Between Flores, Tikal and El Mirador we'd been in the country 10 days or so and seen almost nothing of Guatemela. We'd been in the protective embrace of the tourist havens, the jungle, the ruins. Our destination, Todos Santos, lay southwest of Flores and in the highlands. While the town can be reached in about two days via the capital and the highways, we opted for the backdoor route. The trip took nearly a week.
We took morning coffee and said our farewells to Martyn… we'd been travelling together for over three weeks. Then we hiked over the causeway and got a final view of the lake. In Santa Elena, we caught a collectivo to Poptun… the trip took an hour and a half. From there we caught a chicken bus. Chicken buses are those fabled Central American contraptions that serve as public transport over long distances… converted U.S. school buses… so named for the cakling livestock that is often brought aboard. The chicken buses are a legend… spectacularly decripd, immensely crowded, astoundingly uncomfortable. They really rattle about… tremble, clatter, shake… you get packed in there, three to a seat… standing space is taken. The woman to your right has two chickens in a shawl, the woman to the left is breast feeding. Spanish music blares from the speakers… some slapstick theme tune… and we move along… banging and rocking over the potholes… the bus sways deeply… one way, then the next… we hit a pebble and jump out of our seats… the bus driver grinds the gears… a hanging crucifix moves like a badly timed pendulum.
Our first chicken bus took us as far as Fray Bartolome… a slow and arduous wind on mountain dirt track… to dark rocks and valleys… we rose and fell amoung solid stacks. On the edge of a village en route, a devasted chicken bus had been dragged from the edge… front and roof crushed densely… seats ripped out… an empty wreckage. A minute later we passed another chicken bus coming the opposite way… peppered with bullet holes. We went on…
Fray Bartolome de las Casas was a spreadout, dusty sort of town. We followed the main drag upto the plaza, el parque as they call it. A few hundred people had formed in demonstration… they'd set up a line of rocks across the road, only letting certain vehicles through. Everyone was crowded around a loudspeaker… standing and drinking coffee and talking… we passed by with our backpacks and checked into a hotel nearby. We ate in the adjoining restaurant. I took a fried chicken dinner. They had a parrot in a cage that made continual demented noises. A patron stood up and wandered over the room. He had a revolver stuck down the back of his jeans. I watched him. The parrot said:
"Woochy-whoochy-woo-woo-woo… waah, waah, waahk… k.k."
We ate our chicken dinner.
The next day we made it to Semuc Champey… a famous natural wonder located roughly in the centre of the country. We first caught a chicken bus south… passed through several impoverished villages… arrived in a town and spent forty minutes pressing through an enormous crowded market. We were let out some time after that, maybe three hours journey in total, we exited at some nowhere point where the road split. We climbed onto a cattletruck with several other passengers and began the descent to Lanquin. Forty minutes later, we piled out and secured a final ride in a pickup to Semuc Champey itself.
Semuc Champey is a place of great beauty and healing… several large, clean pools, descending by tiers… they run into each other with little waterfalls… cascade over limestone shelves… warm sometimes, cool sometimes. Swirling erosion has littled the banks with smaller pools and puddles, sinous carving, pot-holes and curling shapes. Beneath the pools an immense and crashing torrent rides… visible through holes in the rock… a roaring rapid that exits about half a kilometre downstream… into the lower most pool. The vegetation is lush and tropical… hanging vines and creeping roots. The landscape is dramatically carved and dark. Semuc Champey is purely enchanted… you'll feel immediately good there. A magical quality to the water.
We spent two days at Maria's, a hostel about 1km from the pools. The first night we maintained the tradition of the festival in honour of Saint Patrick. We got shitfaced. We had a good party with the beer and rum and several travellers from the U.S. England, India, Denmark and Canada. We had a good game of cards… shithead, naturally. The next morning, my head was thick and I took it to the pools at Semuc Chapmey. The effect was instant and impressive… immediate relief… and the moment I left the place, my hangover returned. Let every drinker know what a thing is water.
The next day we made it to Coban, a few hours south west… the only sizable city in the region and the jumping off point for the Western Highlands amoung other places. We took a collectivo which provided no more comfort than the chicken buses… at twice the cost. The driver kept stopping for food and passengers. He was insatiable… with his chicken tortillas. And when the vehicle was full of passengers, he began strapping them on top. It took an hour just to get out of Lanquin.
We finally got to the city and it wa cold, clouded and wet. Coban boasted some of the ugliest architecture we'd ever seen… a hideous glass bandstand supported by solid, concrete legs… neo-classical pillars held up a structure of civic pretense… churches and clocktowers were marzipam horror. We checked into a hotel and had a chicken dinner. Then we crashed, under the weather.
In the morning, we waited by the road to catch a chicken bus to Uspantan. Kids tried to sell us chewing gum. When finally the thing came, we passed our luggage to the monkey on the roof. Then we crammed ourselves in. Women came with baskets of tortilla and chicken… they sold what they could and left. The bus took us into the highlands but we couldn't see much… everything was dense with fog. We exited into Uspantan in the early afternoon. The town was small and clean and prettily placed in the mountains. We crashed for the evening and then woke at five for the final trek to Todos Santos.
We caught the first bus to Sacapulas at 6.00… arrived around nine and the town was manic with a market. Pickups, cars and cattletrucks arrived with produce and people. It was a dense crowd… traffic came and went on all sides. We ate and then crossed the bridge out of town. We sat with out backpacks and waited for a ride… watched the vehicles and movement. A German was waiting, on his way to Mexico… it passed the time to talk a bit. Finally a pickup came to take us to Aguacatan. Six of us climbed in the back, three foreigners, three locals. We wound over a long construction site… workers watched us with their shovels… the road was a thing in progress. The hills were bare and raped and studded with dead, black, trees. The land was bleak, decimated. We exited out at Aguacatan and even larger market was underway. From Aguacatan we caught a bus to Huehuetenango and from Huehue, one final bus to Todos Santos… high, high into the mountains, over two hours of almost continual climbing. We exited out on the edge of twilight, everyone clad in traditional threads. The air was cold and clouds rolled down the hills. We'd made it.