After returning to Guatemala city to buy a new pair of shoes -Adidas running shoes for the KoRn fan in me and also because I wasn't about to buy a pair of Ocean Pacifics- I took a 5 hour Monja Blanca (White Nun) luxury bus to Coban, not to be confused with Copan. Coban is a tourist hub of a city of about 55,000 that's all about growing coffee. As soon as I got in I made my way across town to a microbus to Lanquin which is a small town 45km away, but the drive took 2 hours because the roads are slow.
We passed through green rolling mountains and lots of little farms suffering from a lot less poverty than on the way to Xela from Guate. When I got into town I headed to a backpacker's paradise called El Retiro which features thatch huts with bunks, a lovely river, and a real tasty restaurant that served lots of veggie friendly options. What a place for me! I settled in, but felt a little feverish for some reason as my dirty-mountain-kid cough/undefined illness seemed to be digging in. I laid down for a little and felt a lot better in time for dinner.
My 3 hutmates were Spanish gals in their 30s who I had trouble understanding, but they were real nice. The next morning I hopped on the back of a pickup with a group of 10 other gringos and went to Panajachel which is probably the coolest place I{ve ever been. Our guide was a young Guatemalteco who took people out everyday to the same place, so he knew what he was doing, so I figured. We got dropped off at a cave called Santa Maria which was only recently explored in totality (as it turns out, by our guide who was a regular caver).
We dropped our backpacks off at the office of the cave which was right next to a beautiful green river and put on water-logged donated shoes that hung on nails behind the office for use in the cave. I sported a rad pair of white Kswisses and looked like a real tool.
Then we went as a group down the riverbank a little bit to a treestump that had a ropeswing tied off to a pole. Our guide, who's name I still don't know, but will call Jorge for the sake of this entry, was all, "So who's gonna go first? It's a good warmup for the cave," as he looked at me. I told him I'd gladly do it after he did and cleared the rocks that were looming under the water near the bank. He assured us all that we'd be well out into the middle of the river, away from the rocks by the time we would let go and drop/fly into the water. A brave Irishman named Rory went first and went sailing over the river and let go awkwardly and dropped the 10+ feet down sort of sideways. He lost his Crocs and had to go swimming after them and started swimming to the opposite bank of the river, why I{m not sure. Then someone else went and screamed and landed awkwardly too. I was only casually considering taking the plunge until everyone else except a Swiss couple and an Israeli went. THe Swiss guy, Manuel was all "look, even the American isn't doing it!" so as not to feel too pressured himself so I thought, "oh, what the hell. This looks like a good experience waiting to happen." So I hopped on the swing and without waiting too long to freak myself out I went flying out over the river and dropped from what seemed like an enormous height without injury and I felt great (eventhough I got some water in my nose)! I swam back to shore and we headed off to the cave.
Everyone got a
candle but being NOLS trained to the maXXX I had my headlamp ready to go. It turned out that Jorge had taken 7 days to explore the cave and map it in its entirety. I eagerly followed him in. It turns out that Guatemalan caving differs greatly from supercautious conscientious NOLS caving. We were not in any way prepared for injuries, backup light sources, or extra food or water (we had none at all). But what the hell. I can handle myself in any cave that maintains its integrity. We entered the cave which was already a pool of water then Jorge went ahead of me and dove in and started swimming balls to the walls ahead. So I followed him as I had both hands free to practice my Waterworld Mariner's-butterfly stroke (not really). The other folks had a candle in one hand and had trouble swimming. We kept going forward, swimming and wading until we got to a ladder that was lashed to a beam installed up above. Jorge climbed up and I followed. We were all barefoot and in swimsuits, definitely not leaving
no trace. There were parts to the swims where I couldn't touch the bottom at all and was glad I'm not retarded in the water. We kept going and going until we reached a really deep pool that Jorge encouraged us to jump into from about 7 feet up above. I took a pass on that one as getting injured/stuck in a cave is not my idea of a good time. We headed back to the entrance and when we got to the ladders we took another route down a rushing vortex-like hole. I'd noticed it on the way in, but thought better of poking it as it looked like the kind of place where you could be sucked in and never come out. Well, that's how we got out. I had to lower myself down and duck under a waterfall and big rock to a room where everyone else was waiting then Jorge came down and we exited. It was a lot of people's first cave experience and they were pretty wowed. It was definitely the most dangerous cave experience I've ever had, but a good one, nonetheless. I'd never been in a cave with that much (swimmable) water. Rad.
