Cobán: Unplanned Orchids

Owing to a late start on my part and infrequent transportation on Sundays, I was only able to make it 30 miles to Cobán after leaving Lanquín.  Owing to unclean water and/or poor food preparation, I found myself forced to spend the next 3 or 4 days in Cobán.  There isn't a whole lot going on in Cobán, but I wasn't up for anything that took me further than 50 meters from the nearest bathroom.  At that point there isn't much you can do but eat antibiotics, replace all the fluids you're losing and wait for it to pass.

On my last day in Cobán, though, I felt somewhat better and decided I might as well do something.  Call it a test run before getting on an overnight bus.  So off I went to the orchid nursery.

One of their specialties is miniature orchids.  Yes, that's a champagne cork.

These photos are in no particular order, mostly because this was so long ago now that I've long forgotten any plan I might have had.  But flowers are pretty, and that is reason unto itself.

This, though, I remember is the biggest orchid in the world.

It's these long dangly bits that make it the "biggest."  Kinda cheating, if you ask me.  "Longest" I might allow.

Feel free to chime in with identifications or whatnot.

It's all kind of lost on me, quite frankly.

There were flowers other than orchids, of course.

Another tiny one (not my hand).

Ah, very nice.

Purple.

This guy was pretty funny/bizarre. Check out the video.

It's almost obscene, right?

 Some of them don't even really look like flowers.

 Ach! It's tiny!

 Another smallish one.  And beautiful.

Weird/cool.

It's a see-through bug!

I particularly liked this purplish one.

In the low light it was ghostly, almost seeming to produce its own light.  Can we go even closer?

Yes!

And that was pretty much it.

Semuc Champey

Before I get to Semuc Champey, I need to spend a few moments describing, well.. getting to Semuc Champey. I left Flores, the nearest town to Tikal, fairly early in the morning.  My destination was Lanquín, a wide spot in the road near Semuc Champey that supposedly boasted hippy-backpacker-jungle-paradises.  Alright, sounds good.

My initial inquiries at the municipal bus station left me, frankly, incensed.  "$15 for a 6 hour ride directly to where I want to go?  Are you serious?  I'll bet I can do it for $7!"  So off I stormed, looking for an "authentic" Guatemalan travel experience.  Really, though, how bad could it be?  Lanquín is only 80 miles from Flores, as the crow flies.  And more to the point, it's barely one index finger away.

Little known fact: index fingers (or fractions thereof) are an internationally recognized measure of distance.

When I inquired at the local marketplace, I was informed that there were no vans to Lanquín.  I kept asking.  There had to be a way to get there.  At one point I went so far as to tell someone "No te creo," a rather impolite and direct: "I don't believe you."  I eventually got it through my head that though there were no vans to Lanquín, there were vans for Sayaxché, which was at least in the right direction.

Two or three hours later, I discovered why there was no van to Lanquín.  There was no bridge across the river.  Everyone just piled off the van, hopped on the waiting boats and motored across, where there were more vans waiting.  Touché, Guatemala, touché.

Leaving Sayaché I received my next lesson in "authentic" Guatemalan travel mores.  Every van is run by a two man team: a driver, usually a little on the older side, and a boy.  The boy collects the money, redistributes the passengers as needed and acts as a crier.  While puttering away from the river crossing, our boy was leaning out of the sliding door yelling at the top of his lungs: "Raxrujá, Raxrujá, Raxrujá!" (our next destination).  I surveyed our van and, thinking it already rather full, inquired of the boy: "A dondé vas a poner más personas? Me parece que ya está llena."  I don't think my idiotic comment even earned me a derisory look.  As I was soon to find out, we were far from full.

At it's fullest, I counted at least 25 men, women and children in the van.  At one point I was seated in the very back center, with two people on either side of me and a boy of perhaps 10 standing in the cargo area leaning over my shoulder.  If that van had crashed I would have died a terrible, fiery death.  It would have been completely impossible to escape, so encased was I in humanity.

Seat belts for 15 but space for 25+.

Upon reaching Raxrujá I learned a final lesson for the day: the most direct way to a place is not always the way to that place.  Despite being perhaps only 20 miles from my ultimate destination I had no choice but to catch another van to Cóban and from there make my way to Lanquín, a total of 50 or more miles instead of 20.

And to top it all off, the power was out when I arrived in Lanquín.  To get to the hostel I had to walk 500 meters down a steep dirt road that was so dark at times that I could see absolutely nothing.  Not my feet beneath me nor the sky above me nor the direction the road might be turning.  I had to shuffle along for fear that would roll my ankle or walk right off the edge.

Welcome to Guatemala!

Finally, without further ado, Semuc Champey.  It's what's called a limestone bridge, which is when the majority of a river descends into a limestone cavern but a small percentage continues along the surface.

The ride out in the morning was an experience in and of itself.

Bouncing along standing up in the back of a pickup.  The scenery was quite stunning.

Before going down to the waterfalls themselves, you're encouraged to climb up to the mirador (look out point).  It's a pretty grueling 45 minute climb almost straight up through the jungle, but obviously well worth the effort.

This was one of those times I cursed my basic little point and shoot camera.  It simply doesn't have a wide enough field to show Semuc Champey in all its glory.

For a bit of a sense of scale, I took this shot at maximum zoom. See the little people?

A few of my fellow travelers standing on the platform at the mirador.  We were a long way up.

After descending from the mirador you're immediately drawn to roar of the river falling into the caves.

Note the Guatemalan fellow at the upper left.  His job is to tell stupid tourists not to get too close the hole.

The reduced volume of water leads to gently flowing waterfalls between still pools.  As the sun went down the canyon quickly fell into shade, a blessing in the tropical heat.

Sun dappled pools, trees hanging over them while you just lounge away the afternoon.  It was an incredibly beautiful place.

Looking back up the canyon.

Not all was peace and calm.  I like to jump off things into water.

Collecting our belongings to leave.  *tear* *sniffle*

It was a dazzling emerging from the shady canyon to the full sunlight.

There was another activity that day that I unfortunately have no pictures of: the caves themselves.  Before hiking up to the mirador we were led several hundred meters into one of the smaller branches of the cave system.  We alternately walked, waded and swam deep into the earth, climbing waterfalls as necessary.  It was pretty cool, particularly the swimming part.  We were each given a candle to light our way, so while swimming you had to hold one hand above the surface or face the prospect of complete and utter darkness.  It made me feel.. intrepid.

At one point, another fellow and I decided to forge ahead while the rest of the group collected themselves (as it turned out, we had reached the turnaround point, so we probably shouldn't have gone on).  We swam another 50 meters or so, well beyond ear or eye shot of the others before stopping to savor the sense of solitude and bizarre aspect of the cave, all stone and sand and water and blackness beyond the flickering light of our candles.  Suddenly, we both realized we were hearing voices not from behind us (from where we expected the rest of the group to be catching up) but from ahead of us, from deeper into the cave.

We shared an apprehensive look and a few moments of bewilderment bordering on fear before a pair of figures emerged from around the next bend.  A Western-looking woman wearing a sheepish look followed by a Guatemalan fellow looking rather proud of himself.

Ahhhh. Hahahaha. Good on ya, mate.