Guatemala--Land of Natural Wonders

Guatemala is not a vacationers' paradise.  On neither its Pacific nor Atlantic coast does it have a single destination resort or world class hotel.  Visiting the beach is a third world experience.  With the exception of parts of Guatemala City, the country lacks the kind of amenities one expects in the developed world.  But what Guatemala lacks in modern development it makes up for in spades in natural wonders and beauty.

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to visit the city of Coban in Alta Verapaz to the north of Guatemala City.  You begin at nearly 5,000 feet in Guatemala City and within a few short miles descend to the Motagua River basin at less than 1,000 feet, and then within another few miles ascend to Coban at 4,350 feet, passing through beautiful pine forests and a natural reserve for the Quetzal bird.  Alta Verapaz is a beautiful part of Guatemala.  We stayed in a fairly nice hotel for Guatemala standards in the small community of Santa Cruz south of Coban.

Coban is a fairly traditional Mayan city.  Most of the women dress in their traditional Mayan dress with long pleated skirts, some with beautiful embroidery, and their distinctive lacy Huipiles over a chemise like undergarment.  Coban is small city, but it had a nice mall in the city center.  We arrived on Independence Day and enjoyed a Marimba band in the main plaza with the performers being two young and very talented boys with their father or grandfather.  En route to Coban we stopped in the small village of Union Barrios and watched the Independence day parade where all the children, and there were lots of them for such a small town, grouped in their school classes marched and danced along the highway through town.

The next day we made a trip to a famous nature site in Guatemala--Semuc Champey.  The last few miles of the road was a rough dirt road descending from the highway high on the mountainside to the Cahabón River and then up to Semuc Champey, which is a National Park.  This is really a natural wonder of the world!  The raging Cahabón River crashes down a canyon and at the top of the site is funneled into a natural underground tunnel that goes under the pools of Semuc Champey for some 300 meters and then emerges again in a torrent of white water surrounded by waterfalls from the sides of the canyon and from the crystal pools above.  The pools are beautiful natural pools that cascade down to the point where the river reemerges.  It is incredibly beautiful.  We took some pictures which we will try to add to this blog, but they just can´t do the site justice.

After spending a few hours swimming in the pools and enjoying the beauty of Semuc Champey, we headed back to Coban, but missing a left turn early on we spent several hours on a wild goose chase down the canyon along the Cahabón River on very rough dirt roads.  The amazing thing was passing buses and big trucks traversing these back woods trails to get to various points in the river valley.  It was a pretty rough ride.

We rested on Saturday and enjoyed the city.  Sunday we attended Church in the small town of Valparaíso where up from the dirt road into town we found a beautiful chapel where probably 100 to 125 local Mayan members gathered for Church.  Not a single car, other than ours was in the parking lot (well really basketball court) in front of the building.  The valley was beautiful and the faith and warmth of the Saints in this tiny town was inspiring.  It is really a testimony to the truth of the Restored Gospel to see these faithful Saints who have so little of the things of this world, but are true disciples of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  We returned to Guatemala City inspired by the beauty of this country and its humble people.