9/8/09 - 20/8/09 Xela to Flores 445 km
Well we did it, we finally left Xela after a few previous attempts to do so. It had been one of those places where no matter what you try to do, you may never leave. What started as a few weeks of Spanish language school, followed by our trek to Lago de Atitlan, turned into a relapse of Anna’s health problems from the previous month with more tests and visits to the specialist. In the meantime our English cycling friends, Martin and Susy caught up to us in Xela. Then on the 8th of July we received the sudden news from the Netherlands of the death of Anna’s father...our world was turned upside down in an instant. Within 48 hours we found ourselves on a plane via Panama and back in the Netherlands.
“The funeral was a beautiful goodbye for my dad, and most importantly time shared with my family before and in the weeks after. It was good to see that while my dad’s life ended, many friends are building up young families, and new lives start; to see Eva and Pieter’s one week old Sarah was a highlight of the time home”. - Anna
By the time we arrived back in Guatemala it all seemed like a dream. Strangely familiar to be back among the green highlands of Guatemala and reunited with our bikes and gear, safely stored in Xela with Furio and Eloisa, and proudly protected by our newest friend ‘Manchas’ their boxer.
So with a few wobbly pedal strokes on seemingly overloaded bikes, we ungracefully ride out of Xela in the early morning en-route to el Quiche, a highland town on the dirt road route to meet up with Martin and Susy again who had waited (or just bummed around too long at Lago de Atitlan and Antigua) for us to return.
The highlands of Guatemala are like nothing else we have ever ridden in our lives. A seemingly endless horizon of folded green mountains, symmetrical in their bumps, capped with clumps of dark green pine forest, and covered with a patchwork of square plots of Milpa (Corn or Maiz fields), beans and other vegetables and small adobe cottages. Smiling and laughing kids greet us from between the Milpa, ‘gringo...gringo’. The women in their traditional dress of brightly coloured huipiles carrying children slung to their backs or goods balanced on their heads greet us with gold-plated smiles and ‘beeuuunos diiiiaaaas’, a long drawn out version of good morning.
But as you can imagine, such a dramatic landscape inevitably means dramatic riding. Huge canyons have been cut into valleys around Quiche, meaning drops and gains of a couple of hundred metres in only a few kilometres of riding. Our toughest day riding was 40 kilometres and 2,000 vertical metres of climbing between Sacapulas and Uspantan.
From Uspantan it was 30 kilometre of flowing downhill on paved road past small landslides, through misty clouds and under lush green pine-studded slopes to the river at 500m, dropping over 1100 metres in elevation. From there it was over a rickety bridge and then back up again another 1000 metres over 30 kilometres...only now the sun was out, we were at low elevation in the heat and the road degraded into ‘ripio’, an unpaved rocky rubble. We had thought the grades were going to be gentler than the days before, but they seemed just as bad on the loose stuff. Trucks laboured up and down the steep switching road carting heavy loads of quarried rock...even they were struggling in parts.
As we rounded a bend and spotted the final ascent for a tough day, our hearts dropped as we were greeted with ‘no hay paso’ (there is no passing) and we came face to face with a huge landslide. No, not just a landslide, but a whole mountainside that seems to have just collapsed and crashed to the valley below taking everything in its path. We had heard of this particular landslide from people but we were completely unprepared for the enormity of it. Metres from where we stood at the edge of a huge crevasse the land plunged away into yellow, cream and red rock rubble. At the other side a road continued, oblivious to the 2 kilometre abyss where the rest of the road (and mountain) had once been.
The landslide happened on the 4th of january 2009, when over 10.000 tons of rock tumbled down a mountainside. It took about 40 coffee workers and a 2 km section of road on its way down. The road had been closed three weeks prior to the slide, due to a minor slide. But the coffee workers were dropped by a truck at the closure and made to walk to the other side where another truck would pick them up. That’s when the whole thing came crashing down.
From where we stand we can see that a new road has been cut into the valley below beneath the flow of the rubble. Our hearts sink again. The last kilometres are not going to come easily. We would have to go all the way down then back up a steep muddy road. With grinding bottom gear climbing and pushing we make our way back to the main road. What should have been two kilometres of gradual climbing ended up as an hour and a half struggle against the mind, exhaustion and the hill.
There have not been too many points on our trip where we felt like we were riding for our survival, but this was one. Amazingly as we lay exhausted at the top, a ‘Coke’ truck arrives up the same hill. I have this dream some days that we are riding in the desert, desperately thirsty and then out of the blue a ‘Coke’ truck arrives to offer us free drinks because we are cycling out there in the desert! Well it isn’t the desert, and we do have to pay for these ones, but at only 2.50Q per bottle (25 EURO cents, 40 cents AUS), we can’t complain!
The next day as we roll the last downhills, past coffee plantations into Coban we can’t help but feel that the mountains of the highlands are behind us, and feel a twinge of sadness for leaving it’s beauty behind...In Coban there is an amazing market that sprawls out onto the streets. In a clash of changing culture, Mayan women in bare feet and traditional dress sell their wares of fruit and vegetables from the pavement in front the new ‘Pollo Campero’ (a kind of KFC fast food establishment in Guatemala).
