Coban, Lanquin and Semuc Champey

Coban is not on the way to anything. That is the whole point of it, and it is also why getting there eats a day. Shuttles run from Antigua for about $40 a person, or $45 if you book straight through to Lanquin. Most hotels/hostels can help arrange transport for you and it heads out in the early morning.

The road is the thing people warn you about and they are right. It climbs and drops and switchbacks through pine and cloud for hours. If you get carsick, this is the ride that gets you.

I was on the ground in Coban by around 5pm. I stayed at Hotel Boutique Casa Jose, which runs about ~$54 a night. Garden, shared kitchen, free WiFi, and a tour desk that will book your onward transport, which matters here because Coban is where you arrange everything else.

The hosts are the reason I would send anyone there. Genuinely sweet people, the kind who ask where you are headed next and then actually help you get there. Mine drove me to my onward leg at checkout, unasked and for nothing.

Dinner was Xkape Kob'an, a block off the central park on Diagonal 4. Garden seating, an aviary out back, a gift shop full of books about Guatemalan culture, and tamales made with amaranth seed and heart of palm that I still think about. It is the best meal in town and it is not expensive.
Warning worth having: Xkape Kob'an is closed on Sundays.

Then up to El Calvario, the church on the hill above town at the top of a long staircase, for sunset over the valley. Free, five minutes from the centre, and the best view in Coban.

This is the day I did not know I was going to have, and it turned out to be the reason to come to this part of Guatemala at all.

Biotopo del Quetzal, properly the Biotopo Mario Dary Rivera, sits on the same road you came up on. It is over 1,000 hectares of protected cloud forest on the edge of the Sierra de las Minas, set aside in 1976 for the resplendent quetzal. Entry is Q40, about $5.45.

There are two interpretive trails: Los Helechos at 2 km and Los Musgos at 4 km. You walk under tree ferns the size of small buildings, everything dripping, everything covered in moss. I have been in a lot of green places. This one is a different category of green.

Here is the mistake, and it is mine, so learn from it. February through May is the best stretch of the year for actually seeing a quetzal, and the windows are 6:00 to 10:30 in the morning and 5:00 to 6:30 in the evening. I arrived at two in the afternoon. Right month, worst possible hour. The forest was extraordinary and I saw no quetzal, and that is a scheduling problem rather than a luck problem.

Back in Coban I walked into a procession I had no idea was happening. A wooden anda carried on the shoulders of men in white shirts, and standing on it, life size, the moment Judas kisses Jesus in the garden. The banner across the front quotes it directly: con un beso traicionaras al Hijo del Hombre, Luke 22:48. Behind it a long line of Q'eqchi' women in white lace veils, embroidered huipiles and long dark skirts, walking in silence. That image belongs to Coban's Jesus Nazareno del Perdon tradition, kept by a brotherhood that has been doing this for over 450 years.

Then that night the power went out across the town and the sky opened up. Standing in a blacked out street in the highlands looking at that many stars is not something you can plan for, and coming after the procession it made the strangest, best evening of the trip.

Out of Coban late morning. The tourist shuttles will sell you Coban to Lanquin for a lot. The local bus does the same run for about $4, hourly, in around two hours. If you are not in a hurry and you do not have a suitcase, take the bus.

I was in Lanquin by 2:30 in the afternoon. It is small: a strip of buildings, a church, a few shops, tuk-tuks parked three deep. Almost nobody stays here for Lanquin itself, they stay here because it is the last town before Semuc Champey.

The final leg is the part nobody photographs well. Lanquin to Semuc Champey is 45 minutes and about Q20, roughly $2.50, and you do it standing up in the open back of a pickup truck holding a metal bar, on a dirt road that switchbacks down into the valley. It is genuinely fun and it is also the single roughest ride of the trip.

I was down in the valley by 3:20 and stayed out until nearly 5. The river here is a colour that does not look real in photographs, and the photographs are not exaggerating. I stayed at Hostal El Portal de Champey and it was a 5 min walk from Semucwith the river in the backyard.

Warning: this whole valley runs on cash. There is no ATM you should rely on at Semuc, and the park, the pickups and most of the hostels want quetzales in hand. Take out what you need in Coban before you leave, because Coban is the last proper town.

The full day, and the order matters: do the mirador before the pools.

Semuc Champey costs about Q50, roughly $6.50, and the mirador hike is included. It is about an hour round trip and it is steep, muddy, and hand over hand in places with ropes and ladders. You climb up through the trees and come out on a platform looking straight down at the whole staircase of turquoise pools sitting on top of the river. That view is the reason this place is famous and photographs of it undersell it.

Then come down and get in. The pools are a series of limestone terraces with the Cahabon river running underneath them, which is why the water on top is calm and clear while the river is thundering below your feet. Do the climb first while you are dry and it is cool, then swim after. Everyone who does it the other way regrets carrying wet shoes up a rope.

If you want the caves, the K'anba caves are about Q70 extra, roughly $9. You go in by candlelight, in the water, sometimes swimming with one hand up holding the candle. It is not for everyone and there is no shame in skipping it.

Warning: the park opens at 8 and closes at 5, and you are entirely dependent on the pickup schedule back to Lanquin. Confirm your return before you go down, not after.

Last morning in the valley, and then the long haul back. Whatever you are doing next, it is far.

If your onward ride is in the afternoon, the park opens at 8 and you are a two minute walk from the entrance, so you can get one more hour in the water before you go. It is emptier at 8 than at any other time of day, so set the alarm.

Then the ride out. You have to get back up to Lanquin first, and it is the same 45 minute pickup in reverse, standing in the back holding the bar. Leave earlier than feels necessary, because the road does not care what time your shuttle is.

Lanquin is a hub for onward shuttles to Flores for Tikal, to Antigua, and to Guatemala City, and all of them are long days. Spend whatever quetzales you have left before you go, because nothing down here takes a card.

Warning: book your onward shuttle the day before, not the morning of. They fill, and the next one might not be until tomorrow.

I decided to skip Tikal and hop into Honduras for a couple days and explore the ruins there. That'll be a post for next time ;-)