Cobán

The drive into the mountains was something I’d been warned about; people passing into oncoming traffic around curves, hairpin turns at speed, and once we crossed the climate divide – wet roads. But it was beautiful and worth it, and the Cobán had much more personality than Guatemala City.

Ana’s grandmother owns a cafeteria, so after dropping our luggage off at the house, we went for brunch. I opted to take the D70 and a 50mm lens for outings, since it was raining the whole time and everyone and everything is rather is densely packed. After eating, we ran a couple of errands and walked over to the Dieseldorff tour office to get a tour of one of the more famous coffee plantations, but unfortunately were about 5 minutes too late as they were on lunch. Due to the rain and mud, our other plans for exploring some of the outlying mayan ruins were.. ruined.

For dinner that evening, we ate with some of Ana’s other relatives. The gentleman you see in the pictures cooking was our host, and he is a coffee grower. He used to be a bull rider in the 80’s, and even made it to some higher level competitions up in Houston, TX. He also liked to drink a bit, and I had to draw the line for myself at 6 vodka mixed drinks – which incidentally was still too many as you will read in the next day’s post.