El Quiché

El campo. I was so eager to get out of Guatemala City. I was in the Quiché in 1995, but on the other side, I remember the bus ride down to Nebaj through the mountains, a curvy, dusty dirt road in an old bus. I got sick. The road is paved now, but only to Nebaj. We left half the vehicles in the parish and continued northeast to Chajul, then wound through the Cuchumatanes and twice across the river Suchum on a single lane dirt road. The road is rough, even when dry, and the scree made it hard to climb. One of the baby suvs, a Toyota Rav4, couldn´t make it up the hills and an 80s model toyota pick-up with a bedfull of locals had to tow us. We´d left Guatemala City at 5 a.m. and arrived in Chel (after Juá) at 7:30 p.m. It was dark and we were exhausted.