The Journey North

The journey to Coban was uneventful in itself, but rendered memorable by our unfortunate seating allocation, which placed us directly beneath the only working speaker on the whole bus which, because of its solitary task, was cranked to full volume and played local adverts and maddening Central American pop non-stop for four hours.

Coban itself was also unremarkable, but the parque central boasted a pupuseria (see El Salvador) which more than justified our evening stroll, and we even managed to find a cash machine which actually dispensed cash - a minor miracle in most areas. The follwing morning saw the arrival of the long-awaited election day, and ushered in a weekend of national inactivity - Saturday to vote, and Sunday to celebrate the end of the 24hr drinking ban (but of course). As a result, public transport was expected to go to pot and most travellers we had met were planning to sit the weekend out and get on the road again on Monday. Determined to press on however, we asked around and heard that there might be a bus departing early on the Saturday morning for Lanquin - the town we needed to reach, so we booked a 5.30am taxi to the bus station .... naturally the only time Guatemaltecans are ever early is when you have just crawled out of bed bleary eyed at 5.15 in the morning, so half asleep we arrived in town and found a very suggestable minibus driver who seemingly on the spot agreed to run a service to Lanquin. Miracle of miracles, we noticed me was parked right outside a panaderia where, miracle of miracles, an angle of a lady was just stocking the shelves with freshly baked banana bread and boiling her first batch of coffee. Evidently fortune was on our side!

written by  Alex Kent on September 8, 2007 from Coban, Guatemala
from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature
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