Se alquila telefonos (telephones for rent)

After the touristyness of Antigua, we headed north, into the hinterlands of Guatemala. But first we stopped at Coban for a tour of a coffee plantation, and got to see every stage of the process from seedling, to picking (each red fruit has two green beans in it, and they squirt out if you squeeze the fruit - they have a really vegetably smell and are covered in sticky goo), to washing, to drying, to roasting (we went into the tiny roasting room, where they have a wee little roaster and two grinders, the size you'd see in a coffee shop at home, and two folks roasting and packing each little bag of coffee by hand). We also got to taste cardamom fresh off the bush - yum!

The central part of Guatemala was gorgeous to drive through. Rolling hills, the forest getting more and more tropical. We drove a little ways off into the jungle to eat a bite of lunch and start soaking the purple beans I bought in the market in town. Here's a movie:

(coming soon-the internet cafe is closing...)

Some of the roads were out-of-hand bad, too. One day we drove for 8 hours, and only went 100 miles!!! 100 miles!! The roads were dirt, and sometimes sand, and incredibly windy. Here's a picture of a chicken bus coming up a hill towards us on a really sandy bit:

(coming soon-the internet cafe is closing...)

Somewhere in the planning of this trip, we worked out the total mileage, and the number of days we had, and figured that we'd only have to drive 100 miles a day to get to Argentina in 4 months. We thought, great, an hour and a half a day, maybe 3 or 4 if the roads are really really bad. ha!!

Once we got out of the hilly region, the roads got a lot better. Only the major highways are paved in the north, and all other streets in a town are dirt, which makes it kind of easy to find the way out of town - just follow the ashphalt. If you hit dirt, you've made a wrong turn, and you'd better go back to the center of town and find a bus to follow.

Things got increasingly tropical as we headed north, and the folks got poorer and poorer. I wonder why those two things seem to go together. The Peten was also hit pretty hard by the war - many of the Mayans who fled their villages ended up living in hidden jungle villages in the Peten. Maybe the area is still recovering - the peace accords were only signed in 1996.

The north is also the country of motorbikes - everyone has one, even the schoolgirls. You see them motoring around, two to a bike, with their little plaid skirts hitched up and their braids flying. No one wears the Mayan typical dress up here, either. Just in the highlands.

Then we got to Tikal!! We spent a night on Lago Peten Itza, near Tikal, and that was glorious. The water was so clear you could see to the bottom even in moonlight. We also met some interesting Italians who are driving from Buenos Aires to Alaska, and we exchanged tips about the road - how handy that we're going in opposite directions! On their advice, we waited until 3 pm the next day to go into Tikal - that way you get a few hours in the afternoon, and your ticket is still good for the next day. Tikal was absolutely magical. Read on to Douglas' post for stuff about Jungle and Birds, birds, birds!!!