El Portal Lanquin

... our views on the world. A top bloke I must say! Anyway the journey was uneventful apart from riding through beautiful tropical forest and crossing a major river on a ferry which was powered by 4 outboard motors positioned on each corner. Innovative engineering at its finest! When we arrived at Lanquin we had ourselves dropped off at the most popular hostel in the area called El Retiro and I ...

... and grabbed hold of the special bars installed just for that purpose.

Eventually we arrived, and began our actual tour. The first stop was a series of caves. These caves are unique in the sense that they are wet caves. Depending on where you´re at, the water is anywhere from an inch deep to (well, I don´t know. But over my head, anyways). So each of us had some shoes, a candle and a swimsuit as we set out to explore. Every turn presented a ...

... could see in the shadows, let alone count. Every camera flash revealed dozens of bats, and for the 30 minutes that we sat and watched, the bats never stopped coming, and the crowds never lessened. Thousands of bats must have left through the mouth of the cave where we sat, flying right by us, utterly unconcerned by our presence as they zipped passed our heads. Except one, with ...

... to a ten-footer. Made it okay down that one once, but the second time it rolled me. That was enough of that. The pools at Semuc Champey are really awesome. The colors and the extent of them is what makes them beautiful.
One night I wanted to see bats exit a nearby cave. I waited until it got dark and then positioned ...

I got to Xela yesterday and found a hostel. It was very nice, with clean rooms and lots of other travelers. Around dinner time I met up with a few of them and we all decided to go out and get dinner together. Haley, the reserved server from Canada; Joe, the teacher from New York; Duke, the recent graduate from Switzerland; Dave, the expat software designer from England, and me. After getting some food, we decided we wanted go go out for a drink, since we ...

... as he told me that he would love to give me a ride to the museum, but he had to deliever a pizza, gesturing to the building behind him.

I looked around and for the first time noticed that where were standing in front of a Guatemalan Pizza Hut, and this boy was indeed not a mototaxi driver with an ad on his luggage rack, rather he was just a Pizza Hut delivery boy. Can you imagine an enthusiastic, overly confident foreigner in the states ...

... that I didn´t catch the name of.



Because of the roads, we had to go through Guatemala City. The traffic and pollution in the city was almost more than we could bare. Miles of countryside was filled with the smell of burning as people cleared forests for planting. The hillsides smoldered from garbage burning, even plastics. Guatemala didn´t yet have an national infrastructure in place for garbage pickups nor any sort of emissions control ...

... for anything you could want...general good luck, good health, bad things to happen to your enemies, for people to like you, to ward off the evil eye, etc. There seemed to be two application techniques: potions from a bottle you could rub onto yourself after a bath, and potions in aerosol form that could be sprayed about the house. When asked, the salesman assured me they worked.



After a few days, I left Coban and caught a bus into the mountains and ...