Inspiring vista for
changing a tire

Sunflowers on the edge of
forever in the Cuchumatanes

Old US school buses with achingly bright paintjobs are a common sight on narrow highland roads

Overlooking Sacapulas and the Río Negro Valley

Lonely farming outpost in the highlands outside of Cobán

The Río Cahabón roars into the earth at Semuc Champey

A study in contrast, tranquil pools lie
above the subterranean maelstrom

Waiting in the dark on a lonely dirt road, unwelcome thoughts of Guatemala’s violent past creep into my mind. My wife had walked up a sheer mountainside a few minutes ago, leaving me in our Jeep with our two young children. She followed an unlit, hand-hewn path, seeking the home of a man who had helped us change a tire at dusk about an hour before. As the minutes pass, it occurs to me that I am in a very difficult position if there is any trouble. I can’t leave the kids to find her (even if I thought I could do anything to help). I certainly wouldn’t want to take the children with me to go get her. Making matters worse, we are a good day’s travel (more, considering that it is now dark) from Cobán and any possibility of official help.

It’s funny how much more menacing things seem after dark.  We were cruising along just fine, enjoying the spectacular highland views on the road from Cobán to Lanquín.  As the quetzal flies, the distance between the two is just over 30 kilometers, but the rugged country and the primitive road combine to make it an all-day trip.  About 2 hours before sunset, we hit something on the road and put a hole in the left rear tire.  As I was changing to our emergency donut, we were debating whether to continue forward to Lanquín or head back to the last wide spot in the road, about 20 minutes back.

About then, a local man came along with his young son and helped me finish changing the tire.  He also told us that there was a tire repair shop, or pinchazo, back at the last settlement, and another one in Lanquín, which was still more than an hour ahead.  That decided us.  Twenty minutes on an emergency donut on that road was about all I felt comfortable risking. 

About 90 minutes later, with night falling and a fresh patch on our tire, we set off once again.  When we got back to the place where we had stopped earlier to change the flat, my wife wanted to stop.  She wanted to thank our benefactor once again and to give some clothes that no longer fit our children to the little boy who was with him. 

My fears made her absence feel like hours, but she couldn’t have been gone for more than 20 minutes, and came back raving about the hospitality of the family she had just met.  She was also carrying an armload of tamales.  Tamal is a traditional Christmas dish in Central America, but the ones in Guatemala are really special.  They are loaded with cardamom, which is an unusual flavor for this part of the world.  Oddly, Guatemala is the world’s largest exporter of cardamom, and ships most of it to India and the Middle East.  The little that is not exported ends up mostly in Christmas tamal, from the taste of them. 

When our tire tragedy befell, we were nearing the end of a three-day odyssey that started in Huehuetenango.  We had come to see Semuc Champey, touted as one of the most spectacular wonders of the natural world, and to do some exploring in the Lanquín caves.  The attractions were everything we expected, but in many ways the real highlight of the trip was the backcountry journey itself. 

We pulled out of Huehuetenango on a Friday morning, leaving behind the crowded, smoky streets of Guatemala’s last large town before the Mexican border.  Heading due east out of town, a gravel road climbs precipitously into the Cordillera de los Cuchumatanes, the highest mountain range in Central America. 

Driving was a little hard on the nerves.  There is a surprising amount of heavy traffic on the bumpy dirt road, despite the fact that it is narrow, and the switchbacks are extremely tight.  Chicken buses and lumber trucks pretty much require the whole road to themselves on a tight turn, and we had to throw our Jeep into reverse more than once to find a spot wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other. 

After nearly a full day’s drive, we arrived at Sacapulas, a pleasant, friendly place situated deep in the Río Negro valley about 60 kilometers east of Huehue.  On arriving, we went for a walk to unbend muscles clenched from long hours in the 4x4.  We ended up spending about two hours walking around the town, which is remarkably large given its remote location.  Just down the road from Hotel Río Negro, where we were bunking for the night, we saw a handful of women washing their laundry in the river.  A few minutes later, only a quick about-face saved us from interrupting several men and boys in the middle of bath time at the river’s edge.  Up above the central plaza, we ran across a man chaffing beans.  The children were fascinated, and we spent a good half hour talking to him while the kids helped to take the black beans out of their little jackets. 

The hotel is probably the best in town, but accommodations are primitive.  Dinner was rice and beans and pollo dorado, washed down with Gallo, the national beer.  The dining room was a bit hazy from all of the wood ovens burning in the kitchen.  Later, after swinging our iron door shut and padlocking it, we laved ourselves with mosquito repellent, hopped onto threadbare sheets covering thick foam-rubber mattresses, and turned out the naked light bulb. 

Shortly after cockcrow the next morning, we were back in the Jeep, making the steep ascent out of the valley and headed for Cobán.  Nearly every switchback brought another breathtaking view, or another close call with a cargo vehicle. 

