Feliz Navidad

I spent a quiet Christmas just relaxing and reading, as many places were shut down and services closed, so it wasn’t really possible to go anywhere except on foot.

I had hoped to make a few phone calls home, and the Internet cafe at my hotel actually has Skype installed, but their microphones don’t work properly so it would have been a one-way conversation with me doing all the listening.

I took the pictures here last night on Christmas Eve in Coban’s central square. After that, thousands of firecrackers burst all into the night. I was awakened by a series of bangs around 1 a.m. I tried to get into the Christmas spirit by watching It’s a Wonderful Life dubbed into Spanish, but somehow Jimmy Stewart speaking with a different voice and in Spanish just wasn’t the same.

If I can get tours tomorrow to a couple places in this area that I’d like to visit, I’ll stay another day. Otherwise, I’m off tomorrow by chicken bus to Nebaj, a Mayan town where I hope to spend a bit of time and hopefully study some Spanish and do some hiking.

Christmas shopping Guatemala style

The central market is just a block from my hotel in Coban, and there’s a lot of action there on Christmas Eve.

There are sellers of toys for children, of flowers, clothes, and tables with mountains of firecrackers. The firecrackers here are huge and no doubt would be banned in Canada — there’s enough of them to start a small regional war, and I hear them banging quite often.

I took a number of pictures — some surreptiously of the general action, and some posed, like the one of the lady selling flowers, who took off her jacket for the picture. At one bookstore where I tried to find a map, the young sales women asked me to take a picture of them, so I did, as did several other people in the street. I then went to a place that does instant digital pictures and got some 4 X 6 prints to give to the people who posed. They were thrilled, and one little girl (about 10) gave me a hug, and “Gracias. Feliz Navidad.”

Speaking of which, the song Feliz Navidad plays everywhere, as do a number of other Christmas songs. It’s been strange hearing them sung or played in different styles in different places — the reggae Christmas carols in Belize, and now various Latin styles here.

The main square has a Christmas tree that I’ve pictured below, sponsored by Gallo (rooster) Beer.

My hotel is like a museum

I decided that rather than face another day on the dreaded chicken buses, I would spend a couple more nights, including Christmas, in Coban. My hotel here is very interesting. It´s one of the oldest buildings in Coban and was a former nunnery. Like many old Guatemalan buildings, it has a simple wall on the front that comes right to the street, but inside everything is built around a courtyard with trees and flowers.

Around the courtyard and outside the rooms are all kinds of historic artifacts. My hotel is like a museum.

The room is pretty basic, but it does have hottish water, which is nice, as it gets quite cool here in the mountains. Like a spring or fall day at home.

So I´ll spend a quiet Christmas on my own, but there´s lots of celebration around me in the streets, so I´ll be able to participate in that.

Transportation madness – Guatemala style

Guatemala is one of the hardest countries in the Americas to travel any great distance. It’s very cheap, but the level of comfort is abysmal. For most trips, if the choice exists, it’s between a rundown chicken bus that used to be a Bluebird school bus absolutely crammed with people, or a minibus that is absolutely crammed too. Both stop everywhere to pick up and discharge passengers. The main difference is that the chicken bus is bigger and the minibus goes slightly faster. Guatemalans are very small people, and travel spaces are designed accordingly.

I spent yesterday and today experiencing Guatemala’s transportation system close-up, and will do the same tomorrow. Yesterday I got up at around 5:30 a.m. hoping to catch the sunrise at Tikal. Unfortunately, it had been raining and was still cloudy so there was no sunrise. I did visit the ruin site when it opened at 6 a.m., and it was a great time to see and hear birds and other animals, and to see the temples before the crowds arrived. I was quite exhausted from walking a great distance and climbing up and down temples on an empty stomach with no coffee when I decided to finish up.

My timing was good — as I was leaving it started to rain, and it rained the rest of the day. This was the first significant rain of my trip — there had only been a few small bursts of rain in Belize to cool things off between periods of hot sun.

I got a minibus with a group of young tourists who were going to Flores, the main tourist town near Tikal, but I got out at Santa Elena and caught another minibus going to Sayaxche, a small town to the south. My goal was to shorten today’s trip by getting as far as I could yesterday.

Sayaxche is an interesting little town on the banks of a river where there is no bridge for the main highway. At the river, there are narrow wooden passenger boats and a car ferry across. I got a hotel with a large shared balcony overlooking the river and the boats crossing back and forth. It was interesting watching the action as I relaxed at the hotel and the sun went down, but the noise from boats wakened me during the night. Sometimes the boats were jammed with passengers standing and with no evidence of life preservers. It appears Guatemala has no safety standards for boats.

On the hotel balcony was a cage with my favorite kind of bird, a scarlet macaw. He looked so confined I was tempted to release him, but the hotel people might not have been too happy if I’d done that.

Today I was also up at 5:15 a.m. to catch a chicken bus headed for Coban. I expected the ride to be about four hours as it was under 100 km, but partway through I learned it would actually take eight hours. I was holding my bags as I didn’t want to let them out of my sight in all the madness of people getting on and off, and the bus got fuller and fuller and fuller. About 4 1/2 hours into the trip my cramped legs were killing me and I couldn’t take it anymore so I got off in a town in the middle of nowhere to recover for a while.

Continuing on, I rode a minibus the rest of the way. It was also extremely crowded and uncomfortable, but at least I was able to secure my bag on the roof. They stopped everywhere to let people on and off, constantly trying to squeeze in more people so that there were close to 30 people at one time and it was hard to breathe. Despite the constant stopping and starting, they actually drove quickly on the narrow mountain roads. Suddenly, a cow ran out in front of the bus, and the driver momentarily lost control as he tried to avoid hitting the cow. The cow slammed into the side right next to where I was sitting. It was a hard bang. The driver regained control and drove on without stopping. I don’t know if the cow was fatally hit or not, but sometime later the driver inspected the vehicle and noticed only minor dents.

At last I arrived exhausted in Coban, where I am staying in a fascinating hotel that used to be a centuries old nunnery. It is built around a courtyard with trees and flowers, and there are all kinds of historic artifacts and masks from the area.

I’m not sure if I’ll stay here another day, or continue on to my destination of Nebaj. It depends, I guess, on whether I feel ready tomorrow to endure another day of Guatemalan transportation.

Images of Tikal