We also visit a working coffee ‘finca’ (plantation), to learn a little more about the plants that produce the ‘black gold’ that we know as coffee, cafe or koffie. In fact not only do they grow a huge amount of coffee here, but they are also one of the worlds largest suppliers of cardamon.
As soon as we arrive at Las Grutas de Lanquin the lure of the icy blue river and the campsite at its edge is too much to resist to break out the tent for the first time in months. Martin and I visit the caves which are somewhat of a disappointment. Many features have been vandalised or broken off, and there is a slippery death-defying trail along a series of light bulbs and power lines past insignificant features such as ‘el mono’ (the monkey). However as the sun goes down, the cave becomes filled with thousands of little insectivorous bats leaving the entrance of the cave on mass for a night time feeding frenzy in the forests. As we’re sitting at the entrance the noise of their ‘echolocation’ is deafening, and thousands of these creatures ‘flap’ mere centimetres past our faces on their way out over the Rio de Lanquin. At our riverside camp Anna and Susy are not missing out on the show either as the bats put on an aerobatic display over the blue waters, flooding by the thousands down the river.
It is only 11 kilometres to Semuc Champey, but it is brutally steep, rocky and unrideable in many sections. It still takes us 3 hours to complete, with much pushing of bikes and grinding then resting....”this place had better be worth it!” we mutter from sweat covered mouths. At his point we also agree that we will not ride this horror road back out to the highway again in a few days time...sometimes pick-up trucks have their purpose!
Semuc Champey in local Maya language means ‘the underground river’ and it is a series of limestone terraced pools of turquoise blue waters set in the lush jungle setting that was formed when the mountain above crashed on top of the river forming a natural limestone bridge over the raging river. Beneath the tranquil pools, the Rio Cahabon still rages ferociously. The butterfly life here is amazing, giant white butterflies the size of birds drift in pairs through the forest, along with a bright blue and black version, never stopping to land on a leaf. We swim, and then dive from the limestone bridges from one pool to the other in this piece of paradise.
We join a subterranean tour of the Las Marias Cuevas: wading and swimming through an underground network of caves in an icy cold river, climbing ladders and traversing waterfalls all barefoot and by candlelight. The injury list includes cut feet, swollen ankles, chilled bodies and a few extinguished candles. It’s a little more adventure than we had been promised, especially the waterfall.... No need for helmets, booties, lights, or guides that tell you what is going on - just pure adventure. “Hmmm...I wonder whether our insurance will cover this?”. We end the tour with a relaxing float in a tyre tube down the Rio Cahobon through mini rapids, under rainforest canopy and past limestone boulders back to camp.
Once off the mountains and down to the hot and sticky lowlands everything feels different. The jungle that was once there is almost all but cleared for cattle country. The occasional large tree stands testament to what mighty forest once stood here, pumping water, recycling nutrients and providing homes for thousands of creatures while limestone outcrops remain untouched draped with vines and lush forest. We occasionally hear the roar and scream of howler monkeys in the distance, restricted now to small patches of forest. We can’t help but wonder what untold damage has been done here, and will continue to be done in the search for more farming land, to grow more cattle...
The kids here continue to yell out “gringo, gringo” to us like in the rest of Guatemala (gringo can be a derogatory word for an American, but here usually means tourist or white person), but here it’s followed by “dame un quetzal...un quetzal” (“give me one coin...one coin”) and it’s said in an unfriendly way. The smiling, waving, shouting, friendly kids of the highlands have been replaced with begging untrusting eyes. The women and girls wash themselves and the laundry in the ponds and streams near the road and stare as we pass. The men carry machetes, work the fields and drink a lot of beer at the local ‘cantinas’ (bar). For some reason the people of the lowlands seem a little less savoury in character, eyes watching us all the time, never the same happy greetings of the highlands. We do however manage to ride 121 kilometres (the first 100km + day in Guatemala) through the ‘slashed’ and ‘burned’ jungle in the heat to get to Sayaxche.
In the morning at Sayaxche I wake up to the dreaded feeling in my stomach and rush to the toilet. A little culinary gift from the comedor (restaurant) we ate at the night before. I am in no state to try to ride, but also don’t feel like hanging around this unwelcoming town, so try to push through it. We have to wait for the unusual car ferry (powered by 2 palapa covered outboard motors, each with its own driver) while it miraculously zig-zags across the Rio Pasion to pick us up. It is getting hot and I am deteriorating quickly in the sun. Anna organises a lift with a young guy David in a pick-up truck and loads our gear and bikes on while we cross the river. At the other side as I am about to jump in the car, the smell of deep fried chicken from a ‘Pollo Frito’ roadside vendor is too much to bare and with a few short steps, I unload my breakfast just three metres away from them, which I’m sure would have helped their morning business. With a quick wipe of my chin, I am feeling much better and make the hour long trip to Flores without further incident. It’s amazing how I am still able to maintain a half fluent conversation in espanol with David, while feeling like I do. Muchas gracias David.
We have now been in Flores for a number of days both recovering from our stomach problems...oh the joys of travelling in central america! But looking forward to riding to the Mayan kingdom of Tikal in the next few days and onwards to Belize and the Caribean.
Que les vaya bien!
Alister and Anna
Ps. Thanks for the support, love and best wishes of all our family and friends over the past month.
