Cascades, pools and a beautiful hillside village

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From Tikal we're on the well-worn tourist trail to Semuc Champey. It feels strange to be in a micro bus full of tourists with 'TURISMO' emblazoned across the front, but its the most efficient choice of transport to travel the 8 hours between the two tourist spots when we don't have many days left in Guatemala.

The road trip starts in the relatively flat terrain of Peten and takes us through country roads that involve undercarriage-graunching speed bumps in every one of what seems like hundreds of tiny villages and even a vehicle ferry ride across a river, finally reaching the amazing steep limestone hills of the area around Coban and then the beautiful village of Lanquin, perched in the hills. The last half hour of our journey from there is by 4 wheel drive on a steep, rough and narrow gravel road to reach a hostel in the countryside close to our destination of the National Park of Semuc Champey.

As we arrive at the hostel, so does the rain. They have one room left and although it seems like the worst value so far, we take it. Its our smallest yet, with the smallest bed. There are trellis-type openings at the tops of the walls, so no hope of keeping out any roaming mosquitos and there are plenty of friendly spiders hanging out in their webs on the walls. Our room is about 2 feet away from the toilets which are already providing sound effects and highlighting the effectiveness of the ventilation in our room. As we put our bags down we realise there is some water on the floor. A quick check under the bed shows a large pool of water under there, but with an unexpected bonus - a beautiful big froggy cousin of mine under the bed! We check each other out while our floor is mopped. There's a bit of an explanation in Spanish involving mention of a lot of rain last night. We start hoping the present rain will stop as we head off to locate some dinner.

Its a small world - we meet some Australian travellers at dinner who it turns out spent time surfing and hanging out with some New Zealand friends of ours when they were all in Sri Lanka. We have a good relaxed chat and head for our room with just enough time to get to bed before the generator (and so our lights) will be turned off. Alas suddenly its panic mode, as our bags are now in a pool of water covering almost half the room - it's seeping up through the floor tiles! We call for a table to put the bags on and there's a Mr Bean moment trying to get the table past the toilets and through our small door, then a mopping frenzy before we manage to get into the room and finally into the small, dusty and surprisingly itchy bed with the rock hard pillows. With heavy rain continuing through the night on the iron roof it's not the best night's sleep so far!

Next day we walk up the road to check out Semuc Champey. This spot has a beautiful river in limestone hills, and the raging brown river suddenly plunges underground, leaving a series of beautiful green cascading pools at the surface. It seems a bit like how the pink and white terraces must have been in New Zealand (before they were destroyed in a volcanic eruption). About 500 metres further down the water surfaces again in a raging torrent. We walk the tracks through the forest and take a much needed extended cool-off plunge in the pools. Its so warm here that no towel is needed - we're loving the heat!

We buy home made chocolate from a guy on the roadside outside his house and stop for a yummy lunch at a stall. Then we leap on the public 4WD bus to Lanquin, hoping for a slightly more comfortable night's sleep than the last. We find a gem of a place, the best yet. A welcoming posada, family run, really clean and comfortable, good value and (most importantly) dry!

We really like Lanquin, we'd heard good things about it before we arrived and it just has a great feel to it. Cobbled steep streets, stone churches, friendly people, nice views and tuk-tuks to run you around if you want a speedy trip up a hill or across town. In our travels we check out a large hostel down the road with pretty cool thatched huts, a river frontage, plenty of tourists lying around and a big team of locals working on a new restaurant. We have a look around, book tomorrow's shuttle to our next destination and scuttle back to our friendly little local posada. This seems like a great place to settle into for few days, but we don't have many left 'til we fly out! Aaaagh!

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Photos

Ferry crossing on the main road
Lanchas wait and the ferry returns

My newly discovered cousin!
Lurking in the pool under our bed

Semuc Champey
The water cascades through a series of pools

Beautiful pools
Keith in paradise again

Roadside feed
About to stuff ourselves with some Aussie fellow travellers

Spot the workers
Preparations for a new restaurant at a hostel