"Pueblo of Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta... " a Uspantán Travel Page by atufft

The bus failed to depart from Coban on the day we wanted to leave, so we had to hang around another day. We had spent the whole day waiting with some Mayan farmers who lived in Uspantan. The next day the bus was so crowded that the driver's assistant had to climb on the roof with the baggage. We were the only tourists on the bus, and I gave my seat to a mother and child, choosing to stand and peer out the windows. The old school bus climbed slowly into the mountains along a gravel road that manuevered many hairpin turns. On a couple of these turns a creek drained over the road, so the driver was especially cautious lest the entire bus and all its weight would collapse with an avalanache. The mountain views of high altitude agriculture was unlike anything I've ever seen.

We could have scoured around for a place to stay, but my wife was worried about her altitude sickness, so we planned to push onward. I got off the bus and walked around the central plaza and neighborhoods of the tiny pueblo. The distinctive Mayan dress prevailed here in a big way. We had been advised to exercise caution in these mountains, as robbery of tourists has happened. But, I saw no reason to believe we were risking our lives, even on this old rusty bus. When, Belinda left her purse on the bus, my nephew chased it down urgently. The driver showed equal concern in tracking it down for her.

Belinda, a native speaker of Spanish, claimed that the Spanish utterances of some women whom she talked with was pretty weak and had strong non-Spanish accents. Mostly we heard Mayan dialects in this town, and so I can imagine that Rigoberta Menchu's claim that she begain learning Spanish at age 18 could very well be true for many young Guatemalan's in this part of the country.