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guatemalan kids
one of the many drop offs, This may be a long blog so brace yourselves...I have plenty to say about the last couple of days!! 😊
Monday we visited Semuc Champey, it was the most beautiful place I have ever been to! We were with a tour group that left from our Hostel, the tour guide was absolutely insane but very funny! The first thing we did was take a truck(yes we were piled in like mexicans) up the mountain for about a 30 minute drive where we arrived in Semuc. Then Uncle Patrick wasnt up for the climb to the mirador where you could see all of the pools and waterfalls but it was a 25 minute hike so he headed straight for the pools where we met him after. The climb I'll admit was brutal but worth all the sweat I consumed! At the top was the most amazing view you could ever imagine, I'll upload a picture with this blog entry!
Climbing down was the easy part...I thought until we were walking down the wooden stairs which happened to be quite steep and I slipped and slid down about 5 or 6 steps where I ran into the guy in front of
me..probably scariest thing ever since we were basically dangling off the mountain! But I got a great souvenier scrath of my left calf😊 At the bottom there are a series of freshwater pools that flow above a huge waterfall. Over millions of years a limestone bridge was built across the waterfall so now it runs underneath the pools and comes out at the bottoms of the pools. Last year alone, 4 people died by falling into the waterfall and one guy didnt come out of the bottom for 40 days where they found him all chopped up as if he went through a blender, very scary! The pools were amazing!
There were slick rocks but the pools were so deep we dove off each individual pool into the other! After swimming in there for awhile we headed back but of course my clumsy self had to take a fall on the rocks and get one more gaping hole in my shin(sp?) before we left, but it was ok😊 We ate lunch at this place on the side of the road where I'm pretty sure is the object behind my sickness yesterday and today but it was fried chicken which
was pretty good minus seeing the shaved and nasty looking chickens runnings around looking for their mother who happened to be on our plates 😉 We then headed for the caves...now this is where the trip got interesting. Did you ever see that horror movie The Descent? If not, google it and look at the pictures and videos...that's what I pictured was going to happen to me! Luckily I had another girl who was just as scared and we worked together to get through it. We all had a candle stick and traveled through the cave with that, where we explored the water mostly where we could touch, but in parts where we had to swim with the candle(that's what freaked me out) Uncle Patrick jumped from one the higher rocks into the deep cave and 1 other guy followed him! We were in there for about an hour and a half and afterwards we headed back to the hut to get our tubes. We carried our tubes down to the water, but first stopping at the rope swing. Now like in Givhans they have those rope swings wehre you just hold on and hope you dont slip right? No,
last pic before we hit the road!
worth the 25 minute hike, i would say :) no, here it was literally like a SWING(reminded of a trapeze) you sat down, swung out and jumped into the river! It was sooo fun😊 Then we got in the tubes, floated into rapids and got out near the bridge where Uncle Patrick and 2 other guys jumped off...THAT was insane! Like if something happened to Uncle P, bye bye college i'm staying in Guatemala because there would be no way I could talk Spanish enough to get myself out of here! ha. That was the whole tour and you wouldnt guess how much it all was, including the ride there and back? Guess! ....nope your wrong, in U.S. dollars it was TWELVE dollars each, now you couldnt get a tour like that for twelve dollars in Charleston! hahaha.
We were absoltely DRAINED after that trip, went back to the hostle and got some dinner and headed to the bat cave where ltierally MILLIONS AND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of bats came flying out at dusk! It was so unreal that so many could live in that cave! We got to sit in the cave as the bats flew by us and got tons of pics and videos. after
that we headed again back to the Hostel and went to bed because we had a 6AM bus ride to Lake Atitlan Tuesday morning.
Tuesday we got on the bus, traveled to Antigua which was one hell of a ride. Picture the most unsecure short bus with the most obnoxious guy who constantly sung the whole way and was falling on top of me every turn we took...that was the ride we had! In Antigua we caught another bus with new people(Austrailans...one was just gorgeous) but all of their accents melted me! We drove to lake Atitlan, and arrived at the fanciest hotel ever! And I mean FANCY SHMANCY! Hot water, comfy beds, beautiful gardens with every flower you could ever dream of, toucans, parrots, the lake in the backyard basically, hot tub, pool, volcanoes and there is even a helicopter landing pad(grass) for the rich people(1500 dollars just to land there!!) We got here at like 7 yesterday and just got some dinner and walked around. This morning we decided to just take it easy for the day since we have been literally going, going, going. Uncle P is now downstairs having a 2 hour massage and I'm
updating this thing like crazy on the back porch watching all the birds, water, and the volcanoes! The cool thing about this Lake is that its about 10 miles long, and millions of years ago before people were even on the earth the lake was one big crater of a volcanoe that erupted so many times it was just one large whole so the volcanoe collapsed and sank down, so now over millions of trillions of years the water has come into the big crater! SO it's pretty nice 😊
Well I'm going to start uploading pics and such so I hope you guys enjoy!
P.S. My niece is being born today (first one) so I'm super anxious to see here and have already picked out some Guatemalan bibs and clothes for her 😊 hehe.
P.S.S. Here is a video of Uncle P and I racing up the Temple!
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Bernie
non-member comment
Awesome
Hi Ericka, Awesome and exciting is all I can say. You are one lucky gal to be having sooooo much fun.....Happy for you.