Antigua :: Guatemala
Saftey? Bah!
Places: Antigua, Pacaya, Lanquin & Semuc Champey.
Coolest thing I did: Toasted marshmallows on molten lava. Yes. Really.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: The CIA has actually orchestrated the overthrow of this countries´ elected government on several occasions. Once to save banana plantations.
Guatemala has some absolutley top notch natural beauty to behold but part of the fun is having to put your Western sense of legal protections behind and realise you´ll be doing things that are inherently dangerous and if you get hurt there isn´t much come back. Lawyers don´t get much work on litigation claims here. I imagine if you´re from the US that must sound a bit like heaven.
Take Pacaya. It´s an active volcano (last major eruption waayyy back in the 90s) about an hour´s trip out of Antigua and is pretty much day trip de jour with the Lonely Planet toting masses here. You imagine when they say you´ll be climbing an active volcano that you might get close enough to take some pictures, not close enough to have your leg hair burnt. You get to the lip of the crater and look down on a blackened lava field that is pure Mordor (from Lord of the Rings) sans flaming eye at the peak then notice people actually a few metres away from what looks very much like molten lava and realise you´ll be doing the same thing. Words don´t describe just how expletive inducing cool that is, despite the fact I´m pretty sure my travel insurance won´t cover this kind of thing.
Walking on lava that´s only hardened days ago is a lot like walking on ice. It´s crunchy, hollow sounding and has massive cracks all the way through it. Every now and then you look down a fissure and see the glow of shifting lava a foot below your feet and in the split second before you realise how scary that is the only thing that goes through your head is "holy crap, this is cool!". So I did toast marshmallows on a 1.5m long stick and realised that was pretty much what everyone did, only the Mexicans (lots of richer Mexican tourists, which was a change) seemed to prefer slices of chorizo. Posh types.
I made a move from Antigua to the central highlands of the country to a place called Lanquin, which is famous for some caves (gutas! See how my Spanish gets better in leaps and bounds!) that I didn´t see. The trip up there takes you over a couple of hours of windy roads through coffee and maize growing country and it appears to be just before planting season. They love slash and burn farming in this part of the world and there were times the smoke was so thick over these massive valleys you couldn´t see the sun. It seems by going up on Saturday they were all trying to get through two days of burning before their day off on Sunday and you mostly saw the spectacle of entire hillsides ablaze. I know it gets better as my trip back through the mountains was on Monday morning and the sky was clear over green hills and all rather breath taking.
The reason I didn´t go to the caves at Lanquin (I did stay in the town though) was I´m feeling the walls closing in a bit and I prefered to go to Semuc Champey (SC from here on in), which has a much better rap. That was a wise move, it seems with hindsight. They put you on the back of a ute for the 12k winding drive through the forest to the site and again you know saftey is in your own hands. If you´re stupid enough not to hold on and fall off the back of the tray onto the road all the Guatemalans are going to do is laugh. I´m starting to like that devil may care attitude.
The first part of the day was into the caves at SC, which are small, narrow and mostly under water. They tell you not to wear anything but your swimmers and some rather nasty looking shoes they give you (mine were size 17. Zapitas grande!), not even to take your camera. They give you a candle and say to try and hold it out of the water while you´re swimming (!!!) and then it´s an hour or so of swimming between rock formations, climbing ropes, sliding down waterfalls on your arse and jumping off high rocks into murkey water. It was an amazing experience and one I´d strongly recommend. I even got good at doing breast stroke with a lit candle between my teeth and not setting any of my hair on fire. A skill I´m sure will come in handy one day.
After lunch the other part of the day was SC itself, which is a series of huge clear pools that cascade from one into the other and after a photo frenzy from the lookout high above you then swim in each one, sliding down waterfalls or diving off them to get to the next level. The place has repute (acording to the Lonely Planet, in case anyone thinks I´m getting actual knowledge from anywhere else) of being one of the most beautiful in Guatemala and I´d have to say from what I´ve seen so far I´d agree. It´s also prime chocolate growing country so the little girls from the village come up and see you raw cocoa pods, which are sort of creamy coloured, have a purple centre and a very sticky. I don´t think they taste much like chocolate but all the Europeans disagree so maybe their sugar beet flavoured chocolate is closer to the real thing than our cane sugar stuff. I´m still not converting.
So a few really good days of nature (punctuated with some horrible bus rides I´ll spare you from) and I´m back in Antigua for my next leg. I´ve only got 4 more days til I fly to Costa Rica and I really should go and learn something about the country before I get to the airport. My last stop here will be Lago de Atitlan, which is supposedly another natural gem. I could get used to this. As I´ve since seen that the cities are hell holes and the transport is utter crap it´s good to know there´s something worth seeing here.