Day 1 – Travel Day
- Welcome to the Jungle!
We had a couple of comfort breaks, one at a McDonalds.
There were no other choices so it was good to enjoy a guilt free Big Mac when
you should be enjoying the local cuisine. We just had time to pick up some
mozzie cream (needed for the jungle!) before we boarded for the 45 minute, very
bumpy decent into the valley on Lanquin where we would be staying.
We were deposited in the middle of town and found someone
waving a plastic card with our hostel name, after showing us to a tuk-tuk, we
were soon on our way with our bags crammed in the back, it seems our hostel was
right on the edge of town.
There isn’t a great deal of choice in Lanquin so hostels
are a little pricy and basic, ours had a small very basic bedroom, shared
bathroom, opposite a generator with an open sewer outside!
As we were on the edge of town, we decided to go to the
hotel restaurant that offered a basic menu of grilled meat, chips, veg and warm
beer. We decided instead to treat ourselves to a bottle of red instead and
enjoyed that and the food whilst being entertained by a weird fluffy mammal
running though the rafters. It looks a little like a possum but it’s not, we
never did discover what it was.
Day 2 – Pools and pedicures
We were heading to Semuc Champey, famous for its amazing
natural rock pools. To get there we had to take a collectivo, which is basically
an open truck you stand on the back of and hold on for dear life as it careers
up and down hills and breaks excessively. Our truck had to make a trip into town first so
we had a chance to get a glimpse of the village and village life first which
was nice.
We then headed for around 30 minutes up and down winding
roads through stunning jungle scenery! This is what travelling is all about,
hanging onto the back trucks, rumbling through dusty roads, passing, banana,
coco and many other plantations, breaking for the odd chicken or small child,
we both loved it and something we will never forget!
After pushing off the drivers rather insistent offer of
waiting for us and asking for a return time, we made our way to the ticket office
and paid a small fee to enter the national park. We made our way along a
crumbling path until we came to a sign announcing Mirador with a path leading
up. There was a local lady who had just come down and as I was about to follow Glenn
up the path, she warned me that it was incredibly muddy and slippery and to
take care. She said it was between a 30-40 minute climb!
Glenn, hearing this and knowing I might have one or two
concerns, hoofed it up the path ahead of me so I had no choice but to follow
him! By now you know how unstable I am on my feet. The hot sticky 40 minute
very steep, rocky and slippery journey was spent with me effing and jeffing,
sobbing that there was no way I would be able to make it back down, and leering
at Glenn’s back. When we finally made it to the top Glenn announced “well isn’t
that view worth the hike?” to be fair it was, absolutely stunning but I wasn’t willing
to admit it!
We had overheard a woman talking about her trip to Semuc
Champey earlier, she had said it was lovely but not worth the journey. Being on
the road for so long, we do tend to take things for granted so wasn’t expecting
too much but we were both blown away by it, absolutely stunning and the pics
just don’t do it justice!
Whilst there, a couple of people came along with a tour
guide, we had noticed that there was another path down but it looked like it
might be steeper than the one we had climbed. The guide assured us that it was
a much easier path which made me cheer up a bit.
True to the guides word, the path down was much easier
and we were soon scrambling over rocks to get a picture of the waterfall before
heading to the pools themselves for a well earnt dip.
We grabbed a quick drink at the entrance and then made
our way over a bridge, towards the caves. It was around 4pm so we had just
managed to catch the last guided tour. We were told to strip off to our
swimmers and to hand over all of our valuables as we would be getting very wet.
We were introduced to our guide who didn’t speak English, handed a candle each,
a candle, no helmet, no life vest, just a candle! and then made our way to the
path.
As we started our assent, an Aussie guy came running
along who wanted to catch the last tour, we would be glad of this later as we
made him go first. Given it was a steep climb up, I didn’t think he would
appreciate my wobbly bikinied bum in front of him so let him go ahead.
At the mouth of the cave, the guide opted not to give us
a safety briefing and instead lit our candles, gestured to keep our arms up and
in we went.
Aussie first so he could find the submerged rocks that
you crashed into, Glenn second and then me. We were soon up to our necks in
water and then out of our depth, pulling ourselves along with ropes or trying
to swim with a candle in your hand in pitch black.
Now, I’m probably the stronger swimmer out of the two of
us and more confident in the water, as a result Glenn struggled a little more
than me and doused his candle twice!. Vengeance is sweet, Mirador Glenn, Mirador!
We made it through and then more swimming, rope pulling
and shin crashing through the cave, hitting our heads on (I think) stalactites
and tripping over stalagmites and relighting Glenn’s candle occasionally until
we reached the end.
There was a option to do some tubing after this but as it
was now late we thought it would be cold so headed to the road to find a collectivo.
One came along pretty quickly but was packed so the
journey wasn’t so pleasant on the way back as you had to hold your arms out
rigid otherwise you would be slammed against the bar or into the next person,
the driver was a bit heavy on the breaks too!
