456 - Cenote de Calenderia
As we drove up to the border of Guatemala, I bid Mexico a farewell. It’d been our home for the past three months, and had treated us well. Fuck, it had treated us amazingly. I was going to miss this place. But it was time for a new chapter in the land of volcanoes, coffee, and uh… other stuff. I haven’t researched this place much.
Mexico had occupied 100% of my time. I never thought there would be a moment in my life where I felt more comfortable in Mexico than wherever I was going. But today that day came.
It wasn’t for any logical reasons. I knew Guatemala was just as a safe as Mexico, if you had street smarts. But it was fact that it was a completely different country we were going into that threw me for a loop. New currency, new foods, new culture.
But here we were, and the border was right in front of us. The road in was narrow, and there was no turning back now.
We rolled up to the checkpoint, which doubled as a market. The entire place was swarming with vendors, people, and tacky souvenirs. And by the time we’d gotten out of our van to start the paperwork, we’d developed quite the audience.
But we were used to the attention. Our paperwork took about 20 minutes. What we didn’t realize, however, was we were out of cash to pay for the paperwork. Don’t ask me why we didn’t think of that.
The point was, I had to venture into Guatemala and find an ATM that had quetzals (the official currency) alone. Haley had to stay with the van. Well, shit. I had no idea if this area was safe, and I had no idea where an ATM would be. I did a quick scan, figured I’d be fine, and took off.
After about 5 blocks, faked confidence, and a bunch of questions, I found an ATM. I just had to pray that my crypto debit card would work, because Haley’s card had gotten stolen a week ago and was effectively useless.
I slid it into the slot, prayed to the Mayan god of agriculture, and waited. And waited. And waited. Until it failed.
Fuck. Then I realized I put it in upside down. I flipped it upside down, waited, and BOOM. It worked.
Phew. That was almost a major pain in the ass. I hustled back to the van, paid our dues, and were on our way. Our first adventure we had in mind was Cenote Candeleras, which was about 3 hours north of the border. We had quite the drive ahead of us. But we were in!
*Three hours of uneventful driving later, we arrived at the cenote*
And this place was massive. Easily the widest cenote we’ve been at so far, to the point where you couldn’t swim across it unless you knew what you were doing.
Once I got out my camera, I started searching for a way to capture the whole thing. It was going to be difficult, that’s for sure. From a non-aerial perspective, it was too wide and blown out to get something creative. So I started low. The first thing that captured my mind was (you guessed it) a cactus. Look at this pointy thing:
“Star Saw”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 500 ~ 70mm ~ f/8 ~ 1/200s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
One trick I did to make that photo stand out was highlight the inner points. You’ll notice they almost make a star shape… That became my subject here. If I can’t find a subject, I make one!
I kept looking around, eager to get SOMETHING that encompassed the entire cenote. It just didn’t look that good in a photo. Either that or I wasn’t warmed up enough. After all, I hadn’t shot in two days because it was our weekend. I looked into the dark water, and got an abstract shot of it’s short, subtle waves:
“Sparkled Ripple”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
[ISO 200 ~ 70mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/1250]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I know, I know. Calm your titties. You’re begging to see this whole cenote and I’m just taking mini abstracts. I’M GETTING THERE.
Jump forward 15 minutes. Well, the sun set and I still didn’t have a mangum opus photo. Haley was ready to go back to the van, but I was stubborn. I can’t just leave like this… There has to be a way. So I tapped into my inner sanctum of secrets and decided I needed to pull the horror card.
Now, if you’ve been reading/watching my shit long enough, you would know that whenever I’m in a photography rut, finding something “horror-esque” will get me out of it. I looked around. There was nothing “horror” here, just a bunch of flowers. Then I went about 30 feet to the left.
One thing that I ALSO like to do when I’m stuck is keep moving. Even if I THINK I’m in the best spot for a shot, I have to keep moving. This is something I learned from taking buckets of LSD in college. If you’re starting to have a bad trip, just switch your environment. Oddly enough, the lesson carries over into photography.
And that’s when I found the most insane root system I’ve ever seen in my life. It straight up looked like intestines… And since it was twilight out, it looked absolutely vile:
“Tree Intestine”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamon 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 1600 ~ 17mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/160s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
A perfect addition to my horror landscape photography collection. I did it. Not the entire cenote mind you, but enough to get a taste. Haha, but now I was amped. I couldn’t leave. My flow just began.
I told Haley to go back to the van because she was on the verge of losing it, and I stayed behind. I ended up snagging another root shot here:
“Fatty Fluids”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Tamon 17-28mm f/2.8
[ISO 1600 ~ 17mm ~ f/8 ~ 1/125s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Equally disturbing as the other photo, but more in a fat, slimly kind of way. I think this shot does a nice job of displaying the complexity of this root system in correlation with the rocks. That’s a mouthful of a sentence.
And with that, I called it a night. Twilight is the perfect time for horror landscapes.
What a weird way to start off Guatemala. I’ll take it, though. Tomorrow we’re heading to a haunted sinkhole that can fit a skyscraper in it. If this is my last blog post I probably fell in. Stay tuned.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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