leave San Pedro La Laguna, we wished we had explored further than the lakeside tourist streets into the town during our stay. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We didn’t fall in love with San Pedro as some people seem to but enjoyed our stay and the western bars and restaurants.

The bus journey was straight forward with a direct chicken bus to Quetzaltenango, known to everyone as Xela (pronounced Shey-la). We checked into a decent hostel with a lovely courtyard and amazing roof terrace views over the city and went out to explore. The main square of Xela is quite attractive with columns and band stands but there’s not much else to see. Rhys popped in to MacDonalds for lunch and I went to a coffee shop next door then we headed to the market to buy ingredients for dinner. Buying food from the markets is always a great experience, the people are so helpful and friendly and it’s as novel for them to see you shop there as it is for you to go there. We ate dinner on the roof terrace before watching a film and heading to bed.

The next day we were up early and headed to the plaza to find a taxi to the Minerva bus station. Our taxi driver helpfully dropped us off next to the bus to Retalhuleu and we hopped on for the hour and a half ride to Xocomil (pronounced Shoc-co-meel), the biggest water park in Central America. Having told the conductor where we wanted to get off they stopped by the roadside seemingly in the middle of nowhere and shooed us off the bus. There were no signs along the road and nothing at the main gate other than a car park entrance to suggest we’d reached Xocomil. After tentatively asking the car park attendant if it was the right place he happily allowed us in and pointed us in the direction of the ticket office. It was 9:30am on a Thursday and the park had just opened. The massive car park was empty but for 4 buses and about 20 cars (and wouldn’t get any fuller all day). We paid our Q100 entrance (about £9) and headed to the changing rooms. It was brilliant and wouldn’t have been out of place in Europe or North America, it was incredibly clean and well maintained. There must have been about 20 different slides, some that we went on together on blow up rings, one that we raced down with foam mats, one that was like a giant toilet bowl, one that was like an inflatable log flume, one with a capsule and a trapdoor that was incredibly steep and of course the obligatory lazy river. We spent 4 hours at the park stopping only to gulp down our picnic. We left about 2pm and caught a bus back to Xela. From the terminal we walked back into town and back to the hostel.

We were up early again the following day for another early bus, this time to San Francisco El Alto for the Friday market. Supposedly the largest market in Central America you could buy absolutely anything. We were the only gringos we saw the whole time we were there and passed a couple of hours strolling through the food stalls and wandering around the animal field full of pigs, cows, multi coloured chickens and puppies, all thrown in sacks when bought and tossed over the buyers shoulder. Then we ventured into the haberdashery section to admire the cloth and after finding out how expensive some of it was we discovered a bargainous piece that we couldn’t resist and will make a beautiful bead throw when we get home. We ate lunch from a street stall before jumping on a chicken bus back in to Xela. After stopping at the market to buy food to cook for dinner we headed back to the hostel to enjoy the roof terrace and the views over the city and the hills beyond.

Another early start and we were at the bus station and on a bus by 7:45am heading to Huehuetenango. From Huhue we caught another bus to Sacapulas. Our next bus took us as far as Uspantan and the final bus, a micro took us to our destination Coban. The last leg of the journey was hellish, we were squashed in the back row of a minibus with two other people, Rhys had someone leaning on his legs for the 3 hours and I had half a seat and my shoulder out the window because there wasn’t enough room in the van. It was a tough trip. We got to Coban after dark and jumped in a cab to a hotel we’d been recommended only to find it was full. Luckily the owner called ahead to another couple of places and found us a bed at Casa Acuna. It was a blessing in disguise. The hostel was beautiful. The rooms were ok but the restaurant in the courtyard was stunning and wouldn’t have been out of place in Antigua, a little candlelit courtyard scattered with orchids and a little fountain. As we’d had such a hideous journey we treated ourselves to a meal in the restaurant before heading to bed for an early night.