We headed to the restaurant for a very well earned beer before
returning to the room for showers.
Our choice for dinner was grilled meat, chips but no veg,
they had run out! In the middle of all this vegetation they had run out! We
enjoyed that with the half bottle of wine they had left before retiring to our
room and going to sleep to the sound of the generator.
Being the brits we are, we were packed and ready 15
minutes ahead of time, just in case the mini bus decided to turn up early as
god forbid should we keep people waiting! Despite 15 months of everything
turning up late we haven’t unlearnt this habit. True to form and after a 45-minute
wait, we boarded a very packed mini bus for the 9hr journey to the middle of
Guatemala and to the jungle.
We were stuck on the back row, not ideal as you feel all
of the bumps but we kept ourselves amused by listening to an audio book
together, enjoying the amazing scenery (Guatemala seems to be made up of mostly
jungle) and trying to avoid the water dripping on us from the air conditioning,
at least we had air conditioning.
It turned out that an Aussie couple who were on the minibus
was also staying at the same place. 3 things I can recall about them. 1: they were
only 2 months into their 12-month journey (lucky gits), 2, they were only paying
a 5% fee to the estate agent to manage their home, I’m paying 15% (smug gits!),
as a teacher, he gets 80% of his wage for a year whilst he’s traveling (gone
off them now!)
Something weird happen whilst we were waiting to
check-in. We were in the middle of the jungle so I had a long-sleeved top on.
Suddenly I felt a painful burning sensation on my arm, we were in the middle of
listening to smug gits story so I distractedly rolled my sleeve up and flicked
a bug? Ash? off and decided to deal with it later. Only when getting to our room did I see that I
had what looked like a weeping burn on my arm, weird as my long sleeve wasn’t damaged
but something had managed to crawl up my sleeve and do some damage! Weird! Ask
and I’ll show you the scar when we get back.
Hey ho, we went in search for a welcome beer!
What with the generator and the cockerels waking us at an
ungodly hour, myself and a very grumpy Glenn went across for b/f. The b/f’s are
huge in Guatemala and always served with around 5 corn tortillas (that get a
bit boring after a while) so you fill yourselves up for the day.
We also met a bloke from Manchester up there who had just
visited the caves and told us it was the maddest thing he had done. I told
Glenn that we would just concentrate on getting off this bloody mountain first
before he would throw me into my next life threatening adventure.
It was amazing! We
had been to rock pools before but these were by far the best, the water wasn’t too
cold, not too many tourists and the scenery was stunning. I swam to the
shallows and noticed that little fish started to come along to nibble my feet.
You know the tanks you see where silly sods pay a fee to have a fish pedicure? It
was those fish! It tickled but was strangely nice and as I hadn’t had a
pedicure in all our time traveling, I settled in for a bit of beauty treatment.
I called over to Glenn to join me and, given his gnarly hardened
skinned football feet, they zoned in on him, he must have had about 10 on his
big toe alone. With little crys and yelps of “I don’t’t like this, make them
stop” from Glenn, I laughed so much that I may have let out a bit of pee!
(payback for Mirador!). But after a while he got used to it and we must have
spent about an hour there chatting, enjoying our foot treatment and being grateful
that we had made the trip.
Once we had dried off, we followed the trail to some more
stunning pools and waterfalls before making our way back to the entrance. We would
have stayed longer but it was now late in the day and we wanted to see what the
caves were all about.
It was all going quite well and I was enjoying it (Shel
not Glenn) till we reached a small waterfall with a rope you could climb up
through the water. Aussie went first (we are not stupid!) and it looked a bit
of a struggle so we both took the ladder route instead. The ladder was fine but
very slippery and led to a crevasse at the top which you had to walk across
with gushing water, slipper rock and about 20cm wide, if you fell you wouldn’t recover
in a hurry if at all. No helmet and a candle for light, scary!
Here, we were told we could climb up a jagged rock and
jump into the water. Fuck off! Aussie did decide to do it however, he clambered
up, jumped in and survived. Glenn, (I think trying to get some kudos back
after the candle dousing) decided he would give it a go. He climbed up, taking
care not to rip his back on the cave ceiling, and jumped. He survived!
It was now time to turn back and retrace our footsteps, strangely
it was harder than the journey in! imagine climbing down a metal slippery
uneven ladder in pitch black!. Luckily for me, Glenn was in front of me and
helped me find my footing but when we reached the crevasse again we both broke
out into a sort of a nervous giggle, it was madness!
We made it to the mouth entrance and hugged each other
(Aussie included) and congratulated ourselves on still being alive. It was at this
point we noticed our frazzled hair and black smoke stains from where the candles
had burnt us. We were so shit scared we hadn’t noticed we were setting our hair
on fire! It was also at this point we noticed the signs to enter at your own
risk and the company would not take responsibility for any accidents.
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