Semuc Champey, Guatemala. Probably the Best Place in the World.

¡Hola Guapos!

(Our new found Spanish is coming along nicely for the most part.)

On to our recent trips, where have we been? Who have we met? What have the so called "Hand Holders" been up to? All will be revealed.

When we left you last, we were leaving fair Flores:

 for Lanquin: 

and Semuc Champey. 

We originally went to Coban with the intention of staying a few days and generally checking out that provinces´ capital. When we got to Coban, the map in the Lonely Planet was wrong, the hostel we had picked out no longer existed and the next one down the list was closed because it was Sunday. We stayed one night in Coban.

Immediately we pushed on off to the wonderful Lanquin where we stayed at the always entertaining ´El Retiro´. Basically, Lanquin is the last town before Semuc Champey and the road turns to a dirt track about 10km from the town of Lanquin itself. What you get in El Retiro is a green hillside with a few cabana´s nestled around the place and a river running through the bottom of the property. A rope hangs across the river so that when you get bored of lounging in hammocks or too hot sitting in the sun, you simply hold onto the rope and get into the river. You NEVER let go of the rope, or you´ll drift down the river a long way before you´ll be able to find any way out because of the current. A few words to the wise: don´t let go of the rope.

The other fun thing to do in Lanquin is go visit the Gruttas di Lanquin (Caves of Lanquin) at around 5pm in the evening. The day myself and Ian went, it was raining so there was no one else there. No tours, no groups, just us and Cave Keeper Marco. (Personally, I like to call him Cave Master Marco.)

Anyway, the cave is this about 200mt deep and its huge. The stalactite and stalagmite formations are hugely impressive. That´s not really why you go to visit this cave though. At 6.30pm when the sun goes down, you can re-enact that famous scene from Batman. Millions of bats come flooding out of the cave when the sun goes down every night. So there we were at 6pm waiting for the sun to go down when Cave Master Marco comes over to check on us (he´s carrying the standard shotgun that everyone in Guatemala carries.) Anyway, Marco takes pity on us and decides to act as tour guide for us, he heads off to turn off the lights in the cave and takes us just into the mouth of the cave and we sit down. You can kind of feel a bit of a breeze, but its dark so you´re not 100% sure where its coming from, its probably just standard cave breeze. No, its not. Turn on your torch and there are millions of bats flying past your face. 

At this point, I would suggest no sudden movements or shrieking. Bats see with their hearing, so if you´re hoping around the place, echo positioning will be inaccurate and they will fly into you. Stay still and move slowly and they won´t come too near you. It was actually really impressive when we turned on our torches because moths and bugs would fly toward the light and the bats would swoop down quite close to eat the bugs.

Anyway, El Retiro is a pretty cool place, if not a little buggy. There was a lovely American couple staying in the loft above our dorms. We were just hanging on the hammocks one evening when we see them coming down with your standard ´cup and paper  insect trapping device´. Turns out they had a scorpion living in the thatch of the roof. I said that was pretty impressive since we´d only caught a cockroach in our room, to which the girl replied, ´Oh there are hundreds of cockroaches in the thatch up there, its alive. I don´t mind the cockroaches, but I just couldn´t sleep with the scorpion up there.´  The next morning it turned out that a pair of German lads staying in the loft on the other side of the Americans found a tarantuala in their room. That´s when I realised, I am a high maintenance girl. I can´t sleep with cockroaches in the room. I slept in my mosquito net that night.

Semuc Champey is probably the best place we´ve been so far. It is absolutely spectacular. We stayed in a hotel/hostel that´s right at the gate to the National Park (called El Portal for anyone planning to visit.) The drive from Semuc Champey is pretty hard core. It takes about an hour to go 9km. Most of the road is dirt/mud track and at times there are two concrete strips that the truck can get its tires on. (Oh yes, you get there in the back of a pick up truck.) There´s a bridge across the Rio Choban that has sleepers missing, just big gaping holes in the bridge. Makes the National Road Safety Authority look like Nanny State extreme. 

