Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Our next stop was the Caribbean Coast and the Rio Dulce area.  When we were leaving Semuc Champey we caught a bus with 2 Spanish girls and they had recommended a place called Finca Tatin near Rio Ducle.  Oddly enough, somewhere along the way I had picked up a flyer for Finca Tatin and we decided that is where we wanted to go.  Finca Tatin is only accessible by boat.  When we got to the town of Rio Dulce our first goal was to find a boat that would take us there.  There is no shortage of boats, but we wanted to make sure we got a fair price, so we asked around at a couple of people offering their services.  We finally found one that also had a parking spot for us, so we were set.  Matthias tried to call Finca Tatin to see if they had space for us.  The number on our flyer was out of service, but we decided to risk it anyway and hope they had room.  William found the boat ride too bumpy, but Julian couldn’t have enjoyed it more.  He had a huge smile on his face the entire way and kept pointing to things and chattering excitedly about them.  The water is sparkling green and surrounded on all sides by green jungle.  It is about an hour boat ride to Finca Tatin and we arrived safely and they had plenty of room.  In fact we were the only visitors at all.

We rented a bungalow right along the river for two nights.  William and Julian both squealed with excitement when they saw we would all be sleeping under nets!  Matthias and I weren’t so excited when we saw the spider the size of my outstretched hand on the wall above one of the beds.  When we arrived we were floored at how neat this place was.  This area was very different from what we expected it to be and definitely transcended all our expectations.  Both Matthias and I had a moment where we felt that just the opportunity to spend a few days here was one of those times that makes this whole trip worthwhile.

    

 

Finca Tatin is a great spot for relaxing.  There is a main area with hammocks, sofas, books and games for all to share.  The two dinners we ate there were probably the best food we have eaten since we came to Guatemala.  On the dock there is a rope swing you can use to jump out into the river.  You can also rent kayaks, there are nearby hot springs and lots of trails for walking in the jungle.  They only have electricity for about 4 or 5 hours.  The owner has a generator that he turns on when it gets dark, and shuts it off when everyone goes to bed.

We arrived in the early afternoon and went swimming.  Everyone except Julian had so much fun swinging out and jumping into the river.  The river was clean, very warm and a nice way to escape the humidity of the jungle.  That evening we had dinner, played some dominoes and went to bed early.  The rains that night were tremendous and the jungle is an active place at night.  The memory of the spider on the wall left me lots of bad dreams and a very restless sleep.

The next day we took a boat to Livingston after breakfast.  Livingston is also only reachable by boat and the stretch of river from Finca Tatin to Livingston was even more spectacular than the ride in.  We spent a few hours walking around this town, which is right on the Caribbean coast and definitely has a Caribbean feel.  Many of the slaves from Africa remained here and there is a large Garifuna population in Livingston.  It has a much different feel than any place we’ve been to in Guatemala.  We went swimming again that afternoon and later the owner offered to take us over to the hot springs.  The hot springs are just a hole in the side of the river wall where hot water comes out.  We pulled up to the dock and jumped right in.  It was very relaxing and we watched the sun set.

That evening we had dinner with the guests that had arrived during the day, a group that consisted of 2 Argentinians, a woman from Uruguay, a woman from the Canary Islands, a Swiss man and a girl from Israel.  It was so interesting to talk to all of them and see where they had been and how they were traveling.  Our friend from Israel has been traveling on her own for over a year.  One couple travels around the world in a catamaran.  The other couple has lived on their sailboat for a number of years and they support themselves by repairing sails on sailboats.  This woman (who grew up in Uruguay) was the daughter of a German woman and grew up speaking German.  She now speaks German with her 5 year old son, her husband who is from Argentina speaks Spanish with their son, and he just picked up English along the way.  Their son is tri-lingual and seen so much more of the world than most Americans.  It really would be interesting to follow everyone’s lives and see where we all are in 20 years.  I left wanting to spend more time with all of the people we had met here.  Luckily, though, we left relaxed and invigorated to continue our travels.

 

Matthias has put more pictures on the web here.

Our map of Guatemala has a section where it lists the number of kilometers between cities and the anticipated driving times. You could really throw this information in the garbage because it more or less useless. Matthias (being German) wants to know exactly how many kilometers it is between cities, not an approximation. The times listed for certain stretches of road are even rougher estimates. Though even if you had the actual distance, that information is only sort of useful because there is no way to know what shape the roads are in. According to our map it should have taken 5 hours from Lake Atitlan to Cobán. It took us 9. I guess that is just Guatemala.

Seeing as we totally misjudged how much time we would need to get to Cobán it was no surprise when we ended up finishing the drive in the dark. Driving in the dark is something we don’t want to do here. However we were so close and drove the last half an hour in the dark. We found a hotel room relatively fast, and luckily we found a cheap one ($15/night) that is clean and comfortable. I was able to hack the computers they have in the lobby so we could get free internet access as well. That Microsoft education is at least good for something!

