The boat ride could be sold as a tour by itself. The boat was jumping in the waves and falling down on to them very hard and i could see that the man in front of me didnt like that a bit. The locals new why to sit in the back where the bumps werent so hard.
The shuttle to Semuc Champey turned out to cost $35 which was a lot more than we expected. I didn't want to pay it but we were short on time and this was the best way to get where we wanted, so we took it.
The shuttle took us to Antigua where we had about an hour before continuing to Lanqin (village close to Semuc Champey) so we went to the place with sandwiches. This time they had the gas and we really got them. Mine tasted great!
The van ride to Lanqin followed. It was just us and two girls from Quebec - Jessica and Stephanie, so I finally had a lot of room for me to be comfortable (particularly for my legs). As we were passing through Guatemala City, all the fumes from the traffic were making me sick. I was not the only one, as Stephanie opened the window and was leaning out of it for a while. She seemed to be ok, though.
I was reading the 1984 book by Orwell on my kindle. It is not bad but i expected it to be better, as it it listed among the best books of all time.
Anyway, we arrived in Lanqin at about 9 pm and got accommodated with the girls in a 'hostel' for 40Q. What was funny about it is that above the walls of the rooms, there was no ceiling (there was a roof) so you could get from one room to another just by climbing up the wall. (The next night we paid just 35Q. The man was not easily negotiated with.)
The next day we figured we didnt have a lot of money and worse, there was no ATM around. At first we just wandered around the village, which was very small and sleepy. It was cloudy and I wanted to wait for tomorrow if it gets better. But then again we didn't have money and there was nothing to do, so we decided to visit Semuc Champey that day.
Semuc Champey is basically a set of pools in the middle of the jungle. It was ok, but I have seen better things so far. After that I wanted to visit caves which were close. Vasek didn't want to do that at first because he didn't like caves, I forgot to take flashlight and there was the risk of missing transport back to Lanqin. Still, I wanted to go no matter what.
So we paid. The tour consisted of swimming (!) through the flooded cave system. We were given candles (!) to see in there. It started to get interesting. We joined a group of six people and walked in. Nobody, even the guide, had a flashlight so the cave walls were enlighten just by the weak candle light which created a really cool atmosphere. At the beginning we walked in with the water at our knees. Then we had to swim, climb some ladders, swim again and so on and so on. At the ends we jumped to a deep pool inside of the cave. When I was jumping I forgot I was wearing my glasses and when I jumped, I lost them. Luckily, there was the second tour guide who had a headlamp and dived down just twice to find them (the water was crystal clear). Wow. It was awesome. Better than Semuc Champey. It's just too bad I have no pictures of this tour, but there was a guy from Denmark who we have met before and I should receive his pics.
There was this other group where our Canadian friends were and so we knew that there will be transport back to Lanqin. After the caves we stayed with the group and mixed in it. They were just about to continue their program with river tubing and I was lucky enough to do it with them :) I was quite sure that we wont even pay for the transport but they figured we weren't in the group and we had to pay 15Q (which is 2$). Hehe, I did like that.
On the way back home the girls told us they were going to have dinner and if we wanted to join, we had to sigh up. We were busy with finding transport to Flores for the next day so we asked them to sign up for us. Back home we counted our many and concluded we cannot go to the dinner because it was 60Q. Still, we joined the girls on their way to make them company only to find out they were accepting credit cards in the restaurant. It was a buffet style dinner so we paid and I got to eat three full plates. This was the first time since leaving our all-you-can-eat dining halls at Union College that I was full. You would't guess the names that the girls used to sign us up: Carlos and Alberto :D
We stayed for some time, chatted and had some fun imitating animal noises. Stephanie turned out to be pretty good at imitating howler monkey while I struggled to imitate turkey :D Most surprisingly we found out that Stephanie actually puked on the way (from the window). Picturing that in my mind makes me laugh even now. :D
The next day, the girls left back for Antigua where they attended Spanish lessons and we waited for our shuttle to Flores where we were to see the famous Maya ruins of Tikal (the topic of next post)...