Once you get there though, its spectacular. We headed off to do a candlelight cave tour. Romantic it a´int. 

We turn up to the entrance of the cave and the guy takes us up to the cave with two candles, one for each of us. The guide had a headtorch. We wade through the water into the darkness with only our candles for light. Now at this point, I should probably remind you, water and candles don´t work well together, being in a cave doesn´t improve the situation at all. We swam through the cave, desperately trying to keep the candles above the water level. We climbed up a waterfall with only a rope. In the age old war of candle vs. waterfall, waterfall wins. No light, no safety precautions whatsoever. You HAVE to climb up that waterfall and once you start you have to keep going because the only way back is up. 

At one point the guide says sit here, hold on here and jump through this hole. ´How deep is it?´you may ask yourself, you may even ask your guide. ´Just jump! Oh and don´t go to the right, stay left´. This warning comes as an afterthought and doesn´t really instill confidence. But you jump through the hole into water never going right. You´re candle is now defiantely dead and you have to make the rest of you´re way out of the cave using only the guide´s headlamp for light. (His headlight isn´t waterproof either in case you´re wondering.)

Public Safety does not exist in Guatemala. 

Anyway, the other cool thing in Semuc Champey is the limestone bridge. Basically you go for an hour long hike up to a viewing point. The hike is difficulty: difficult. When you get down the other side you see something like this:

And you go swimming in this:

There are little fish that eat the dead skin off you´re feet. Its a little weird, but I´ve been told its a ridiculously expensive beauty treatment. Who knew? Its a bit weird, but swimming in the crystal clear fresh water surrounded by humming birds and jungle is just awesome. Absolutely awesome. Awe inspiring. (Took me a good ten minutes to come up with a word that described it.) 

Needless to say, we loved Semuc Champey. We even got a chance to break out Catch Phrase! There was an Australian couple, a pair of English girls and an another Oz. We had an epic game of Catch Phrase which was interrupted only by the staff catching a dragon fly to show us the local tarantula. (They used the dragon fly as bait to get the big hairy spider to come out of its hole.) 

Next post will detail our attempt at learning Spanish and our trip up Central America´s highest volcano. The trip up the volcano requires photos, so I´ll do all that at a later date.

Over and out, hope you´re all jealous and planning trips to come visit us! 

Remember: This could be you! 

Best bus journey in Guatemala.

I`ll get Ian to do an abbreviated version and I`ll do a proper blog post with all the fun stuff we`ve been doing, but this deserves a post to itself straight away.

I want to tell you about our more recent bus trip which took us from Coban to Huehuetenanengo if you fancy looking it up on maps. (You should find Google maps conveniently located at the bottom of the blog for such a purpose.)

To the point, myself and Ian spent €7.50 on buses yesterday. We travelled 150km in 9 hours which took us 4 buses. The average speed to go anywhere in Guatemala seems to be about 20k an hour if that!

This bus journey will be the yardstick for all future bus journeys.

The bus: this was a Toyota hiace (smallish one) designed to take maybe 12 people inside. There were 25 people inside with more on top. We could literally hear the side panals of the bus creaking under the pressure and you could feel the supports giving way. Buses in Guatemala seem to be kind of semi-privatised with the result being, they will never turn down a fare. Which means you can always get a lift! Another result is that buses tend to kind of race each other so that they`ll get the next fare, so overtaking other buses on a corner is just so commonplace you start not to notice it after a while.

We were very cramped, I had a nice young fellow fall asleep on my shoulder. (Guatemalans can sleep anywhere.) I sat on one arse cheek for a solid 4 and half hours. Ian`s knee was level with his shoulder the whole trip and he kept on banging his head against a spike sticking out of the side of the bus.

The Road: this wasn`t really a road for the first 4 and half hours of the trip. It was a dirt path that was mostly washed away in places. The rain had cut gullys about a foot deep into parts of the road. You haven`t seen a pothole until you`ve seen the ones in Guatemala. Less of a pot hole and more of a small sinkhole in the ground.

