Pictures can be found at the end of this post :-).
We are 2hrs in the drive to Lanquín and gosh I can't stop smiling, this is what traveling is about. I feel alive, even when I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster, but part of it might be the cuba libre buzz I'm on haha. Or that I'm listening to my music, it always had a way of tuning into my emotions. Or maybe its all of the above. Every blog I read said the road to Semuc is aweful and bumpy and, well just 'hell'. And yes, it's not a smooth road but compared to Madagascar or even one busdrive I was on in Myanmar, this was fine. We're on a gravel road at the moment but the driver is able to go pretty fast. The driver slows down when he has to but I still feel he is fierceless or maybe he just really wants to get home. And when he does hit the breaks, we are almost torpedoed forward! And so I'm hanging on for dear life, not (only) because of the condition of the road and his driving but because I never want to lose this feeling again. Again might be the booze talking a bit here haha. We stopped on the way once, I bought a can of coke, 2 small bags of conditioner and 2 small bags of chips, it cost me less than €1,3. The real prices of Guatemala, because we would not get them this low in the places we visited before.
I felt like a dog with it's head out of the window most of the time. My face and hair got all sandy and I know I am going to need that conditioner I just bought! My face feels like it just had a natural facelift and so around 6pm I finally closed the window. It was also starting to get dark and colder as the sun had set.
We got to the hotel around 830pm. The driver apparently lived there or close to it as he dropped us off there and we saw the bus and him the next few days. Our room is huge, we have two double beds and two bunkbeds. It was the only available room and we pay about €25 each per night (so if you do occupy it with 8, it's about €6 each per night). The room is kind of set on a hill and so there's steep steps going up and down. But I only went out once to get some information about Semuc and then called it a night.
We got up early the next morning, had breakfast and walked into town to catch the 'collectivo' to Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a series of natural stepped, turquoise crystalline pools. We hopped onto the pick up truck and waited for a few others to join. You basically stand on the back and hold on to a railing, either on the sides or one that's in the middle at about shoulder height. We first went to the busstation to drop some people off, then we picked some more people up at the exact location we got on, dropped them off again. Haha, all in good time. We eventually made our way to Semuc, it's about 10km from Lanquin and most of the roads are not yet developed, so again we had to hold on for dear life but it was a lot of fun!
Once we got into Semuc, it's a national park, the first thing we saw was the steps to the look out. I didn't necessarily want to go up but my friend said, since we're here, why not and so up we went. It said 500meters up and that it would take you about 30min. It was sooooooo steeeep!!! Half of it was actual stairs, the other half was handmade stairs of sand or rocks and so it was a hard climb. My head was leaking almost the entire way up, haha but we made it and was it worth it? I'll let you be the judge of that when you go up yourself ;-)!
We made our way back down, which also wasn't easy and we passed all sorts of people, also pretty old ones. Kudos to them!! We then walked to the Semuc pools, 'mind your step'. It was very slippery so we figured out a path that seemed doable. We then got to a very quiet, private pool but it wasn't very deep so you couldn't really swim but we got in anyways. The water felt great, just really cold. We then looked for another 'safe passage' into another pool and found one that we could kind of swim in. Although my friend found a good spot in the shade with live entertainment (little fish that were swimming around her feet). I swam and chilled for a bit in the sun.
We went back towards the exit, found another 'collectivo' back. Of course they said 5min and we waited for about 20. The ride back was also rough but again, lots of fun. Not so much the branch that hit my friend in the face and then me as well haha. After we were back in the centre, I bought 3 tacos for Q10 (€1,2) on the street and we bought a few cold drinks and chips at a shop and walked back to our hotel. We chilled in and around the pool and took showers. I was cold and so was the water, haha fail!
Also, first day without any alcohol here, whaaaat?! Haha might explain the headache I had during the night. My eyes hurt and then my head felt like it was about to explode. I rarely ever have headaches and when I do, I either need to eat, drink or sleep. Since my eyes were hurting, I assumed it was the latter. But the bar was playing very loud music and every other sound seemed amplified as well. Might be because I was in the sun too long, a leftover from my concussion, withdrawel from alcohol or because I read intensively in Rio Dulce (2books in 2days). Anyway, I finally fell asleep. Leaving for Lake Atitlán in the morning, a 10 hour bus drive!
Cheeers, T
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