The shuttle to Semuc Champey turned out to cost $35 which was a lot more than we expected. I didn't want to pay it but we were short on time and this was the best way to get where we wanted, so we took it.
The shuttle took us to Antigua where we had about an hour before continuing to Lanqin (village close to Semuc Champey) so we went to the place with sandwiches. This time they had the gas and we really got them. Mine tasted great!
The van ride to Lanqin followed. It was just us and two girls from Quebec - Jessica and Stephanie, so I finally had a lot of room for me to be comfortable (particularly for my legs). As we were passing through Guatemala City, all the fumes from the traffic were making me sick. I was not the only one, as Stephanie opened the window and was leaning out of it for a while. She seemed to be ok, though.
I was reading the 1984 book by Orwell on my kindle. It is not bad but i expected it to be better, as it it listed among the best books of all time.
Anyway, we arrived in Lanqin at about 9 pm and got accommodated with the girls in a 'hostel' for 40Q. What was funny about it is that above the walls of the rooms, there was no ceiling (there was a roof) so you could get from one room to another just by climbing up the wall. (The next night we paid just 35Q. The man was not easily negotiated with.)
The next day we figured we didnt have a lot of money and worse, there was no ATM around. At first we just wandered around the village, which was very small and sleepy. It was cloudy and I wanted to wait for tomorrow if it gets better. But then again we didn't have money and there was nothing to do, so we decided to visit Semuc Champey that day.
Semuc Champey is basically a set of pools in the middle of the jungle. It was ok, but I have seen better things so far. After that I wanted to visit caves which were close. Vasek didn't want to do that at first because he didn't like caves, I forgot to take flashlight and there was the risk of missing transport back to Lanqin. Still, I wanted to go no matter what.
So we paid. The tour consisted of swimming (!) through the flooded cave system. We were given candles (!) to see in there. It started to get interesting. We joined a group of six people and walked in. Nobody, even the guide, had a flashlight so the cave walls were enlighten just by the weak candle light which created a really cool atmosphere. At the beginning we walked in with the water at our knees. Then we had to swim, climb some ladders, swim again and so on and so on. At the ends we jumped to a deep pool inside of the cave. When I was jumping I forgot I was wearing my glasses and when I jumped, I lost them. Luckily, there was the second tour guide who had a headlamp and dived down just twice to find them (the water was crystal clear). Wow. It was awesome. Better than Semuc Champey. It's just too bad I have no pictures of this tour, but there was a guy from Denmark who we have met before and I should receive his pics.
There was this other group where our Canadian friends were and so we knew that there will be transport back to Lanqin. After the caves we stayed with the group and mixed in it. They were just about to continue their program with river tubing and I was lucky enough to do it with them :) I was quite sure that we wont even pay for the transport but they figured we weren't in the group and we had to pay 15Q (which is 2$). Hehe, I did like that.
On the way back home the girls told us they were going to have dinner and if we wanted to join, we had to sigh up. We were busy with finding transport to Flores for the next day so we asked them to sign up for us. Back home we counted our many and concluded we cannot go to the dinner because it was 60Q. Still, we joined the girls on their way to make them company only to find out they were accepting credit cards in the restaurant. It was a buffet style dinner so we paid and I got to eat three full plates. This was the first time since leaving our all-you-can-eat dining halls at Union College that I was full. You would't guess the names that the girls used to sign us up: Carlos and Alberto :D
We stayed for some time, chatted and had some fun imitating animal noises. Stephanie turned out to be pretty good at imitating howler monkey while I struggled to imitate turkey :D Most surprisingly we found out that Stephanie actually puked on the way (from the window). Picturing that in my mind makes me laugh even now. :D
The next day, the girls left back for Antigua where they attended Spanish lessons and we waited for our shuttle to Flores where we were to see the famous Maya ruins of Tikal (the topic of next post)...
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