There were landslides dotted along the route which are really only cleared if they block both lanes, other than that you just kind of have to drive around it. We were stopped for a good ten fifteen minutes at one point while we waited for a JCB to clear half the road so we could get through.

At one point we realised we were driving on a mining track which was hairpin bends on a mud track. (I might remind you, no four wheel drive on this bus.) There was a sheer cliff drop down either side of the road, we were driving along a ridge of mud really. It was pretty intimidating.

The lonely planet recommends this journey because of the spectacular breathtaking views. We drove through cloud quite a bit, so couldn`t really see where you were going, not to mind the view for the most part. Although, what we did see was beautiful.

I`d recommend the journey for a little perspective - Bus Eireann isn`t really all that bad.

All that said, we`ve both agreed that it was the best and most terrifying journey ever. Anyone going to Guatemala, you need to take this bus.

Ian´s Holiday...

So we left it so long to update the blog that although Ian was supposed to do the next blog, we had to half it. The next problem is that Ian is apparently unable or incapable of writing a blog post. Useless. (His blog post was 4 lines long and far too factual to be interesting.) He fully accepts this description by the way. He tried to pull the excuse that a picture is worth a thousand words. Although, as I type, he´s backseat blogging telling me what to write. Git.

If I remember correctly, the last post left us at the lovely beach at Mozunte. Well we went to visit the Mexican National Turtle Sanctury which was lovely. Never seen so many Turtles in one place before. Our time in Mozunte was limited by the fact that there was no ATM there, so we were  reduced to one meal a day and the cheapest accommodation available.

Moving on from Mozunte we headed to San Cristobal della Casas which was brilliant. We went on a tour of the Suimero Canyon which was class! Although we submitted for the first time and went on an organised tour we were trying to do a few things, make friends and save money. Firstly, there was no way to do it on your own cheaper and secondly at this point, we´d only spoken to each other the whole time because we were too lazy in the beginning and too poor in Mozunte to make friends. The Canyon itself was really impressive. For those who´ve seen the George du Verdon or other such interesting Canyons, its like that only with crocdiles, iguanas, pelicans and jungle. Oh and a HUGE waterfall that they call the christmas tree because it vaguely resembles said christmas tree. The Canyon was class. Ian says that Donal is a git for skipping it. The Crocodiles were at least ten foot or 3.33 metres or 1.5 Fergals at an estimate. (Can you see Ian´s backseat blogging coming  into effect?) The Crocdiles were like something out of jurrassic park and when they looked straight at me all I could think of was that age old wisdom ´Never Smile at a Crocodile.´

Next we took a bus to Palanque and stayed in the very fabulous Maya Bell resort. All staff there were top of their class in charm school. (Ian feels at this point I should warn you that I was being sarcastic and that the staff were largely unhelpful and irritating. Ian has now upgraded unhelpful to as useless as TP at the weekend. For those of you not in acquantance with TP, the translation according to Ian is useless beyond belief.) Maya Bell was pretty cool though, its the closest accommodation to the Ruins at Palanque and its in the Jungle. You can hear howler monkeys at night (which should really be called growler monkeys) and there were toads hopping around at night and humming birds zipping around during the day. I´m not sure if I´ve mentioned the size of the butterlies and months around here, but they are actually small brids. Palanque is alive with bugs.

Anyway, we visited the ruins which were the best we´d seen that far we decided. We lost at least a litre of water in pure sweat. The heat was something else.  But the ruins are fantastic, covered in jungle with people all around just there to keep the jungle at bay by pruning and general gardening. We also made our first friends in Palanque, a German couple (Mario and Tina). We had drinks with them one evening and would end up meeting them a little while later in Tulum, but thats another story.

