For the next stage of our trip, we traveled with our friend Ruth from the 2nd trek to a place called Semuc-Champey. We started on Tuesday morning by taking the bus from Xela to Guatemala city. We stayed at a nice hostel called Dos Lunes for $12. The only choice for dinner in that neighbourhood was a El Salvadorian restaurant where we ate stuffed tortillas called pupusas. It was already dark and after dinner Julie and I had trouble finding our way back to the hostel. The problem was that every building in the neighbourhood is surrounded by a security wall complete with razor wire. This makes individual houses hard to recognize in the dark. Eventually we asked a young guy out walking his dog for help. He took us to his friend's hostel (not the one we wanted) where luckily his friend seemed to know where we wanted to go. So the friend got changed out of his pyjamas and all four of us walked around until we finally found Dos Lunes.
The next morning we set out by bus for Coban which was the next step on our journey to Semuc-Champey. The ride took forever because the bus was very slow climbing the steep and twisted roads through the hills. Also, we stopped to pick up all the passengers from another bus that we came across broken down on the side of the road. From Coban, we took the last microbus of the day to Lanquin and stayed at the beautiful El Retiro hostel.
El Retiro consists of a bunch of unconnected huts beside a fast moving river. The action revolves around the bar hut where reservations are taken, drinks and meals are served, and people hang out. The only room available was a Q180 hut for three with private bathroom. It was very deluxe. We spent the remains of the afternoon swimming in the river. You could also walk five minutes upstream along the bank then jump in the river and float with the current back to the beach area. This was fun but the rocks made it hard on the feet. A popular alternative is to rent an inner tube for this activity.
The next day, we took a microbus with about ten other people from El Retiro to the park at Semuc-Champey, about 10km away. The park is a government nature preserve but just before the park there's an "independant" attraction that was worth stopping (and paying) for -- some caves that this guy allegedly discovered only 10 months ago and named Santa Maria. You pay your money, change into your bathing suit and provided water-shoes, receive a candle for light, and follow your guide underground. The caves were the coolest thing I've seen. This was not disney world -- there would be no light down there if it weren't for our candles, and you are climbing up/over the slippery rocks assisted by with a rope or rope ladder. The cave is an underground river so most of the time you are standing in or swimming through cool water. There were many places where you had to swim across a pool tens of meters long and too deep to touch the bottom in order to advance, while making sure your candle stayed out of the water. Because of all the water, it wasn't possible to bring a regular camera and so I don't have any pictures of the inside of the caves.
The stone was really cool. The cave floor was usually sandstone that even when wet had super good traction. The walls were sharper but possible to climb. The height of the cave varied from 10m to places where you had to watch your head as you squeezed through. It was like a bouldering cave only in real life!
We spent probably an hour in the cave and I estimate we advanced at least 500m underground before turning around. At the furthest point, there was a small pool of water and our guide encouraged us to climb about 3m up the cave wall and jump into it. I went first, and it turned out the pool was only barely deep enough for this to be considered safe.
Our guide was the only one tough enough to proceed through the cave barefoot and he also equiped himself with an electric headlamp in case all our candles got wet and went out. The only information about the caves he offered was to periodically point out rock formations that looked like parts of the human body. We saw two pairs of breasts, a penis and an enormous vagina.
After the caves we headed across the river to the Semuc-Champey park. A bridge spanned the river and we were encouraged (again) to jump off it into the river maybe 7m below. Julie scraped her knee on the bottom but otherwise it was pretty fun.
The park was pretty great. It is build around a section of the river that actually eroded a tunnel under itself and now most of the flow is diverted underground for a stretch of maybe 1km. Some water still passes above ground and forms nice pools and waterfalls to swim in. All of this is in a deep canyon that you can hike to the top of and look down from the mirador on the whole thing. We spend a couple hours swimming and hiking there until our microbus took us back at 3. That night at El Retiro we signed up for the BBQ dinner and it was the best meal of the whole trip.
In the morning we headed back by microbus to Coban, where we split up with Ruth. With no spanish-speaking friend we were lost and lame but eventually found the bus terminal just in time. The LP map was useless because of the combination of the following three reasons. 1) All cities are layed out in a grid system with numbered streets and avenues. For example, you might be standing at the corner of 2A calle and 3rd avenue. 2) Cities are split into different Zonas. Road names are unique within a zone, but may appear in multiple zones. So, in the earlier example, there are actually multiple intersections with that address, probably one per zone. 3) In Lanquin, the city is very small but still has many zones. This means that there are identically named intersections, in different zones but within five minutes walk of each other. This means that even if you figure out what intersection you are at (there is only a 50% chance that a given street corner is labeled) you still don't know where you are on the map!
Back in Guatemala city, we had trouble finding a place to stay. We just kept giving our taxi driver address after address out of the LP, but guesthouse after guesthouse that we visited was full. You might think that it might be more efficient to use the phone for this search ... In the residential neighbourhood around the airport in Zone 13 many ordinary looking houses are actually hotels that cater to those with US$20 and an early flight. Finally, by referral we found a place that was not in the book, but was only a 5 minute walk away from the airport door.
Now we could relax and spend our remaining Guatemalan currency. Actually we were out of money so we walked to the airport ATM, took out Q500 then took a taxi to Zona viva to spend it on dinner. First, we checked out the mall and found it to be exactly like every other mall in the world. Unfortunately/fortunately most of the stores were closed because it was good friday eve. In the same neighbourhood there is an Italian restaurant called TreFre where, with a little effort, we spent Q400 on dinner. The food wasn't that great -- my allegedly "Inferno" pasta wasn't even spicy.
Back at our guesthouse, we watched a neighbourhood easter procession. At the center of the crowd was float carried very slowly through the streets by a dozen people in robes. Behind them was a marching band, and behind them dangled an electric generator powering the whole affair. All this was surrounded by clusters of people walking with the parade, and some like us watching stationary from the sidewalk. I spent the rest of the evening reading 20,000 leagues under the sea while Julie was wooed by the guesthouse's 17 year old night watchman.
Killer-Mosquitos tormented me during the night. I slept with the light on to better catch them when they started buzzing around my head. Guatemalan mosquitos seem faster and louder than Canadian ones.
At 5 something in the morning we headed out to the airport. One funny GUA airport observation is that you can choose the currency of the departure tax at GUA airport but the nominal amount is fixed. In other words, the fee is *either* Q20 or $20. That's a factor of 7.5 difference in real value between the choices! I guess some people are just really dumb and pay the dollar version.
but for only $200 and 2 hours of travel it could be 
. Done.
And after driving it once, flying was a no-brainer: 10x faster for the same price.
