This past week was spent in Chicacnab, an indigenous community high up in the cloud forests of Guatemala. We went there through an organization called Proyecto Ecologico Quetzal, a program that helps to provide sustainable work and incomes for families in the community. Our day of departure from Coban dawned with lots of fog and rain, and to get to Chicacnab we had to take two chicken buses and then hike up a mountain in the rubber boots that the organization had given us to combat the mud. We realized soon after arriving that it was considerably colder than we had anticipated, and most of us ended up putting on almost all of our clothes in order to stay warm. Although some of the men spoke Spanish, many of the people there only spoke their local Mayan language, so communication was sometimes interesting. Every day one or two guys were assigned to gringo duty, and spent the day with us, helping us with the projects that the organization and community had set up. We hacked up a ton of plants with machetes, in order to make room to plant trees- a type of tree that bears fruit specifically for the quetzals.
We stayed in a house built by a past Carpe Diem group, although unfortunately it had no heat source, so on the second day we decided that it would be a good idea to build a fire inside the house. The only problem was that the wood was fairly damp, and when we tried to really get the fire going in order to have some heat throughout the night, we ended up creating so much smoke that Nick ended up dragging the entire fire out of the house and we all evacuated for a little while until the smoke had calmed down. Also, after two of us had been stung, we realized that we had actually smoked out a wasps nest, and there were wasps all over the floor of the house. So we were back to being very cold, and stayed that way for pretty much the entire trip. Even though we had a bit of a language barrier the people were extremely kind and made sure that we were comfortable to the best of their abilities, and fed us so much food that Amanda had to tell them that we couldn’t eat so much. The food was definitely more simple than what we’ve been eating, but it was all delicous and no one had problems with it. Besides planting trees, we spent one morning at the local school and played soccer with the kids on their field (first tie for team CAM) and leveled out an area of land to build a kitchen so that the next groups who come can have a real fire. One evening we went quetzal-watching, and we all decided that it was the best bird-watching we had ever experienced. In the evening they leave the edge of the forest to get food, and it was absolutely breathtaking to see them flying. But by far the best part of the trip was the last day, which was Anjali’s birthday. We ended up having a party in our house, with three guys playing the marimba, which is like a giant xylophone that’s native to Guatemala, and more and more people from the community kept showing up. At one point they took boards from the ceiling in order to make more benches for everybody. And just as we thought things were winding down, some women showed up with a giant pot of coffee. It was the perfect end to our stay there.
After our trek down the mountain, which was amazing because it wasn’t foggy and we could see everything, we returned to Coban and then after lunch got on another bus which took us to a hostel near Semuc Champey, where we relaxed a little and enjoyed being warm again. We spent the next morning exploring the river/waterfalls/swimming holes in Semuc Champey, but in the afternoon spent some time resting up from all the travel, and various illnesses that some of us were experiencing. We returned to Coban in the evening and were all more than happy to take hot showers and crash in the comfortable beds at the hostel there. And in the morning, it was time to return to civilization start the next part of our journey- to Xelaju- the second largest city in Guatemala.
Thanks for tuning in to the CAM blog,
Hasta luego,
Julia
