Chapter 12: Coban Romancing the Stone - Blue Jade

Chapter 12: Coban Romancing the Stone - Blue Jade

My curiosity often led me to pursue interests Javier’s family thought quite strange. One of those passions was gemology.

During one of my earlier visits to Antigua I had stopped in Jades SA, one of the many jade shops along 4a calle oriente near the main plaza.

There, I met Jay Ridinger, a U.S. geologist who had been living in Guatemala part time since 1975, and owned the Jades SA shop. Although it carried several colours of jade it specialized in one of the most prized treasures of the Mayan universe—rare blue jade.

Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Guatemala are the only two countries in the world that produce Jadeite, the most valued of the two types of jade. (Nephrite is the other and has only little value.) But Guatemala produces jade with the most color variety. The palette includes rainbow, champagne and lavender, but the blue hue is the most prized.

The Mayan made sacrificial knives, beads, and ceremonial masks of jade—the most famous being the death mask of a King found in the Mayan ruins of Tikal in northeastern Guatemala.

When the Spanish conquered this region in the 16th century, the source of this gem was lost. That is, until 1998, when Hurricane Mitch tore open the mother lode—a deep vein of translucent blue jade.

In 1975, Ridinger and his wife, Mary Lou, a noted archaeologist, explored the remote canyons in search of the source of jade beads they’d spotted in the shops of Antigua.

  Most archaeologists assumed Guatemalan jade had come from China across the Bering Sea, but the Ridingers believed otherwise. By following a trader’s map, he tracked down the source of the blue jade and discovered, that deep within the cloud forests of Guatemala, it lay hidden by a mountain range stretching more than two miles (3.2 km) high.

Their persistence was rewarded with a find of Olmec Blue Jade, a descriptive term referring to the Olmec culture that blue jade is commonly called.   

  Within Ridinger’s showroom, Jades S.A., located in a restored 17th century building, Ridinger, his monocle firmly in place, showed me how to identify jade.

“It’s an old stone that lies deep below the surface,” he said “You need to strike it to wake it up, and when you do, it sings.”

   According to Ridinger, the ancient Maya believed blue jade had special properties. Its unique molecular composition facilitated communication between beings. Maya kings would drape themselves in jade and use the powers of the jade to communicate between their kingdoms and with deities.

“It was used much like a cell phone,” said Ridinger.

Ridinger himself had experienced this unique attribute himself.

“We were on an expedition in the mountains and a thick fog came up,” he recalled. “It made it impossible to locate where the rest of my family was.”

They had been flying over valleys in vain and almost out of fuel when he clasped onto a piece of jade in his pocket. It was part of a larger piece that he had broken into four pieces and divided among his wife and three children.

“Where are you?” he willed, visualizing his children in his mind.

“The clouds opened up like a donut and in the clearing were Mary Lou and the kids.”

The story was fantastical enough that I was captivated by thoughts of the blue gem. I wanted to see the source of the gem with my own eyes.

But Ridinger wouldn’t disclose the source of his jade and it soon became obvious that the location of the mines was a guarded secret.

I wasn’t ready to give up, so I contacted the Gemology Institute of Canada for advice.

“Mines are always close to water because miners don’t like to walk far,” said a voice over the phone.

Motagua Valley. According to sources in the environmental protection department, there was a 20-mile (32 km) wilderness trail that passed through the jungle ending at a magnificent waterfall. It seemed a promising location to begin our blue jade explorations.

The Nature Conservancy reported the region as one of the last truly wild places of Guatemala. The forbidding terrain is home to more than 2,000 species of flora and 800 different birds and mammals, including ocelots and howler monkeys.

Always up for an adventure, Thelma agreed to accompany Javier and me. We launched our jade hunt from the cloud forest pueblo of Chilasco, seven miles (12 km) off the main road, a three hour drive from San Vicente.

A light rain began to fall and the sky was whitewashed with fog. We lost our bearings and asked directions from a campesino wearing a green garbage bag for a rain poncho. Soon the man was in the backseat of our Toyota, coaxing us up a narrow road that led deeper into the mountains.

  “It’s steep but solid, if you’re careful,” he said, lurching as the tires of the car slipped on the mud seemingly intent on hurling all of us over the precipice.

Two hours later, we neared a town made up of a few battered homes and a large soccer playing field. The sky darkened, threatening heavy rain.

Word of our arrival travelled fast and within minutes a man who introduced himself as Esteban Hernandez appeared. High rubber boots and a tattered cowboy hat, he was the wiry commissioner of the Defensores de la Naturaleza, the conservation authority. His two dogs were the same amber color as the thick mud that puddled in the street.

