I left Xela on the five a.m. bus and was in Huehuetenango within a couple of hours. I had a delectable breakfast of beans and old bullock while killing a half hour until the bus for Aguacatan left. From Huehue' which is at about 8,000 feet, the road follows a ridge line that affords spectacular views in most directions. Another bus change at Aguacatan and another three quarters of an hour waiting around in yet another market. This time it was a smoko of peanuts. From here it's an hour and a half of dropping down into a lovely valley and the village of Sacapulas. I didn't go into town as the next bus was leaving as we arrived, but as we pulled out and started to climb I had a very pleasant half hour of gradually elevated glimpses of what looked to be a pretty little town. As we climbed our way through the switchbacks the view was exposed from every angle.

This was all taking place in the western highlands of Guatemala. And was a result of a desire to go to Belize for a week on the Caribbean coast. I had decided to go via the slower but more direct route across the mountains. I had heard it was a spectacular trip and not much frequented by foreigners.

My target for this first days travel was a little town in the mountains called Uspantan and we pulled in there about four in the afternoon. It had been a spectacular days travel through some of the most magnificent views I have seen in Guatemala. A constant series of peaks and valleys as far as the eye could see and the fact that I struck it lucky with the weather meant that the beautiful grey/blues of mountains in the distance were with us all day. I was also happy about the weather because it is not a road I would like to travel in the rain. It is quite rough gravel all the way and the margins for driver error are fine to say the least. And the drops off the sides of many parts of the road don't leave any doubt in your mind about what would happen if you came unstuck. Fortunately the driver was one of those types that are very rare in Guatemala ... thoughtful and careful. Maybe he didn´t believe in god? Nah, not even a consideration really.

Uspantan is not a bad little place, in a very lovely setting. I was thinking while there though, how remarkable and remote some of the places are where people end up living. This joint might as well have been Alice Springs, but worse, with all due lack of respect to the Alice. Very few people have cars and virtually no one can afford an air fare. I think a week there would have left me feeling claustrophobic.

An interesting aspect of this trip was that there were six other backpackers staying the night in the hotel in this out of the way little joint. I was stunned. There I was thinking what an adventurous soul I was, doing a trip I had been building up to for three years and here were a whole lot of Europeans on holiday. Albeit the more mature and adventurous type of backpacker but I was nonetheless a touch put out.

The small concrete hotel was almost full and as the locals settled in to watch the evenings round of ever popular telenovelas (soap operas), I was relieved to see the management had put up a large clear sign advising that the telly had to be turned off by nine p.m. I should have known better. The building was shaped around the central patio where the telly was and sound resonated quite badly. The rotten bastards had it full throttle until after midnight and then hung around yapping and listening to the radio for another half hour. I could have killed them! So what if the room only cost two bucks and the bed was like rough concrete. I at least could have tried to sleep!

The bus for Cobán left at three a.m. and as we pulled out of town I observed to my new found Spanish backpacking friends that the damn place should be called Uzbekistan as the hotel had obviously been full of Taliban who thought we must have been yanks and spent the night launching telenovelas into our would-be dreams.

Cobán was five hours of similar roads and views away and it would have been nice to do it all in daylight as the country was as spectacular as the previous day, though the valleys and mountain sides became more lush as we headed east into higher rainfall and lower altitudes.

The wet season, which had just finished, had obviously taken its toll on this section of the road, as in the steeper parts we were regularly driving over small landslides which no one bothers, or has the money, to clear off the road. And in the valleys there were regular creek crossings. The old, heavily laden bus did a very creditable job in conditions many four wheel drives never get to see.

I stayed two days in Cobán, at the house of friends I used to work with. It was good to see them and catch up with other friends as well. I happened to be there for my birthday and as chance would have it a few of us went out to dinner that night. During the course of the evening a friend happened to ask my age -as Guatemalans are want to do- and I revealed that it was just on the cusp and after midnight I would be a year older. This friend is an inveterate match maker and had been trying to convince me that we should invite a friend of hers along to the dinner.

When she discovered the birthday coincidence it was the straw that broke the camels back. She whipped out the mobile and while I laughed nervously she called her friend and insisted she join us. While she was off collecting her friend, I called the waiter and demanded cigarettes and strong liquor…..in quantities. The friend turned out to be a rather well fed Caribbean evangelica, who hadn't yet crossed the 30 year line. I hate to think what inner conflicts my alcohol and nicotine consumption must have caused her in light of her evangelical brain washing, but she was very pleasant company and we all had an entertaining evening. When we dropped the girl off on the way home her mum was waiting for her and on seeing mum I was rather pleased we got her home early.

The second leg of this journey took me from Cobán to Santa Elena. From the mountains of Alta Verapaz to the hot coastal plains of the Petén.

The bus left Cobán at the very respectable hour of eight a.m., though the driver did spend twenty minutes doing a "lap of honour" around town and arrived back to where we had started from before actually heading off. You have got to laugh at the sods or they would drive you bonkers.

The day consisted of nine hours spent in a couple of different buses and was for the most part fairly interesting. It took a couple of hours to drop down out of the cool of the hills onto the plains of the Petén. This area (state) is the Guatemalan equivalent of the Northern Territory. It is by central american standards a large area, probably the size of the mallee and is only about four hundred feet above sea level. So it's hot and heavily vegetated. It has the rather odd characteristic that it is covered with small hillocks. Mostly between fifty and two hundred feet high and for the most part fairly symmetrically shaped. It makes for a rather odd landscape.

After the fairly arduous days travel I found a room in Flores and couldn't decide which I would enjoy more, a cold shower or cold beer, so I had them together. Flores is known rather grandly by the locals as the Venice of Guatemala. The similarity being that it is a small island, in a lake, and is covered by tightly packed houses, hotels and tourist traps. And like the real one, it is connected to the mainland by a causeway. It's a rather grand comparison for a nice enough but far from grand place. I found a rustic but nice little restaurant with tables on a thatch roofed veranda which protruded out over the water. A group of eight boisterous (aren't they always) Italians came in and sat at the table next to me. I resisted the temptation to ask their opinion of the Venetian comparison.

I hit the road again early next morning as my destination was a little coastal village in Belize and it was still a full day of bus rides away. I didn't want to arrive there too late in the day as I still didn't know if the place had been blown away by an hurricane which had swept through there two weeks before hand. So at seven a.m. I was sitting in a fly blown dump of a restaurant in yet another market/come bus departure point, eating yet another breakfast of beans, tortillas and old bullock.

To be continued. See Placencia, Part Two

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