 Palanque

The other thing we did while in Palanque was visit the waterfalls at Mizol Ha and Agua Azul. Mizol Ha is cool because you go right behind the waterfall and climb into a cave at the back. Agua Azul is class because its just cascading waterfalls that you can swim in. We found a rope tied to a tree and spent two hours perfecting our swing. I got it after the full two hours, Ian took a little longer. We did happen to meet Tom Cruise´s teeth there. There was this guy, we figured he must be well known in Mexico because he had his own photographer and teeth that Tom Cruise would sue for. We made another friend, Xavier, he was French Canadian, but we haven´t run into him since, so I´m not sure if he still is at the rope swing. He apparently thinks that Quebec should be its own country though.

Agua Azul

We spent one night at Maya Bell in a hammock in a hammock shelter. Now this was definately interesting, you may remember me mentioning that Maya Bell is alive with bugs everywhere. To counteract this, it seemed like a good idea to light a fire so the smoke would keep them away, so we picked a hammock shelter with a fireplace. As Ian lit the fire, a big scorpian popped out of the fireplace scaring the shit out of the both of us as it scuttled off into the dark. Needless to say neither of us slept particularly well that night.

After Palanque we stopped in our last stop in Mexico which was Tulum. Having talked to loads of people, diving the Cenotes was one of the big things that we should do while in Mexico. The Cenotes are these huge underwater cave systems. We did two dives, one in the Gran Cenote and the other in the Temple of Doom Centoe (not as scary as it sounds although we did have to jump about 3 metres fully kitted up into the water which I found a little intimidating.) We dived with Xibalba dive centre if anyone is interested in doing it, I´d definately recommend them. The guy who was our guide, Ricky, was German with 250 dives in these Cenotes and was working to further explore the underwater cave system. These guys really know their shit. Also he did things like tell us about the Mot Mot which is a brightly coloured bird that likes to hang out by the Cenotes and he also gave us a lift back to our hostel since it was pissing rain. The Cenotes themselves are breathtaking. Its a spectacular dive with not much life but amazing stalactites and staligmites. The light coming from the cavern mouth lit up the Cenotes with a kind of a weird glow that was just brilliant. I was a little nervous on the first dive (I don´t really like caves) but by the second dive I was having brilliant craic. Also the second site had these Heloclines that were just brilliant. (I´d put in the exact definition of a helocline if I could remember it correctly, but it was basically warm salt water sitting under cold fresh water, but its very cool.) The Helocline was cool because there was a green glow to the water above and a blue tint below with 150m visibility and water temperature of 27 degrees. (Warmer than an Irish heatwave¡) If you fancy a peek, check out this video- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJe1hevMDr0



We also went to the beach at Tulum where Ian got some pretty nasty sun rash (Ian doesn´t get sun burn.)

After this we said farewell to the lovely Mexico and hello to Belize. We were having a bit of a discussion about how to get to Belize because we didn´t want to arrive in Belize city at night as by all reports, its pretty dangerous. We found the bus station (a market place) and the Belize city bound bus (an old American schoolbus stop sign still entact). The driver informed us that the bus was due to leave at 3.30pm, which was in 15 mins, so we ran to the shop to get a bottle of water for the 6 hour bus journey and hopped straight onto the bus. By 3.45 I knew in my heart and soul that the bus was leaving and 4.30. I asked the driver when the bus was leaving and if we had time to get a sandwich, ´Yeah Yeah, the bus leaves at 3.30 Belize´. Well, we got our sandwhich anyway.

Anyway, after some poor swedish girls (Ian likes to call one of them the girl with the dragon tattoo) nearly got stuck at the border having entered Mexico illegally via Tijuana, we all ended up in Belize city well after dark at 8pm Belize. We picked a hostel from the guidebook and got a taxi there. Sounds like an easy thing to do, but not in Belize city with 10 taxi men opening emergency doors of the bus and surrounding us and shouting at us. The taxi driver told us Belize city was not a dangerous place, that we could walk around whenever we wanted and that there was no troubles, ´You betta Belize it¡´ His words not mine. I might also point out that the inside door handles were few and far between). The receptionist at the hostel set us straight. Ian - where´s good to eat around here? Receptionist - You sure you want to go outside? By that stage we kind of figured out that everything the guidebook said about Belize city was true and then some. From the patio of the hostel we stood playing ´how many rats can you see from where you´re standing´. Ian won with 25. On our way (en masse) to the restaurant, we played rat or crab, a game where you have to figure out if the scuttling thing is a rat or a crab. I won, it was a crab.