The next morning we relaxed in the hostel before heading out to explore the town. Coban is pretty small and there wasn’t much to see. We walked around the square and stumbled across a beautiful park on the edge of town with massive trees and a little lake. Next we headed to the shopping mall where we grabbed lunch and bought some new shoes, a real treat! Back at the hostel we chilled in some armchairs, enjoyed some great coffee and cake in the restaurant and generally kicked back recovering from the hideous journey the day before.

After a walk across town with our bags and a couple of kind locals we found the stop for micros to Lanquin. The trip wasn’t as bad ass the previous day although the last 11km of the road was unpaved and pretty bumpy. In Lanquin we headed straight for El Retiro a lovely hostel right on the river with little huts spread around the garden. We checked in to a little hut with a river view and booked on to a trip that night to the Grutas de Lanquin, a bat cave tour.

We left the hostel for the short drive in the back of a truck out of town to the cave entrance. Once there we spent an hour or so exploring the caves with our guide. They were massive and very impressive. We slipped and slid our way around through the bat poo to see weird and wonderful rock formations and spider-scorpions before squeezing through a crevice and heading back to the mouth of the cave. We chose our perches and settled down to wait for dusk and the exodus of the bats. It was incredible, i’ve never seen so many bats, they swoop around you and dive out of the cave and you can feel the wind as they whistle by. After about half an hour we headed back to the hostel for buffet dinner in the lodge bar.

Despite the storm that had been raging all night we woke and decided we’d risk going on the Semuc Champey tour. We had intended to visit the park by ourselves but once we realised just how much hassle that was going to be with the lack of public transport and Spanish skills we decided to join the daily tour from the hostel. After moving into a 14 bed dorm because they’d double booked and were trying to make us take an ‘upgrade’ to a horrid concrete room away from the river, we left at 9am, again in the back of a truck for the 12km bumpy journey to the park. About 3km from the entrance we drew to a halt behind a number of other trucks carrying tourists. A tree had fallen across the road and the locals were trying to clear it with nothing but their machetes. After watching for 20 mins we decided we’d walk the remainder of the way int he hope of getting to the Kan’Ba caves before all the other trucks. A few hundred metres down the road and our guide unexpectedly veered off into the fields for 25 mins of cross country walking. This would have been fine but the rains meant it was ridiculously muddy and Rhys only had his birkenstocks on. Finally, after a lot of cursing we made it to the caves, just at the same time that all the trucks arrived - someone had turned up with an axe and made short work of clearing the tree. The cave tour started with the guides handing out candles before we waded in to the river in the cave holding them aloft. At some points you can’t touch the bottom and have to swim and at others you’re clinging on the the sharp rocks and the odd rope trying not to be swept downstream. There were a few slides and a jump and then we were back out in the daylight. It had the potential to be a really good trip but as all the trucks had arrived together it was a bit crowded and noisy with lots of people telling you to ‘vamos’ (let’s go!!!) all the time to speed things along. Before we left the cave place we stopped at a big swing over the river that you flew off and winded yourself when you hit the water and then we did a pointless 2 minutes of tubing.

Our next stop was the Parque Nacional Semuc Champey, one of the biggest tourist draws of Guatemala but suprisingly out of the way and uncrowded still. The park shelters a series of idyllic turquoise pools that have formed on the top of a suspended limestone bridge carved by the Rio Cahabon that disappears underground emerging at the other end of the staircase of pools. First we headed up through the dense jungle to the top of the gorge to the mirador to admire the pools from above before descending to see where the river rushes under the bridge. Then it was time to swim. Unfortunately we only had about an hour in the pools and could easily have spent a whole day there but it was enough time to try out the natural water slides and to swim through a tiny cave behind a waterfall and to generally admire the place. Once back in the car park to wait for our truck the heavens opened, we had been incredibly lucky and had amazing weather while in the park. Back at the lodge we showered and spent the evening in the bar drinking a few too many Cuba Libres with Lou and Jason, a lovely Kiwi couple who had been on our tour.