Day 69 : Semuc Champey

Wading into caves, rope swings, tubing on a river, jumping off a bridge, trekking through a nature reserve to swim in turquoise coloured pools, that's what Semuc Champey had to offer. 

It had been an exhilarating day! 

6 of us from the hostel went together for the El Muro Full Day tour – 1 Dutch (Saunders), 3 Kiwis (Cameron, Nick, Alex), 1 Aussie (Klarissa), and I.

First a 45min bumpy ride, standing in the back of a truck, while we made our way towards Semuc Champey.  We had to hang on to dear lives, as we drove through rocky and rough terrain. 

Magnificent landscape views of mountains could be seen in the distance throughout the entire journey, with cloud covered mountains in the distance.

The first activity of the day was visiting the K'an B'a caves. 

Upon disembarking our ride, numerous kids ranging from as young as 4 years to about 12 years approached our group, persuading us to buy "cerveza" (beer) and "chocolate" from each of them.  Hustling at a real young age!

Leaving our gears at lockers provided at the entrance of the caves, and only allowed the bare minimal, ie. Swimwear and water shoes and a waterproof camera, we were each given a litted candle, and then asked to enter the caves.

Water flowed out from the caves.  As we walked further into the cave, it was completely pitch black, illuminated only by the candles we were holding.

5m into the caves, the guide stopped us and scrapped from the ceiling of the cave a black paint-like textured material with his fingers, and painted each of our faces with it. 

When we asked him what the black "paint" was, he replied "Bat's shit".  The caves were also known to have bats living in them.

A short moment later, the guide burst out laughing and said he was joking and that the black "paint" was soot created from candles being held against the ceiling for long periods of time.  The face painting was an initiation process he does with his tour groups. 

Walking further into the caves, the water level rose and soon we had to swim through it, with one hand holding the candle high in the air.  Besides wading and swimming through pools of water, we had to climb some ladders to get to different levels of the caves, and at one point had to climb up a rope using the stone wall as “steps”.

The guys had no problems doing it, but I struggled with the rope, made more difficult with water cascading down on my face. Before even getting to the 2nd of 3 steps, I slipped on the stone and fell back to ground level and in process smashed my finger against a rock.  Ouch! 

I told the guide I was not going to attempt the rope anymore and climbed a ladder located next to the rope instead, with Karissa following behind. We soon came to the end of the caves, where the guide said there is the option to climb up the rocks and jump from the top into the pool of water.

It was about 3m high, however being pitch dark, and not able to see the depth of the pool, along with a tough climb up the rocks, Klarissa and I chose to skip the jump, while the guys had fun jumping in.  We then took the same path back out to the entrance. 

Next stop, rope swing.  This was super fun, as we sat on a swing and swung our way into the river and splashed into the refreshing waters. 

3rd stop was to the waterfalls for a quick swim, before commencing tubing down the soft rapids created by the waterfall.

As we floated down the river, the kid hustlers ran along the river banks and asked if we wanted beers, and threw the cans of beers towards us, with a couple falling into the river. 

The tubing was a short 10 minutes, before we got off our floats at one of the banks, and made our way back to land.

Alas, we weren't fully done with the river.  While crossing a huge bridge suspended about 12m above the river, our guide suddenly climbed the bridge, and told us that we will be jumping off the bridge into the river!

“OMG!!!  Is he serious?”  I looked down and I could feel butterflies in my stomach.  One of the kid hustlers followed and climbed the bridge too, and said to one of the guys in our group, "Don't be a pussy, man!" They sure know how to hustle. 

After a few minutes of discussion among the group, Alex, Nick and Cameron one by one took the plunge. 

I slowly braved up courage and climbed onto the other side of the bridge. 

As I looked down, with no barriers in front of me, I couldn't find the strength to step off the ledge.

I must had been on the ledge for a few minutes contemplating.  The guide then whispered to me, "Don't think, just jump. We don't have much more time left and need to head to our next stop soon".

As the saying goes, "Do something that scares you each day" yah?  I took a deep breath and stepped off the ledge, and a second later, my mind just went "What the hell have I done?", and shortly after "SPLASH!" 

I slowly swam to the surface and towards the river bank.  I felt great!  That was awesome!  I never imagined I would be jumping off a bridge, but I did. Unbelievable experience.

Our next stop was lunch, before proceeding to the nature reserve trek towards the famous lakes of Semuc Champey. 

I had brought only my Five Fingers Shoes meant for water sports, so it had functioned very well up till then, but wasn't great for trekking. 

It was slippery along the dirt path and being thin, I was practically going ouch every few minutes as I felt the rocks against the sole of my feet.  Foot reflexology at work! 

The trek took an hour to the viewpoint.  Mesmerizing, as we saw the multi layered turquoise coloured pools below us.  

It was another 15 minutes trek down the footpath before we reached the pools and spent about 30 minutes in the refreshing cold pools, before taking another 10 minutes trek back to the main entrance.

We walked back to the bridge to wait for our ride back while the guys settled payment of their drinks with the kid hustlers. 

By the time we got back to our hostel, we were exhausted but had tremendously enjoyed ourselves and spent some time at the bar, exchanging photos which we had taken throughout the day. 

Definitely another highlight of this trip!