1st day in Lanquin - Trekking to Semuc-Champay

I arrived here in Lanquin the day before yesterday after a whole day on the bus, so yesterday was the first real day here. Since there was supposed to be a Saturday excursion to the Lanquin caves, also including some rappelling (never done that, dying to try) as well as river tubing and canopy gliding (riding steel wires in the treetops), that really left me with the other main excursion target here: Semuc-Champay.

Semuc is a really small village 10 km east of here (over a mountain pass), whose main attraction is a set of natural water pools, where you can go swimming. Not only that, but the main part of the river flows underneath the pools, so you are actually swimming in pools that are on top of a natural bridge!

There are arranged excursions from the hostel and there are also some of minivans or trucks that you can take, but I wouldn’t be adventurous enough if I did that, right? So instead I put my sandals on a little harder, loaded my backpack with 3 liters of water (unless you already knew it; you need a LOT of water in these parts of the world) and some food, and set off over the mountains. The first two km was almost straight uphill and more than a little hard, but after I reached the summit it was pretty smooth.

Yours truly, after the hike to Semuc – note the trekking poles.

No sun, but that’s just fine when you hike anyway, and I had a really nice 2.5 hours journey. I saw a lot of wildlife that I would certainly not have seen on a bus, including two chameleons (which was a first for me), as well as a rather nasty snake! I also got to use my hiking poles for real for the first time and they were great! Although you feel a little silly around other people, they are really great when going downhill in slippery terrain and also helpful when going up. They are going to be GREAT on Kilimanjaro!

A part of the pools, with an insert of some of my companions.

When I got there, the pools were really as exciting (and relaxing!) as everyone was saying. They were just deep enough to dive in, and the water was just the perfect temperature also. So, I just spent a couple of hours hanging around by the pools, swimming, relaxing and chatting with some other people that had come with the bus from Lanquin (whimps!).

Unfortunately, after a while the weather quickly got worse, so I didn’t get any good pictures. Also, I had to hike my 10 km back home in pouring rain – not exactly the best of conditions. I DID bring my rain gear (full points to my Patagonia Stretch Elements shell jacket btw!), but in this heat it really doesn’t matter that much since you get soaked in your own sweat anyway. :-(

But that just makes you feel slightly more like an explorer, so that’s OK anyway! :-) So, that’s when the rains started, and now they have been going on for 32 hours and counting [Update: they stopped after 38 straight hours!]. The clock is more than ten in the evening and it is time to decide: should I join my English roommates in their drinking game or go to bed? Even though they have the linguistic advantage (it’s that kind of drinking game), they ARE girls, so I SHOULD be able to hold my own, right?

[This is where all feminists should start throwing bottles. Careful of the computer screens girls! :-)]

The social area from the inside.

Well, I did decide to do the drinking game, which in retrospect might have been a bad thing for the next day...