On Wednesday night we had the sister missionaries over for dinner. We attempted to make the most American food as possible. Pretty sure we are their new favorite people because they were close to tears when they saw the food. Tortillas and fried chicken can get old after a while. Ben took off after dinner to play soccer with the guys from church. The two sisters in the middle stayed late and helped me with my spanish. It was a good time. Thurday morning we were off on our adventure of a lifetime! First stop...
Coban! This is known as the cloud forest. We were not there for long, just to sleep and eat dinner. There were not very many clouds that I could see but it was still beautiful! There were a ton of these guys (the parrots) chillin around. After breakfast we were off again! This whole country is literaly a giant mountain range-not one flat road to be found. There were some dodgy roads but for the most part it wasn´t too bad, except....
the road to get here. The road was as high as you can get in this country but the real scary part was when it would rain (everyday), the dirt caused a weird film on the road that made it slick. It was like driving on ice. Uh, talk about anxiety (again!!!!). We headed down into this mountain range as far as our little van would take us and then we had to....
throw our luggage and ourselves into the back of a pickup truck to continue to our destination. Not our usual way to travel in the states, but it worked. Once we arrived....
Paradise. Our bungalow (which was in the middle of nowhere-there wasn´t anything else around) was incredible. There were amazing tropical flowers, banana trees, coconut trees, cocoa trees, etc. all around us. If you are ever looking to runaway and start a new life, this would be the place to come. The bungalow sat on...
this giant river. It was so peacful to sit there and watch the beauty. Once we got settled, we set off to hike Semuc Champay.
It looks like a fairly easy hike, but it wasn´t. Remember this whole country is mountains!!? Not to mention it was so freaking hot. It was the kind of heat that sticks to you. About half way up....
it was time for a break. I thought I was going to pass out. This trip has continually reminded me of how out of shape I am. Ugh. But, once we got the the top...
it was SO worth it! This natural wonder amazes me. At the very top of this picture you can barely see the Semuc River. At that point, the river starts to flow underground in a cave that runs underneath the pools you can see in this picture and then comes back out near the bottom of the pools. The pools are clean water that run off the mountain walls.
We hiked back down the mountain and checked out where the river begins to go underground. It was beautiful. Along our hike, we found some....
friends. The were not very happy to see us but they were very interesting to look at. By the way, this is one of the few garbage cans I have seen in Guatemala and it alone is worth taking a picture of. After that long, hot hike, it was time to cool off!
Whoop, whoop. The best swim of my life! The water was a perfect temperature, it was clean and best of all it was just what the doctor ordered.
You can´t really see but this tree hanging down has these pretty little purple flowers all over it and purple petals have sprinkled down over the water. We swam right there and I felt like I was in a puzzle picture. It was perfect. We headed back to the bungalow to call it a day and get some rest for the next days adventure...
Kan Ba! We explored these caves with candlelight! There were parts of the cave that you could...
walk, like this. And other parts that were so deep you had to swim like a three legged dog because one hand was holding your candle. Once we got into the cave pretty deep, Ben decided to .....
Take a jump into one of the deep spots. Uh, scary! He was fine though.
This was our final destination in the cave, right before we turned around to head out. It was so cool. The cave is 13 kilos long, we only explored 1 kilo. The furthest anyone has gone into the cave was 11 kilos because it gets a bit hairy the further back you go. Once out of the caves we...
took a stroll down the lazy river. This is the river that our bungalow is on so we rode the river until our bungalow-about 30 minutes. In the middle of the river there was a bridge about 30 feet high. Ben also jumped off this. I guess he was feeling a bit jumpy.
Once we ate some lunch, we were on the road for the rest of the evening. Up until this point, the trip was incredible. Never thought it could get any better, but I was wrong.
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