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Published: March 13th 2013
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With reciepts for every part of my five day tour in my hand I get on a tourist shuttle bus (minibus) at 5am for the journey to Lanquin. I was going to stay at El Retiro Lodge. I arrived at 4pm and they did not have a bed even though it had been booked in advance but they did offer me a hammock and some blankets and showed me the ladder up above reception so I could see the hammock swinging from the rafters. I decided against the hammock option and went with some Chilian travellors (who also had no luck getting beds that night) back down the hill into the town of Lanquin and found a nice little hotel with private room for almost the same price as the hammock.
I had to be back at the lodge at 5pm for a tour to the bat caves, after some confusion about not putting my name on the sign up board (even though I had a reservation) we were finally on the way in the back of a pick up truck with a group of school children and a family from Argentina, with the parents probably in their 70's. We
were each given a candle and led along the river and up some stairs into the caves, which opened out in to huge caverns with stalatites and mites and huge cave spiders everywhere. Not to mention the thousands of bats flying around getting ready to exit the cave at sunset to go and forage. As it got darker outside we went further into the cave and the little light from the candles seemed to do little for lighting the way on the slippery rocky pathways, I was really luck I had remembered my head torch, it was definatly useful as both hands were needed at times, to hold on to the rocks!
The next day we went of in the back of another pick up truck to Semuc Champey. This was a great trip along hairy dirt paths down through agricultural land, little villages and jungle whilst holding on tight. We swm through caves, climbed up ladders and ropes and jumped off rocks in the dark, with only the light of a candle, which did keep going out after multiple submergences.There were bats roosting in these caves too. We then went tubing down the river, swung on a trapeze
ovr the river and jumped off and then had the option of jumping off the 10m high bridge into the river below....next came the hike up the hill to loook down over the beautiful pools and waterfalls of semuc champey before walking down again and getting into the turquoise water for a swim. There were little fishes which would come and nibble you whilst swimming too.
The next day I took a shuttle to the Rio Dulce, the road is half built in places, lacking tarmac for the majority and suffering from landslides and rock falls in other areas, but it was probably the most beautiful journey I have ever taken, through mountains and little villages where we would occaionally pick up a local Mayan, in full Mayan dress and carrying vegetables to sell at market on their heads and carrying a blackberry mobile phone in their hand.
I was dropped of at the river dock and met by Ceaser and his boat ready to tke me to the Backpackers Hostel on the waterfront, but we had to go via the Castillo de san Felipe (a Spanish colonial fort built to deter pirates in the area)first, we motored
past little islands full of birds in the trees and terripins sunning themselves on the rock. When I did get the hostel I stayed in the dorm over about 20 beds over the water in a rickety wooden building. Here I met some two American girls and two guys and two girls form Holland. Ceaser came and picked us up and took us for dinner through narrow waterways in the jungle to an amazing little restaurant and hostel with a kinkachoo for a pet.
Next day we went to Finca Paradisio on Lago de Izabal and to the hot waterfall, with water at over 40 degrees celcius cascading over a waterfall into a cool river, it was like a thermal spa in the jungle and after a small climb up the bank and running aross too boiling hot rivers you reach a place to get clay mud to continue the spa experience. We stayed in a newly built hostel on the lake this night, which was beautiful and left the next morning for some boating up a canyon betwwn Finca Paradisio and El Estor, scrambling up over some rocks, jumping off into the river and swimming back downstream into
river rapids, which was more than a little bit painful inplaces, I think a rubber tube would be a good idea next time! We then got a bus to the island of Flores and the five of us stayed at Los Amigos Hostel 2 for two nights before heading to the Mayan ruins at Tikal....
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