#20: El Retiro and the Day of the Devil - Guatemala - A Year and a ...

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After a couple of days in Coban, on Sunday I travelled to the backpacker hostel El Retiro, three hours away in the village of Lanquin. I simply planned to hang around and relax there until my friend Gari arrived (he had just flown into Mexico City and was taking buses to meet me).

I quite disliked El Retiro at first. A lovely place, full of hammocks, swings for bar stools, great vegetarian meals, run by an Englishman — a flawless home away from home for travellers. Unsure how long I could endure this, I came across a really brilliant novel in their library (Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood) and settled down to relax. As the shock of all this gringo trail-ness wore off, I came to really enjoy my time at this happy, calming place. I read my book, played chess, befriended some very fun people and generally lowered my stress setting (already quite low) another few notches.

El Retiro is set by a relentlessly flowing river, and we hired inflated tubes in the shape of an O and would float down, propelled by the current. "Inner tubing" was a mixture of idle sailing and furious avoidance of low hanging tree branches. One time I found myself helping two Israelis who had fallen out of their tubes (tubing can get kind of scary when you realise there is no way to swim upstream against the current). With the girls trying to climb back in, I somehow ended up clinging on to a taut, thin tree branch to hold us all steady, while holding on to one of their tubes with my other hand. I felt my strength failing as the water tore past us — "Umm, I'm not going to be able to hold on to this tree much more." The response, "A little more time please," came back, in the same tone as though I was a tetchy husband on a shopping trip. I gritted my teeth and held until everyone was ready to float on, the tree branch giving me a parting gift of a whipping red scratch across my arm as I let it flick out. Later I had an even more exciting encounter, being swept under and through a tree fallen across the river, immediately losing my tube and tumbling between thick raking branches, but as my mum is reading this I'll leave off any further details.

Semuc Champey

This is the great natural wonder of the Lanquin area. A ferocious white water river ricochets along this valley's floor, and is swallowed whole into a 60m long limestone cave, before escaping out the other end to continue its journey. The natural bridge formed by the roof of the cave contains clear pools for swimming, and there is a steep hike/climb to a lookout point above the valley. The view from the top was lovely, hopefully my camera will be able to convey how beautiful it all looked, but the climb up was somewhat terrifying. I found myself repeatedly grasping rocks or roots and hauling myself up over deeply slippery mud to the next level-ish part of the "trail", pausing frequently to reflect on what a stupid thing this was to do alone. But I reasoned another tourist would be along soon if I got into trouble, and quickly became more scared of trying to descend this nightmare than continuing upwards.

Despite not strong climbing skills and a not mild fear of heights, I reached the top and sat for a while admiring the view and wondering why I hadn't brought any lunch. There turned out to be an easier route down, only it petered out halfway, so I spent a little while tramping randomly through the woods before finding the bottom. I went for a lazy swim in the pools, after I had begged an apple off one of the van drivers that took tourists to Semuc. These young guys' life was to drive their pickup trucks back and forth, lounge around all day in the valley until the return trip and crudely perve at the female tourists in bikinis — they thought the world of themselves.

Gari arrives

Gari's long series of bus journeys from Mexico City ended on Thursday, rousing me from my late morning doze, shouting "Dan? Dan?" by my dormitory's window. It was great to see him again and we immediately set about resuming conversations old and new. Gari has been my friend for over three years now, we'd met in a train station when both travelling in Italy, and he was one of the people that had been encouraging me to do this trip from the start. Being a writer himself, he had also given me a lot of advice on the writing of this travel diary. He is 39, originally from the north east of England, works in London but like me has a massive dislike for the city.

One of the things he brought was a copy of The Sun newspaper. This was a pretty complete cure for homesickness: leafing through The Sun's fury at the unimportant, its unthinking diatribes thinly disguised as news, the confused love triangles of Dear Deidre's page, all the reasons for leaving England returned to punch me in the stomach. By this point it was late, and the hostel's security guard, Mario, came by. The Sun was immensely popular with him, especially the bare breasted lovely on page three (she was explaining her views on tagging asylum seekers). He laid the paper on the ground and slowly turned each page, all incomprehensible as he didn't speak a word of English, pausing only at one photo — he pointed: "Bush!"

About 11pm, Gari went for a rest (he had taken a 5am bus to get to me) and I went down to the El Retiro bar, to say a long and drunken farewell to the friends I had made.

Burn the Devil

Gari shared my liking for Coban and we stayed there another few days, partly to give him a deserved rest from bus journeys and partly because there was a fiesta coming up, The Day of the Devil. We were colossally ignorant about what the fiesta involved, and sat in the town square a little bemused, until around 8pm a huge wooden float of the Virgin Mary proceeded past us, carried by about twelve Cobaners and surrounded by slowly walking locals. A man holding long rocket fireworks was lighting them in his hand and letting them fly, sparks shooting in all directions. This perhaps seemed a little dangerous, but was merely a taster of the madness that was to come. As the Virgin crawled through the streets, a man holding a wooden/papier-mache goatlike float-thing above his head leapt into view. The Devil's float, despite being unquestionably flammable, was porcupined with fireworks, which he proceeded to launch off in all directions as the procession continued. More than several whooshed close by members of the crowd, to my and Gari's horror and to everyone else's immense amusement. The Guatemalan nonchalant cheerfulness in the face of problems or danger now seeming disturbing rather than comforting — as my eardrums began to ache from the ever unpredictable explosions, I started to feel as though I was surrounded by the laughter of the insane.

The procession came to its destination, a small church, and things got crazier. The Devil slung off his spent artillery piece, and was strapped into a huge wooden set of bat wings (or maybe a spider's web). This was, perhaps now unsurprisingly, arrayed with more fireworks, and he began to dance with another devil figure as more fireworks lit one after another. With my arms clapped over my ears and more than a little petrified, I watched the finale of the night, as the pyramid at the top of the wooden frame turned into a fiery spinning catherine wheel.

As the crowd dispersed, we returned to the town centre, and drank strong Cuba Libres to calm our nerves. Those of a nervous disposition may wish to avoid Guatemala on December seventh.

Questions? If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our Central America Insiders page.

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