Coban

Am now in Coban. This is a tiny rural town sort of north of Guatemala City for those of you who are following on a map (and Anne, yes I am waving back at you). There's not much to do in Coban itself - not that that's a bad thing - but relatively nearby are some beautiful caves and waterfalls. I might do a tour tomorrow.

To get here I did a bus mini-marathon from Antigua. Ordinary 'chicken' bus (named because of the main cargo or because of the drivers' favourite game?) to Guatemala city and then another slightly more classy (as in it was an actually coach rather than an old school bus) bus for the 5 hours to Coban. It was actaully easier than I expected. I'm totally used to crowed buses and invisible 3rd passing lanes from Thailand so that stuff doesn't faze me and what I thought would be the hardest part - getting a taxi from where the Antigua bus stopped to where the Coban bus left and not getting lost or ripped off - turned out to be easy. Once all the other passengers from the Antigua bus got off, the bus driver offered his bus as a taxi to the Coban terminal for the same as I'd been told a taxi would have cost. Pretty bizzarre taxi service for one person but hey, it made things very easy. We stopped for lunch at a comedor (resturant) in the middle of nowhere and I nearly lost my bus when it decided to leave when I was in the loo, but luckily it was stopped 10 m up the road for roadwork so I managed to catch it. Lucky, cos that would have been annoying.

I haven't been taking as many photos as usual. The pro-photo vibe isn't really there with most people. I don't think they'd appreciate me snapping away and I don't want to offend. That and there used to be rumours that white women were targeting indigenous children for kidnapping (and selling of their organs), a few years ago there were a couple of instances of tourists being attacked by outraged villagers after they showed too much interest in local children. That was way out in the villages though, and a long time ago. Still I'm keeping my photo taking low profile.

It's a pity though cos I want to show you all so much of this. It's so beautiful and fascinating and just cool. Oh well, there's lots of books out there with better pictures than I could take anyway.

Thinking of you all and having fun,

b