Cubulco

Another hour of rough road from Rabinal brings you down into the next valley to the isolated ladino town of CUBULCO , surrounded on all sides by steep, forested mountains. Cubulco is again best visited for its fiesta , this being one of the few places where you can still see the Palo Volador , a pre-Conquest ritual in which men throw themselves from a thirty-metre pole with a rope tied around their legs, spinning down towards the ground as the rope unravels, and hopefully landing on their feet. It's as dangerous as it looks: most of the dancers are blind drunk and deaths are not uncommon. The fiesta still goes on, though, as riotous as ever, with the main action taking place on July 25. The best place to stay is the Hospedaje Pías (up to US$5) next to the large farmacia in the centre of town, where some rooms have private bath. There are several good comedores in the market, but the best place to eat is La Fonda del Viajero , which serves up big portions of Guatemalan food at reasonable prices.

Hourly buses run between Salamá and Cubulco via Rabinal. If you'd rather not leave the valley the same way that you arrived, a bus leaves Cubulco daily at around 9am, heads back to Rabinal and then, instead of heading for La Cumbre and the main road, turns to the south, crossing the spine of the Sierra de Chuacús and dropping directly down towards Guatemala City. The trip takes you over rough roads for at least eight hours, but the mountain views and the sense of leaving the beaten track help to take the pain out of it all.