  “In 1969, we found a jade boulder weighing several tons submerged in the earth not too far from here,” Hernandez explained. “It took 300 villagers to haul it back to town.” 

The huge monolith – reminiscent of an Easter Island head - now sat in the local schoolyard. Hernandez pointed out a series of grooves where ropes were once suspended and used to hang criminals.

Following Ridinger’s instructions, I surreptitiously tapped the boulder, and heard the resounding ring that verified it as real jade.

  The discovery made me even more eager to see firsthand where the boulder had been found.

Hernandez waved to a villager who would serve as our guide. The hike would be a steep descent to a waterfall and then two days of heavy trudging into the Motagua Valley.

“Two days?” None of us were dressed for that. We were woefully ill-prepared. It hadn’t rained in San Vicente for months so it hadn’t crossed my mind that it might be raining here. Javier was willing to go forward in his boots but although I had hiking boots, I didn’t have rain gear. Thelma was wearing a white cardigan and carrying a purse.

I peered into the green canopy. A giant florescent fern uncurled in perfect form and a series of small waterfall quietly cascaded into dark reflecting pools on the soft jungle floor. A light misty rain, called chipi-chipi, was falling, and, with the thick fog, it was bone chillingly cold but beautiful.

“Are you sure you still want to go ahead?” Javier asked. In late November, we were pushing our luck.

“We’ve come all this way,” I answered passing my purse to Thelma who was scraping mud off her white sneakers with a plastic bag.

A small crowd of villagers had formed, ready to accompany me. An older woman wearing an apron over her floral dress frowned.

She said a mule had broken its leg on the trail earlier this week – not a good omen.
We walked down the street as a group, our feet making sucking sounds in the earth, to a trail leading into the woods.

The mouth of the trail was in poor shape - a thick muddy soup.

  One serious boy watched my face to get my reaction to the state of the trail.

I joked, “Dinosaur caca.”

He laughed, but it was a serious problem. Even the guide ropes to control our descent were buried in the smothering mud.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Javier shaking his head at the churned earth.

“It’s worse below,” the guide, trampling ferns along the edge of the trail to make an alternate path.

  “I’ll give it a try,” I said, forging ahead. Thelma stayed behind, looking like Mr. Clean in her whites, holding our purses.

Javier went first scampering heavily but making it to a bend in the trail.

Far away from Canada, at the edge of a cloud forest and surrounded by mountains, the prospect of jade within reach, I felt a thrilling mix of fear and freedom. I took a few steps forward and suddenly careened out of control, falling head first down a water slide of slippery goo. It felt as though the lower half of my body was on a crazy carpet that moved forward like a living beast. I wedged myself against a tree, using it as a brake to stop myself from face-splatting in the mud.

As the guide hauled me back up the hill by my collar, I peeked around the bend in the trail where Javier waited and saw that the route was completely submerged in water. We’d need a rubber raft to go much further. My attempt to reach the lost jade was over. My shoulders slumped in disappointment and my heart was as heavy as my mud-caked shoes. Javier looked relieved.

Hernandez assured us that we were welcome to come back. With a few days of no rain, the trail might dry out enough to be navigable.

  We retreated to a local hotel to wait for the weather to clear. Tucked beside a waterfall, the hotel was actually a collection of small Hobbit-like stone cottages with white stucco walls and chimneys of smooth river stones. Our unheated cottage was sparsely furnished with three chairs in front of a fireplace as though waiting for Goldilocks to arrive. Although we were cold when not pressed up against the fireplace, Thelma was enthusiastic about the hotel restaurant’s menu. A popular stop for travellers enroute to Coban, it featured the regional specialty, Kack-ik, a turkey soup redolent with mint, cinnamon, cloves and the smoky Coban chile.

That night, sodden and chilled from the hike, we savoured the soup and tamalitos, tiny steamed tamales in banana leaf and then retreated to our cottage, telling ghost stories until the fire in the hearth went out.

Rain fell for the next two days. We explored a maze of underground caves at el Biotopo de Quetzal, a nature preserve for Guatemala’s national bird and at a roadside stand, purchased monas, monkey planters made of vines. Thelma stuffed hers with purple orchids and mine travelled back with me to Canada and still stands in the garden of our Toronto home.

Eventually our time in the cloud forest ran out. Thelma had family affairs to attend to and I had to face the fact that the jade treasure was not yet ready to reveal its secret source. Hidden from view to casual visitors, the beauty of blue jade seemed a metaphor for Guatemala itself. As we returned from the mountain toward the arid desert of San Vicente, long fingers of columnar cacti pointed to peaceful river valleys.