Cobán lies a full day’s journey east of Sacapulas over some incredibly rugged and beautiful terrain.  The road is not all that well marked, and stopping to ask directions can be an adventure in itself, as finding fluent Spanish-speakers is not as easy as one might think.  The sheer remoteness of this corner of Guatemala has probably helped Mayan culture to endure.

Pulling onto paved roads in Santa Cruz Verapaz (about 20 kilometers outside of Cobán) felt like victory.  Half an hour later, we were cruising the busy streets of this highly accessible city (which lies only about 4 hours from the capital via the Carretera al Atlántico), elbow to elbow with other foreigners and paying tourist prices for lodging once again.  We didn’t stay long. 

The next morning found us bouncing over dirt tracks once again, en route to Lanquín, with its Grutas and the awe-inspiring spectacle of Semuc Champey. 

In the native Kekchí  Maya language, Semuc Champey signifies “where the river buries itself in the earth.”  In this gorgeous setting, surrounded by rugged, cloud-shrouded mountains, the great majority of the water in the Río Cahabón plunges beneath a 300-meter long, 60-meter wide natural limestone bridge.  A trickle meanders across the top of the bridge through rain forest roots and centimeters-high rock ledges (which look like rainforest roots), eventually forming a series of gentle falls.  Between the graceful falls, water gathers in crystal clear pools perfect for swimming before finally dropping over a waterfall to rejoin the rest of the river below.  The hole at the top of the bridge where the river rushes underground is an indescribably thrilling sight.  A warning sign hanging on a thin metal cable strung across the river marks the entrance.  It looks a bit comical, actually.  The sign is hardly adequate to convey the gravity of the danger, but the river itself broadcasts a warning loud enough to send a chill up your spine.  Local guides warn that—if you fall in—it takes 40 days for the body to come out the other side. 

It is a singular feeling; floating on one of Semuc Champey’s tranquil, body-temperature ponds, face up to a sky hemmed in on all sides by sheer mountains covered by cloud forest.  Such natural splendor is hard to access.  Semuc Champey lies about 10 kilometers from Lanquín at the end of a road that is impassable by all but 4-wheel drive vehicles.  Of course it is possible to hike.  Be sure to ask directions frequently throughout the three-hour journey, however.  The road is not well marked.

Nearer to Lanquín lie the caves.  According to guides, Mayan tradition holds that Lanquín is one egress for a subterranean highway.  Another end is believed to come out near Quetzaltenango, nearly 200 kilometers to the southwest.  One guide told us that a French team in the late 1940s spent four weeks exploring inside the caves without ever finding another exit.  Our expedition wasn’t so extended, but it felt as if we were using some of the same equipment.  Normally, the caves are lighted for several hundred meters inside, but on the day we went, the generator was malfunctioning.  Instead, we were offered Coleman lanterns to carry inside. 

The atmosphere was eerie, with the lanterns throwing strange shadows off of evocatively named rock formations such as the eagle, the monkey and the sheep.  Caves tend to be pretty cool, but we were sweating inside the Grutas de Lanquín.  Heat from the lanterns probably contributed, but the guides claimed that the caves were hot due to volcanic activity in the vicinity.  We were able to penetrate perhaps about half a kilometer before being asked to turn around.  More than once along the way I checked to make sure that there was plenty of fuel in the lantern.  On the return, some 10 meters up a ladder (with rungs slippery from condensation and guano) we paused by a sacrificial altar.  The guide told us it was still visited in the not too distant past by people bringing offerings of chicken, corn and other valuables.  The rocks above the altar were black from smoke.  

Down below, an immense, spindly cave spider rested on the altar.  It must have been nearly a meter in diameter from limb to limb, and matched the color of the rock nearly perfectly. 

As we were leaving the caves, the guide pointed overhead, where multitudes of bats were sleeping the day away.  Occasionally, these creatures apparently form an impressive sight when, en masse, they exit the cave at dusk for their nightly foraging.  We were unlucky when we tried to catch the show.  By the time they put in an appearance it was really too dark to see them.  Time to be getting back to the hotel.  Hotel El Recreo is a relaxing place with large green lawns and private cabins.  At the restaurant the waiters double as musicians playing happy tunes on the marimba. 

It is ubiquitous advice for travelers in Central America to be off the road by nightfall.  A large part of the reason for this advice is benign:  in the dark, it is much harder to see animals and people that remain on what are busy thoroughfares during the daytime.  In Guatemala, however, the advice not to travel at night somehow seems more sinister, in light of the country’s violent recent past.  This same tragic history has meant that foreign travelers are something of a rarity on Guatemala’s back roads.  What had been impassible is now accessible and still all but undiscovered by foreign tourists.