Saturday 27 February 2010 - Militant teachers and rivers of lava

Having recovered from our illness, we returned to lessons for our final week studying Spanish. However, when we totted up all of the things that we had planned to do before we left Antigua, suddenly our days were looking very full indeed. We decided to cram in as much as we could, and so in seven days, as well as studying Spanish for 20 hours (plus homework), we:

• Took our first salsa class where I shambled around like a slow witted giraffe in an attempt to move my hips to the rhythm;
• Climbed to the top of a hill overlooking the city allowing Lisa to take several hundred photographs;
• Explored the myriad ruined churches in town and worried about the magnitude of the earthquakes that ruined them;
• Climbed an active volcano (Volcan Pacaya), complete with river of lava that we were allowed to go alarmingly close to (see picture);
• Finally enjoyed our belated Valentine's dinner at a swanky restaurant;
• Saw some of the Antiguan celebrations of lent including huge ornate carpets of coloured sawdust depicting religious and natural scenes on the floors of the local churches. Also part of the festivities was a procession of hundreds of people through the streets carrying a ridiculously large statue of Christ resisting temptation from the devil;
• Returned (like gluttons for punishment) to Antigua F.C. for our second match and were rewarded with a 1-0 victory and the discovery that women will bring you a hot individual pizza to your seat for less than 1 pound. Genius.

After managing all that, as well as saying goodbye to our teachers (Ana and Mariesol), our Guatemalan family (Cornelia, Irma, Lionel and Luis Enrique) and our new friends (Rob, Sannee, Ines and Cathy) we were almost exhausted before we hit the road for our nightmare journey to Coban. The travel agent that we had booked our shuttle bus with assured us that we would arrive in Coban in the early afternoon after a 5 or 6 hour journey. Little could he have known the calamities that awaited us. Just over an hour out of Antigua our bus was instructed to leave the highway by a police officer that seemed to be employing an arbitrary system as to which vehicles could pass through his road block and which needed to adhere to it. This forced us through the outskirts of Guatemala City and into heavy traffic. After around an hour crawling along at 10 miles per hour we came to a complete standstill where we remained on our tiny un-airconditioned bus in the baking sunshine for two and a half hours. And the cause of the traffic? A terrible accident perhaps or some major roadworks? A teacher's strike. Although it was tricky to understand exactly what was going on (my Spanish still needs an awful lot of work) it seemed that teachers in Central America are a militant bunch not adverse to blocking highways to get their point across. When we finally got moving again and passed the barricades (which the strikers had, by then, rather genteelly moved to the other carriageway) we saw that it was constructed from just a few large tractor tyres and manned by a smallish number of protesters comfortably outnumbered by policemen. It seems Guatemalan teachers are not to be trifled with.

Having cleared that obstacle and following a break for lunch at the all conquering Guatemalan fried chicken franchise Pollo Campero, we returned to our bus to find that it now had a flat tyre. This necessitated a further hour and a half whilst a chap removed the wheel and then fixed the inner tube (confusingly using a file). As we crawled towards Coban (and were caught in more jams including one amidst a cloud of black flies) it became very clear that our projected afternoon arrival time was not going to materialise. We finally rolled in at 7:30pm, our 5 or 6 hour journey had taken more than 11 exhausting hours.

Our sleep that evening was not as peaceful as we had hoped as we were awoken at 5am by a fairly alarming earthquake (which we later learned had measured 5.6 on whatever scale they use to measure earthquakes these days) and then a smaller aftershock a few hours later. There was no real damage in Coban although a few places lost electricity (not surprising looking at some of the bonkers wiring in the streets. Thankfully our day in Coban provided some much needed respite. We visited an excellent orchid farm where we saw hundreds of plants and some wonderfully intricate flowers (as well as tasting fresh cardamom for the first time). We then went on to a coffee plantation where we saw the entire (surprisingly laborious) process from plant to cup and then finished off with a delicious cup of joe whilst looking out over the coffee fields.

From here it was something of a dash through Guatemala's highlights. First on the list was the natural splendor of Semuc Champey. This consists of an odd natural phenomenon where a river disappears underground into a large cave and re-emerges 300 or so metres further on. Above ground this has meant that water coming down from the surrounding mountains has no river to enter and so forms a series of bright blue pools perfect for swimming (and general larking about). We hiked up to a viewpoint to see the whole complex of pools (see picture) and then went for a swim. Our guide took me and a couple of others off to jump off waterfalls and explore more of the site whilst Lisa and the rest of the group stayed behind to relax in the cool water. It was a fun day completed by a visit to a local complex of caves (complete with bat colony) and a night in a shack in the jungle.

Our next calling point on our whistle-stop tour was somewhere that I had been looking forward to for weeks. When we first thought of coming to Central America, one of the big draws for me was the possibility of seeing ancient temples poking out from dense jungle. This was exactly what I had been promised from the mother of all Mayan ruins, Tikal. We awoke in the picturesque city of Flores at the ungodly hour of 4am in order to arrive at the ruins around day break when the wildlife is at its most active. We were not disappointed. Tikal was everything I had hoped for - spider monkeys swang in the trees whilst all manner of brightly coloured birds filled the air with their songs. We walked amongst the jungle and then emerged at huge temples from the top of which we could look out over the forest canopy. Also, since we arrived so early in the morning, for the first few hours the site was more or less deserted. Lisa and I sat alone at the top of huge Mayan temple and ate our breakfast. Add to this the realisation that Tikal is one of the locations for Star Wars (see here) and you have the ingredients for a wonderful day. The trip to Guatemala would have been worth it for Tikal alone.

Wasting no time, the next day we were on the road again to the riverside town of Rio Dulce for the much vaunted boat ride to the isolated town of Livingston. The journey was absolutely spectacular - the jungle was dense right up to the water's edge and was teeming with birdlife. Pelicans, comorants and herons flew alongside the boat whilst children paddled up in small canoes to sell shells to us. It was the sort of boat journey you would imagine in an Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider movie.

As soon as we reached our destination the contrast with the rest of Guatemala was apparent. Livingston is a town populated largely by Garifuna people - black people who came ashore from the Caribbean many years ago to settle here. Hence the feel of Livingston is very different with reggae playing in every bar and women asking every five minutes if Lisa and I would like our hair braided. We will stay here for one more night to get more of a feel for the place before rolling on again.