The next morning we packed our stuff up in the car and started to walk into town with the intention of grabbing local transportation to Semuc Champey. The road from Lanquin to Semuc is an even less well maintained dirt/gravel road with the added fun of steep inclines. Fun for a pickup, but not so fun for a four door sedan. So our plan was to grab a ride in the local minvans that serve as buses to and from Semuc. Lucky for us a truck working for a hotel closer to the national park stopped and offered us a ride and we spent the half-hour or so chatting with the driver in the cab. He didn't even charge us very much, just Q20 for the pair (outrageously cheap if you were actually hiring a tourism truck to take you around and much less than what he charged the other gringo he was taking to the park). Seriously, people are ridiculously friendly here.
Here's a little bit about Sempuc Champey. It's a series of limestone pools hidden up in the mountains. Just above the pools the river dives deep into caves that run under the whole area. Just below the pools the river emerges and the water from the pools joins the river in a series of waterfalls. The water in the pools themselves comes from runoff coming down from the steep mountainsides that surround them. It really is an incredible sight. The national park is simple but well maintained. It's an incredible place to hike and to swim, and can get very busy on holidays and weekends, e
specially during Holy Week. There are well hidden lifeguards (I had no idea they were there until the yelled at someone for jumping into the pools from a stupid spot) and a few guides here and there to make sure no one falls into the river or off a cliff (which does apparently happen every once in a while). We didn't have a lot of time to spend in the area since we had to return to Guatemala that night (my friend had to be at work at 7:00 the next morning) so once we got to the park we headed straight for an overlook platform high above the pools. It's about a 30 to 45 minute hike up the side of one of the surrounding mountains. A fun hike, and well worth it, but we were certainly ready for a swim by the time we got back down to the pools. I took the picture above from the viewing platform. Truly an amazing sight, no?Once we made our way down from the overlook we did a bit of exploring. We wandered around to see where the river enters the caves underneath the limestone pools, being very careful not to slip or fall. The rocks just underneath the water (the areas of the photos that are more
brown than turquoise) are slick and it would be easy to loose your balance if you're not careful. I was amazed at how much a difference it made with the tiny bit of extra traction provided by a pair of well-worn havaiana flip-flops. The next photo is a picture of the river as it rushes down underground. My friend was telling me that a co-worker of hers drown here a little over a year ago because he had walked up close to the edge that you can see here on the right and slipped and fell into the water. It's hard to see in the photo, but the water is pretty fast moving and rough and it more or less plunges straight down into a hole just underneath where we were standing when I took this picture. I'm not sure if they ever found his body. We were standing behind a wooden fence when I took this photo that protects those who want a view of the river from just such a fall. But if you cross the pools at this point, as you can see from the photo there is no fence up close to the edge of the river itself. It was definitely a dizzy feeling standing there and not only seeing but also hearing and feeling the river rush underneath us.We spent
the rest of the afternoon swimming in the various pools. The water was pretty cold, but it felt refreshing after the climb up to and down from the overlook. There were very few other people around and it felt like we had the place to ourselves. The water in the pools is crystal clear. The turquoise color doesn't come from the rocks or from the water itself but from the depth of the pools. The deeper the pool the richer the color. But when you're actually swimming the water has no color to it at all and you can see all the way down unless you're in a particularly deep area. The little fish that live in the larger pools are fearless and will come up and nibble on your skin in order to eat (I'm assuming) the dead skin and other tasty (yucky) stuff that they can get off of you. It's a strange feeling...you can actually tell they are nibbling on you. It's not that they bite, but it definitely tickles. Sit still for even a little bit and there will be a swarm (or school?) of little fish surrounding you.Once we finished swimming and changed back into our sweat soaked clothes (yeah, I know, yuck) we headed back out to the entrance of the park to catch a minivan/bus back to Lanquin. Much to our chagrin, however, the bus just never showed up. It passed us on the way up the mountain to the villages above Semuc Champey and never came back down. We ended up catching a ride in the back of a pickup with some guys heading to Coban. They even offered us a ride to Coban with them, but we since we had left my friend's car in Lanquin we had to decline the offer. So we spent a slightly harrowing ride (damn but they drove fast!) back to Lanquin in the bed of a pickup truck with an indigenous woman and her young son, two Guatemalan men from Lanquin and a Danish guy we met while waiting for the bus. I have to say transportation here in Guatemala is always interesting, no matter how you get somewhere. It's always an adventure to get from point A to point B. As soon as we got back to Lanquin we dove into the car and started our way back to Guatemala City. It took us about 5 hours or so and we went straight to bed, exhausted, for the third night in a row.
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