More mountain wanderings

My day of getting lost in the mountains above Acul inspired me to spend 3 more days in Nebaj.  I wandered around, exploring the nearby unpronouncable towns of Xexocop, Chajul, Xix, and many others.  I spent a good amount of time walking and waving at folks.  I've been told that Nebaj is a popular base for tourists, but considering that I didn't see any other gringo, and that small children run out on the street to greet me, I can only assume that it's not as popular as the Nebaj tourist board would like to think.

I finally left after spending 4 days wandering around the mountains.  It was a beautiful area, and I hated to leave, but I´ve got to keep moving if I want to have any hope of making it to Mexico to fly home at a reasonable time.  Also I needed to give my aching feet a chance to recover.  I have to switch between my cheapo running shoes bought in Xela, my Chaco sandals, and my flip-flops.  They all hurt my feet in different ways, so I have to switch footwear every day.  After 4 days of walking, I really just needed to have a rest day.

So, after 6 hours of rough dirt roads, I ended up in the town of Coban, where I spent a nice night in a private room with my own bathroom and cable TV for $7 a night!  I may or may not have watched 30 minutes of the Spice Girls Movie.  I´m not a coffee person, but apparently the Verapaz region of Guatemala is a big coffee producer, so I started the next morning off with a cup of the local stuff.  Not bad, but it still tastes like coffee.  I won´t go into a whole big thing, but the origins of coffee still confuse me.  Not sure who came up with the stuff, but it´s amazing that their thought process went something like this, "Ok.  So we'll take these random beans, dry 'em out and roast them, grind them up, and then filter hot water through them."  That's a lot of steps to go through only to come up with an end product that really tastes terrible...

Anyway, I had tentative plans to meet friends in Semuc Champey (Guatemala's big tourist attraction behind Tikal) in the next day or so, so I pushed eastward.  More to come.

**Unfortunately, my camera was stolen on a bus ride, and since I'm about a week behind in my updates, I don't have any pictures.  I'll try to steal some from my buddy Scott.  He's a much better photographer than I, and has already been most of these places.**