Our destination was Semuc Champay. It sounds like it is in Thailand, but it is actually a somewhat remote group of pools near Cobán. We set out in the morning around 10:00 AM. Most of the road was great, but the last 11 kilometers was a really steep, rough gravel road. It wasn’t ideal, but we made it alright. We had a recommendation for a hostel but, of course, it was full. They had a spot for us to park our van and camp. After checking out a few hotels in the town, we decided that camping was the best option.

The toilets were kind of interesting. They were ecological toilets with the purpose of not polluting the river. They were built up like a throne on top of a poop chamber with a trough in front for catching pee. The urine is siphoned off somewhere, and the poop was collected in the chamber below. There was also a tub of lime that you were supposed sprinkle over the poop after going #2. The Americans, Canadians and Europeans that worked there got the cushy jobs like bartending and staffing the internet café. But some poor Guatemalan sap has the unfortunate job of shoveling all our shit.

On the surface this place looked really great. It was quite a ways into the mountain and right next to a river. Matthias took a great 40-minute inner tube ride down the river right to the hostel. They had lots of cabanas on stilts, and a bar where everyone hung out. But it turned out to be a bit weird. We did meet a nice couple of teachers who are spending 2 years in Guatemala City teaching middle school. They were pitching a tent and were looking for a quiet spot to camp. The weirdness we experienced can be summed up in the answer they received when they asked someone if they were in the hang out spot for the hostel. “This isn’t the sex spot if that is what you are asking!” was the snotty reply. That couldn’t be further from what they were asking. They just wanted to know if it was a quiet spot to pitch their tent. Most people were just trying to get laid. I think we all have an honest appreciation for that endeavor, but only to a point. Maybe it was just Matthias and I who felt a bit old traveling with our 2 kids. Just about everywhere we’ve been in Guatemala we’ve met lots of interesting people. Even the republican nurses we met in Xela had a lot of interesting things to say. If you asked people at the hostel what they were doing the answer was “hanging out.” If they gave you any more information they might tell you how long they are planning on hanging out there. The people weren’t interesting, or funny or particularly nice, and almost no one had anything interesting to say.

That night we had dinner at the hostel. It started raining, which was good because it cooled everything off very fast and made it comfortable to sleep. However, the 50 meter walk from the bar to the Yoda Van soaked us to the core. I’ve never experienced rain like this. By the time we made it to the car it felt like I had just walked through a shower with my clothes on. The showers in the cheap hotels we have been staying at have had less water pressure than this rain storm. It was really something else.

In the morning we decided we’d have breakfast in the van. Matthias went to put on some water for coffee and discovered a swarm of thousands of ants in our sink. We knew we had picked up a few ants when we were in Acapulco, but we figured they were all just lone ants living in our car. It turns out they have made home in our water system. When we turned on the water it was just shooting black gunk and ants. We sprayed Raid and boiling water in the area and hopefully got rid of them. Once the situation was under control we headed down to the restaurant for a fast breakfast.

After breakfast we took a shuttle to the pools. The shuttle is a pick-up with scaffolding built up around the bed. We hopped into the back and held on. The road was even rougher and just as spectacular as the road in. When we arrived at the pools we arranged with our driver for him to pick us up at 12:00 to take us back to the hostel. Needless to say, he was no where in sight at 12:00, or 12:30, or 12:45 when we finally hopped another bus back into town. We made it back to town and walked back to our campsite, which had turned into a mud flat after the previous night’s rain. By the time we had finished packing both kids were half covered in mud.

The pools were amazing, the land around us was spectacular, the hostel seemed perfect, but somehow it just didn’t work out for us all that well. The pools were neat, but instead of turquoise water, it was dirt brown from all the rain the night before. Our clothes are still drying from all the rain and they really stink.

Other things that went wrong:
• Matthias forgot his bathing suit and had to wear my hot-pink short in the pools.
• There are great caves here that stretch 3 km into the mountain. After about 3 minutes of slipping on bat poop and muddy stairs, we realized we had to turn around because it was impossible to continue on with 2 kids in tow.
• In the middle of the night the alarm of the car next to us went off. It took the owners about 15 minutes to turn it off and woke us all up.
• Matthias tried to get money from the ATM and it ate his card. He finally went in with a swiss army knife and retrieved it, but he was worried since ATMs are usually monitored by video cameras.
• We went to get gas and discovered that our gas tank is leaking.

In the end, the effort of driving this steep, gravel road, the wear and tear on our car, the resulting mud from the rain storm and the ants were just more effort than it was worth. I remember seeing a picture of Semuc Champay before we left and thinking I’d never see anything that amazing on our trip. But I actually made it, and somehow it just wasn’t what I was expecting. This part of the trip sure wasn’t ideal, but since this is the worst it has been so far, we can still say we’re doing pretty darn well.

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