Coban

On May 18th, to celebrate our 4th month in country and to reunite with my training site mates Jill and Alexis, Alexis and I took a trip to Coban in the department of Alta Verapaz. As exciting as a trip can be on its own, I was even more excited to experience warm tropical weather, which Alta Verapaz is known for. My site isn´t exactly warm, whenever I mention my location to someone the first thing they say is, “Oh hay mucho frio alla!” Needless to say I was surprised and almost angry when the first couple of nights in site I couldn´t feel my feet! I mean the cold actually woke me up. Since then my self-warming technique has been a warm shower just before sunset, followed by a speedy dressing routine, and I´m lucky to have a warm shower – without it who even knows! The night before I reported to D.C. in January I´m glad that I had enough sense through my emotional and frantic state to pack long johns and underarmour – who knew they would come in handy in Guatemala? So I intentionally packed light for this trip. Guatemala is growing on me, but there are some things that are still just backwards – for example, why did it take us 12 hours by bus to travel only two departments north of our departure point? Keep in mind that Guatemala is comparable in size to the state of Tennessee – it doesn´t take 12 hours to drive anywhere in Tennessee!! The main reason why this trip takes ridiculously long is that the Guatemalan government has yet to construct a more efficient road, instead the highway that exists makes it so that we had to go south 4.5 hours to Guatemala City and then north another 6 hours, right makes no sense. Plus the fact that the government is doing construction on the existing highway, which is a good thing, BUT it´s only a two-lane highway… this can take hours out of a trip, not to mention that the construction is taking way too long for a highway that really isn´t that big! Alexis and I left at 7:00am and didn’t arrive to Coban until around 7:00pm. But once we got to Coban I was immediately brought back to my original excitement in being reunited with Jill, and in being swept up in the towns hype over the popular Coban Half Marathon to be held that Sunday. Coban is such a cute city! The people are much more laid back, and even though it is the department’s capital, the city is far from overwhelming. Most satisfying to me that night was the salad I had for dinner. Salads just don’t happen in Guatemala, well that´s a lie. Salads as I know them don’t happen in Gatemala. Instead they serve cucumber (pepino), onions (cebolla), and tomatoes with lime and salt as a dressing. This false salad is good, but it´s missing the obvious ingredient… LETTUCE! Salads are available but only in restaurants, which would involve me spending money that I technically don’t have. Yes they sell lettuce in the market but it looks really dirty, and even Guatemalans will say that the lettuce has bugs. Yes I could chlorinate the food, but I really don’t want to mess with bugs in lettuce. So, I thoroughly enjoyed my salad in Coban! The weekend felt like a vacation, good food, good times, relaxation, and a great chance to get to know some of the volunteers in the area. I have to take a minute to talk about the hostal we stayed at called Casa Luna. This place is so well run!! There are only 6 rooms, and the layout resembles more of a home than a hostal. It´s run by 4 or 5 men who also live there and basically keep house. This is what really got me, Guatemalan men keeping house, absolutely unheard off! Not only were they good house keepers but they were hilarious and so accommodating! We were able to get rooms there for all nights of our weekend except Saturday because of the Half Marathon the following day. Not to mention that all hotels in the area are forced to more than double their price just for the one night. So we had no where to stay, and didn´t want to pay that money. They let three of us sleep in hammocks that had just arrived that day from Costa Rica, and they let me have a bed in a room with people I didn’t know. Grateful for the bed, but not too keen on sharing a room with strangers, but as it turned out they went to bed earlier so I didn’t have to talk to them. The Half-Marathon was pretty cool, I was able to get a picture of the winner!