A nice dinner and some nighttime market walking brought Wednesday to a close as the town began preparing for Thursday.

In the morning we had to move the car because our hotel was in the middle of what was about to become a huge street market. We grabbed breakfast overlooking the central square as the town got fired up. The surrounding streets were completely unrecognizable from the day before as stalls sprang up from nothing. Locals come here to restock food and random while tourists come to fill their baggage with local artisanal works.

After a good few laps we visited the colourful cemetery that was being prepared for Day of Dead then got back in the Safari and headed north towards Coban.

Touted as one of the most scenic roads in Guatemala, we’d gotten mixed info about the actual surface quality. We had about 7 hours of light and we hoped to make it the ~175km to Coban. Sounds easy, I know… But along this road we saw some pretty spectacular road failures, including one massive slide that forced us to detour well below the original road along a temporary path.

When it started to rain we figured we’d never make it in time, but suddenly we were back on pavement and only 30 minutes from Coban.

As nighttime took over we navigated through the main part of town and found a random hotel on the road we’d be taking the next day to Lanquin and Samuc Champey.

We’d heard great things about Samuc Champey while we were in San Pedro so we rejigged our Guatemala plans around getting up there. Coban is only 70km from Samuc Champey and the drive was supposed to take 2 hours. When we arrived, the hotel owner took one look at the Safari and told us we’d be fine getting there, but overnight conditions changed a bit…

We had a nice breakfast down the street, came back and were once again reassured that the Safari could do it, and the rain had stopped. Cool, we said, that sounds neat.

Of the 70km, 50km is nearly perfect pavement winding through the mountains from the cool highlands in Coban to jungle filled river valleys around Lanquin. After 50km the road turns to dirt and gets exciting for 11km before you arrive in Lanquin. Had we been sporting the latest Lonely Planet guide instead of going on memory, we would have stopped here and stayed at El Retiro hostel. Instead, we pulled down the driveway of El Recreo hotel and got very very stuck against a tree.

It took two hours, but with the help of seven hombres and a dumptruck we were free.

We still didn’t have a guidebook so we continued past Lanquin to Samuc Champey, another 9km of ridiculous road. An hour later we arrived to discover that El Retiro was back in town. We considered doubling back, but decided we’d had enough driving so we grabbed some beds at El Portal hostel right beside the Semuc Champey park and caves.