Next morning first thing we headed straight for Caye Caulker which is one of the coolest and most laid back places we´ve been so far in my opinion. Ian seems to agree, in his backseat blogging, he added ´laid back cos its not as cool as Palanque´.  Anyway, the cheapest thing to eat in Caye Caulker was lobster, which I defiantely had. Ian went for the shrimp, apparently the lobster wasn´t to his taste. Caye Caulker is the ultimate carribean creole hang out. Hammocks everywhere. The locals sit at the beach bar from 10am getting hammered by 1pm drinking Guiness. If you´re to believe the locals Guiness is actually brewed in Holland, they know how to make good beer in Holland apparently. We weren´t going to argue since we´d just seen someone break a beer bottle in anger ten minutes before hand.

There´s a place called ´Wish Willies´ where all the food is 18$ Belize, which is 9$ US, lobster included and all you can drink. We ate there twice it was so good! And Willie is a very nice man. The conversation tends to go like this with Willie - Willie - What you wanna eat? Us - What you got? Willie - We got lobster, shrimp, crab, chicken, you want lobster? Us - One shrimp and one lobster please. Willie - Ya mon. Willie sits on a hammock for 20 minutes before finally moving towards the kitchen, fag in mouth. Hilarious.

We had our first drinking session in Caye Caulker with our new friends, the two Toms and these other four Irish lands. The lads kept 24hour possession of the hammocks on the pier outside our first hostel. Local Belize rum is 10$ US, a good deal for 40% rum. Well we kept the lads company for awhile on the 24hour vigil of the hammocks. Pretty hilarious, I expect we´ll run into the two Tom´s again in Honduras. Big Tom is doing a Divemaster there. Tommy will probably have headed home since he came here on a one way ticket with 350euros in his pocket.

We also met the lovely Alex and James. The soundest couple you´ll ever meet. James was diving the blue hole, he had 15 dives and an open water qualification. He told us that for some of the people on the boat it was their first time diving and the dive was down to 42m. Shocking. We hung out alot on the beach with Alex and James and snorkelled quite a bit. We had to jump into the water any time we dried off, it was just too hot. Absolutely brilliant craic though.

Caye Caulker

After a few days in Caye Caulker, it was too expensive to stay so we got the bus to Flores, Guatemala. Flores is a town on an island in a lake connected to land by a bridge.  It is beautiful, constant lightening. No rain, just lightening. From Flores we got up at 4.30am and took a tour to Tikal. It was by far the best of the ruins we´ve visited, and we´re both agreed to that. The guide´s name was Ceasar, and apparently he´s quite well known, (littleceasarstours). Anyway, Ceasar had perfect English and stopped to show us, howler monkeys, spider monkeys and baby, toucans, mot mots, locusts and funky turkeys. He also showed us a tree who´s leaves you chew and its good for all kinds of things from teeth to tummy upsets. Ceasar also produced from unkown places a big hairy tarantuala. Yes I held it, no Ian did not. (In his defence, he was trying not to be sick at the time.) Tikal itself is surrounded by jungle and is really impressive. The tallest building is about 70m high. You´ve to climb a stairs thats more like a ladder to get to the top.



After that we also visited a set of caves near Flores. Full of cool stalactites and mites. We got a tuk tuk there and back with Carlos the tuk tuk driver. What a man. I think Ian wanted to try and buy his tuk tuk off him.

Anyway, we´ve now left Flores and are in Coban. Nothing much to report as yet except that the chapter in the lonely planet describing Coban lists non-existant hostels and the map is wrong.

Apologies for the delay in the blog, I blame Ian. I will never trust the blog to him again.