Having ignored Brittany's multiple warnings that I shouldn't drink or eat after her over the past few days, I found myself hurling the night away just as Brittany had recovered. To make things worse, our hostel's bathroom was a good hundred feet from our room, and the temperature outside was in the fifties. So every time I went to the bathroom (a solid 9 or 10 times) I had to leave our already flippin' cold dorm for the 100 foot walk in the really flippin´ cold outdoors. By the time I got back I was shivering, and right about when I got warm again I started the next trip to the throne. It was a pretty miserable night, compounded by the ****** hostel factor.

So after that decidedly unpleasant stay, we checked in to Hostal d'Acuña, another hostel down the street. For the same price (100Q) we got our own private room two feet from a bathroom. Heaven! I'm not convinced yesterday actually happened, because I popped two nyquils and literally slept 30 straight hours. It's been a while since I've done that, but it did the trick and I'm feeling 95% again. We woke up this morning planning to catch a bus to Lanquin. Not content to take the tourist shuttle, we headed out for the local chicken bus station. We found it, but discovered that speaking ZERO Spanish makes it extremely difficult to figure out when your bus leaves, where it leaves from, and which of fifty other buses is the correct one. So, we begrudgingly hiked back to Hostal d'Acuña, and asked for a tourist shuttle ticket with shame in our eyes.

Apparently, the only tourist shuttle heads out at 8AM (it was now 11AM) so we asked to stay another night and booked our ticket for tommorow morning ($8!!!). This actually happened to be a great thing, because it meant we had time to walk literally down the street and take a guided tour of Finca Margerita, a local coffee plantation. A very old and kind woman took us through the plantation and described the process. Did you know that the plants are harvested five to eight times in one season? That the best coffee is that grown at the highest elevations? That it is exclusively grown in the tropics? I didn't! So we learned some cool stuff and got to sample a cup of their best brew at the end, all for a grand total of $3 each. Have I said how much I love this country?

I'm no coffee connoisseur, but it tasted good to me. We bought some beans for a lucky few at home and headed back out to the streets. Coban itself is, delicately put, a dump. The coffee plantation was a beautiful Eden of 25,000 flowering plants. If they turned part of their plantation into a hostel they could charge any price!

During the short trip back to the hostel, we came upon a street where one bus after another literally screeched and hopped sideways as it attempted to make the corner without losing any speed. We couldn´t help but think that, while that driver would instantly be fired in the States, he'd probably receive a bonus here! Ahhh, Central America, where thirty seconds is worth a bus full of lives :)

Tomorrow we will leave for Lanquin at 8AM; a two hour journey. We'll make Lanquin our base while we explore the numerous cave systems and Semuc Champey for a few days. Apparently you can visit the caves at dusk and see thousands of bats flying out of the entrance, which sounds pretty cool! Kind of reminds me of Crocodile Dundee for some reason :) We've already been reading up on Australia for our trip with Chelsea. Can't wait!

I wanted to try some traditional Mayan dishes for dinner, so I ordered the oddest sounding things on the menu. The main course was a kind of turkey soup with rice. Not bad! But the drink I got with it, Kakaw-Ik, is basically hot chocloate milk with honey, spices, and chili pepper. It tasted as good as it sounds...blech. But hey, I tried it!

Now we're off to find a nice place to get a beer and strike up a conversation with some unfailingly interesting locals. Many of them enjoy practicing their English on us, so we have had the opportunity to meet some very nice and helpful people. I sure wish we had paid more attention in 6th grade Spanish class!

(Pictures are en route)