Guatemalan Adventures!

Seeing Guatemala

Melanie and I have done so many cool things the last two weeks it’s hard to believe and it will be difficult to put into one blog entry without being ten pages long. I’ll try to keep it fairly short but please read on as I am very excited to share the recent events with you all. Hope you enjoy...

Las Fuentes Georginas

Two weekends ago we arranged a tour with Adrenaline Tours to take a day trip to a place called Las Fuentes Georginas. They are naturally hot sulpher springs that are tucked away in the mountains a few miles outside of town. They are naturally heated by the active volcano that they are located upon. The hot springs sounded amazingly tantalizing after not having had a decent hot bath (or shower for that matter) in months. The driver climbed a windy mountain road to about 9000 ft. and into the clouds. The jungle was dense, clouds pouring over the trees and sulpher steam rising up out of the mountain side. The stench of rotten eggs from the sulpher was overpowering. Or was it just because I hadn’t bathed in a week?

We reached the parking lot, exited the van, and headed up a little path toward the fountains. There were many people frolicking around in the steamy water including, unfortunately, a few too many kids for my liking for such a small pool. I’ve peed in a few pools in my time and I feared that this was a karmic payback. I jumped in nonetheless trying to block it out of my head. The water felt great. It was spooky hiw the steam rose off of the water. I thought about the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he’s in the pot on the stove and imagined chopped up veggies falling from the sky into the water around me. I think the sulpher was making me hallucinate a little. Melanie got in the water for about two seconds, and not being able to block out the vision of swimming in twenty kid's warm urine, decided she had enjoyed it quite enough. She headed to the tiki bar overlooking the fountain for a drink. That’s the spirit, right? I climbed out soon after witnessing one of the children pushing his dog into the water and then feeling a particulary warm patch of water flow by my legs. I then saw this sign posted and wanted to report the four legged law breaker. He definately was not wearing a bathing suit!

We headed back to Xela down the curvy cliff side road in the fog. It was pretty herky jerky and stop and go driving because of the conditions which didn’t sit too well with Mel. We made it back to our apartment and she ended up worshiping the porcelin god like I had never seen her do before. She didn’t even drink any alcohal at the bar. I ended up coming down with a cold a few days later so we both ended up feeling a little terrible after that trip, but it was definately worth the trouble, if just for the scenery alone.

The Journey to Tikal

Last Wednesday we boarded a first class bus headed for Guatemala City. It’s supposed to be a six hour bus ride to Guat. City, another six to Coban, and then another eight to Flores, which luckily is about an hour away from the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal. Don’t think we planned on doing all that in one shot. We stayed in Guatemala City for one night, Coban for two nights, and Flores for two as well.

We arrived in Guatemala City exhausted after our six hour ride turned into eight because of all the road construction delays. I have to point out something really bizarre here. The music selection on the bus ride was normal at first with Spanish pop music and some classic Spanish tunes. The third cd they put in, however, was what seems to be the Guatemalan tourism board standard issue gringo cd of eighties US pop music. It was apparantly meant to be a special treat for us, as we were the only gringos on board. Everyone kept turning to see if we were enjoying ourselves at which point, to Melanie’s horror, I would open-mouth grin and bob my head wildly, giving my best dance moves. I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings would I?

We had heard the exact same cd on several occasions since arriving in Guatemala in various buses, vans, and boats. It would not be the only time we heard it on this particular trip either. This was by far the most fun of any of the times though. The best part in this instance was the 60 year old Guatemalan lady who had been happily singing along with all the Spanish songs still trying to hum or sing along with the eighties cd until Funkytown came on at which point she finally gave up. The song list included (I’m leaving a few out that I can’t remember) : “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”(C.Lauper), “Eye of the Tiger”(Survivor), “Ghostbusters” (yes the Ghostbusters theme song - she was still humming along at this point!), “Africa”(Toto), “Rockit”(H. Hancock), “Playing With the Queen of Hearts”(Juice Newton), “Bad Medicine” (Bon Jovi), “Betty Davis Eyes” (Kim Carnes - Possibly the worst song I have ever heard in my life), M.J.’s “Beat It” & “Billie Jean” double shot, the aforementioned “Funkytown” (Lipps Inc), and “You Know I Love You” (Phil Collins).

I put on an elbow swinging dance in the aisle during “Queen of Hearts”, showed off my head banging skills during “Bad Medicine”, and tried, unsucessfully, to get everyone to shout “Ghostbusters!” every one of the two thousand times they yell it in that song. Melanie downed half the pill vial of valiums at the beginning of “Eye of the Tiger” and was happily crumpled on the floor in front of her seat by the time the “Ghostbusters” song started. She’s quick like that.

