Viaje de Semuc Champey: dia uno=el malo día

Another epic weekend trip. So epic in fact I will have to write about it in two posts. The positive news is that Semuc Champey is, in fact, amazing. Well worth the trials and tribulation. And belive me... there were trials... and tribula?..tribuli? Tribils? I guess it wouldn´t be a Molly and Jamil trip without some kind of crisis. So without much more ado- day 1.

Traditionally the shuttles for trips tend to hit the side of town Jamil and I live on first. So we had intended to snag some prime seats and sleep a lot on the shuttle. In preperation I had not slept a lot. I need to stop doing that. Instead of the shuttle hitting us first it failed at finding where we live, calling us at one point to say "we are waiting outside" which we knew they weren´t because we were waiting outside. By the time it finally reached us it was almost full- leaving us with the least prime seats. It was the begining of an awesome day.

I was grumpy, and just wanted to sleep. While I attempted a dozen different sleeping positions (involving the window which was a foot away from me, a lot of leaning and bracing, and my squishy airplane pillow) the people in the seat behind me talked rapidly and enthusiasically. I wanted to slap them all.

As we drove I alternated by attempting to sleep, and watching out of the window. Once we were out of Guatamala City (which is dirty, ugly and smells like filth and gasoline) the landscape quickly became rather breathtaking. We wound up green, lush, rolling hills and down into deep canyons. At one point, as I "lay" wedged against the window, the hot wind whipping against my face carried with it a familiar scent. I opened my eyes and was surprised to see-thrusting skyward out of the rich green underbrush of tangled vines and green feathered banana plants- bushy pine trees. It was an odd mix of tropical and coniferous- but the smell made me a little homesick for mountinous California.

After seven hours of driving we reached Lanquine, which is the next town over from Semuc Champey, and the home of the El Ritero lodge where many people had recomended we stay. Most of these people also insisted that reservations were not needed, in fact one person assured us that even if we tried to make them it was usually impossible to get through. However, Jamil and I do not have good luck with traveling. They had nothing available, and we did not know where else to stay. The shuttle driver took us back to the center of town where a guy who worked for the tour company tried to find us another place to stay. However, I suddenly found myself in a very unnerving situation. My Spanish is still fairly limited, especially in a stressful situation, and suddenly we were faced with someone, who I didn´t know or trust, who benifited by getting our money, trying to shuttle us off to some hotel far away from town that may or may not have rooms. Luckly there was one other english speaking couple- Australians- who spoke a little more Spanish than Jamil or I. They determined that there were only dorm type rooms available there and we all wanted to at least have a room we could lock our things in.

Another guy came up to us and said he had a hotel that did have rooms available. At first I thought he was also connected with the tour group and so we all jumped at the chance to get rooms. However, when he lead us up to a sketchy jeep and tossed the Aussies´packs inside I started to worry. I clutched my bags to me and climed in. Jamil mocked me for not puting anythign in the back but I was suddenly very nervous about where we were going and wanted everything close to me.

As we started up the hill towards Semuc Champey I contemplated what we might have gotten ourselves into. I imagined the driver takeing us to some remote road and robbing us- or worse. I contemplated what the most important thing I had on me was and then silently slipped the photocopy of my passport and drivers licence I had in my purse into the back of my underwear. Although it occured to me that in the worse case scenerio, that might not be a particularly good hiding place. Luckily, it did not come to that.

We pulled up to the Casa El Zapato, which was not near anything else. The campus consisted of several thatched roofed buildings, and the property was backed by the jungle. We were lead to our room- a very sparse room that housed two beds and a lightbulb. The room was "screened" but that term only applied to the window. The room itself was made of slats of wood, between which there were small spaces- none of which were screened. But what do I know? Maybe jungle bugs only like coming in windows or doors.

At this point the Aussies decided to bail, and I started to panic. We were alone and isolated, with a questionable room, and were at the mercy of what transportation, food and other resources could be provided by this hotel. Dinner, we were told, could only be a sandwich because the woman who usually cooks dinner had bailed early (the boss was out of town). However, it was almost five and the prospect of attempting to find something else was equally bleak as the prospect of staying. Well maybe a little more bleak. At least here we had beer.

And so we made the best of it. The 16-year-old who was working the front desk/bar/kitchen brought us some rounds of beers, I busted out the playing cards, and we taught the kid 21- or "ventiuno". As the night wore on we continued to sip on beers, snacked on some sad sandwiches, and I practiced my spanish with the 16-year-old while he practiced his english pick-up-lines on me. Sadly, "I like your smile" and "do you like my country?" were about all he had.

Finally we gave in to the inevitable and headed to bed. We pulled our beds away from the wall, and I tucked my sheet around me, leaving no opening for a rogue spider to wander into. We put in our ipods to drown out the corse buzz of the jungle insects, and, maybe more so, to pretend we were somewhere other than helpless in a poorly constructed room in the middle of the jungle.

Around 2am the roosters began to crow. And again at 4am. I know I slept at some point but it was strained. I woke up at 7am with a headache but also a sense of relief that it was daytime again and I had not been bitten by anything fatal.