Then we went back to the office, grabbed inner tubes and headed upstream and hopped in the river and floated down until
we got to a bridge that the road took to Panajachel. We paddled to the opposite bank and walked back across the bridge where we were informed we could jump. This bridge was a steel structure with giant steel cables supporting it on either side. It hung 10m over the river. Was I going to jump? Of course not. That would be dangerous and not something my mom would approve of. Other people gave it a go, overcoming their fear and reporting that it was the jam and definitely worth doing. I was not convinced. I began thinking about why I didn't want to do it and the only reason I could think of was just plain fear (of jumping off a fucking 34' bridge into a river). "You only live once," I heard from Andy, the other Irishman trying to convince Rory to jump. Yes that is true, but I don't want to die in Guatemala. But seriously, Dan, you're not going to die. Just go down straight and you'll be fine. I climbed over the side and stood on a girder looking down as Ron, one of the two Israelis held my glasses. Before I climbed over I had said that "without being able to see, things were less scary" which proved to be incorrect. I took a breath and, without thinking, stepped off. I inhaled deeply and couldn't believe how fast I was accelerating and remember thinking "Oh, shit. This is going to hurt." But I went in pretty smoothly and came back up and reported that I recommended the experience to those who had yet to try it. Doing things that yer afraid to do is the jam. You just have to be able to overcome reason, your gut, and see what happens. Yay!
Then we all returned our inner tubes and hoofed it to Panajachel (national park). Along the way Jorge knew some little girls at a farm and they were selling chocolate wrapped in white printer paper for Q10. They had a cacao fruit which Jorge busted open and gave us the beans to sample. They had a sweet, tangy gelatinous coating on them which we sucked off then spit the seed out. I went in halfsies on a square of what turned out to be grainy chocolate goo that had a real nice cigarette flavor to it. Stimulating the rural economy, we were. T'was my good deed for the day. Everyone sampled it and agreed that it was not worth eating so I left it at the entrance booth to the park for someone who smoked.
We hiked up to a lookout high above the 350m of limestone bridge covered in clear turqouise pools under which a raging torrent of water flowed and continued downstream. We hiked down to the pools and checked out the upstream entrance where the river flowed under the pools/bridge and witnessed the awesome force with which the water flowed. pretty rad. Then we went downstream a little to
a nice clear pool and I dove in and the water was wonderful and unlike anything I've ever experienced before. What a place! Where the rock came up from the bottom it was covered in a slimy algae that made walking on it really diff'. We swam around for a while then met Jorge down at the last pool downstream where he brought a rope 'n' wood ladder.
He took 4 of us to the other side of the pool and slung the ladder around a good sized rock and threw the ladder over the side down a waterfall. He climbed down first, barefoot. We followed clinging to the ladder for dear life. This shit was
Dangerous! If we fell, we'd be
Fucked! Jorge was holding the end of the ladder down below. It turned out that my bare feet had incredibly good traction on the wet, seemingly smooth limestone. All that caving in boots kept that fact from me. We were now under the bridge on a ledge looking down into the exit torrent that furiously roared out into the river. Water was dripping down on us from the ceiling as it filtered through the limestone from the pools. We climbed down further, to my hesitance, to get a better look at the rushing water which was exploding from a hole in the giant tunnel a couple hundred feet away. Then we climbed back up and called it a day and watched the other four's stuff as they went down. Then on the way back Andy told me about his pal who was arrested bringing 2 suitcases of weed into Japan from Thailand and was getting out of jail after 8 years. He was just a regular dude who didn't hurt no one and got caught up in some shit while on holiday during college. It was a good day in Guatemala.
The next day I went back to Coban instead of going to Chisec to check out some supposedly rad caves because I wasn't feeling up to it and went to the local coffee finca. The tour was boring, but I learned about coffee. There were 3 square-as-can-be American retirees on the tour along with a Quebecoise couple. One of the Americans kept asking really stupid questions. Then we sampled some weakly brewed coffee and I left. Put that in your naturally formed wonder of a skull bong and smoke it.