I’ll let Melanie describe our time in Guatemala City. The city wasn’t anything special, but I think we enjoyed our one night there more than almost any place we’ve been on this trip so far. I’ll let her explain why.

Off we went the next morning well rested, happy, and thoroughly clean to the next bus station. We purchased our bus tickets for a city called Cobán and ran to the café next door to grab a quick bite to eat before departure. Halfway through our meal a “little person” walked in and walked a few tables back and sat down to have lunch. She recieved her food and started watching a soccer game on the television. Melanie, not in eye shot of her (a coke machine blocked her view), but definately within earshot, was talking about something (I can’t remember what), and said “....I would FREAK!” All that little person heard was the word “freak”. She whipped around to stare at me! If looks could kill...

If I recall correctly this is not the first time Melanie has insulted a little person. Her friends will remember. Before we met there is a story about her refusing to dance with a very handsome four foot tall gentleman at a dance club in a lovely plaid suit at the Limelight. Very very sad.

So, after making Melanie feel really bad about something she didn’t intend and drudging up bad memories of her past we boarded the bus. We sat in the sun on the highway at a dead stop for almost two hours trying to leave the city. Traffic was a nightmare and the sun turned the bus into an e-z bake oven. The driver, apparantly concerned about conserving gas, refused to turn on the air conditioning, and the windows on the first class buses do not roll down. It was another butt numbing, sweat pouring, head aching eight hour bus ride. The last two and a half hours on this ride they showed the newest Scorsese flick, ¨The Departed¨with Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCapprio, and Jack Nicholson. The voices were sadly dubbed over in Spanish. How can you have a movie with Jack in it and dub over his voice?

I still thought the movie was great, but everyone on the bus would glance at me at shake their head every time someone got their brains splattered all over a wall, which in this movie was about every 10 seconds... yet another akward bus ride. It seemed like we had much better luck on chicken busses and were bound and determined to take one of those on the journey from Cobán to Flores.

Meanwhile we were dropped off in Cobán, a little city, which is a hub for all tourists headed to Tikal. We checked in to our hotel, went for a bite to eat, then headed to a local travel office to sign up for a tour of a beautiful place called Semuc Champey that was about an hour away.

This part of Guatemala, come to find out, the locals all go to the local university to get degrees in the ¨hostitality¨ industry. The service at the restaurants was terrible, the people at the tour office were jerks, and everyone on the streets looked like they wanted to smash my ugly white face in. This continued unfortunately through Flores as well. It seemed as if the people were extremely tired of their lives depending solely on tourism. In these particular places it is way more common for people from the U.S. to fly in, chug beers, wreck their hotel rooms, and see the pyramids then go home. I wanted to carry around a sign saying that I'd lived here for a month and a half. The people and the service, for the most part, was very dissapointing and depressing.

We visited Semuc Champey the following day. The one compact disc the driver had in the tour van?... you guessed it, that damn eighties cd. He was not discouraged by our request for a radio station and simply turned “Beat It” up a few decibles while saying to all of us in bad English,

¨You like ochentas (eighties) music, no?¨.

Semuc Champey is up in the mountains where a river runs into an underground cave and mountain water runs down to form beatiful crystal clear multi-leveled swimming holes on top of the cave. The mountain water meets up with the underground river as it exits the cave to form a huge rapidly flowing river. It is truly something to behold: the view from the mountain, the river running into the cave (death to anyone who falls in), and the beauty of the pools.

We hiked up a grueling path to a beatutiful vista point first. Check out the view. The hike down the mountain led us to where the water flowed into the cave. It was phenominally cool. We then hiked through a stream over mossy, incredibly slick rocks to where the pools were. It seriously was like what I had always imagined the fountain of youth to look like. Beautiful turqouise water with little bright yellow fish swimming around.

Here's a picture of Melanie doggy paddling around (Check out the Guatemalan kid's Van Damme shirt!).

There were layers of deep crystal clear water. You could dive in to each level from the previous one. There were also a great cliff with several levels to dive off of into one of the pools. The water was clean and refreshingly cool. I felt like screaming for joy it felt so good. I spent a good hour with my new friends climbing up tree roots to about twenty feet on the mountainside overlooking one of the pools and diving in. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun.

Pictures of the river flowing into the underground cave:

We headed back to the hotel after our exhausting day of hiking, diving and swimming and crashed out knowing that we had yet another full day of bus travel to look foward to the following day, only this time on a chicken bus headed towards Tikal where we were going to see more ancient ruins, climb more pyramids, and see hundreds and hundreds of MONKEYS!!!

To be continued....