After leaving Flores, we take a nine hour bus ride, in which DJs seat is a nice comfy bucket (only for the last couple hours :)), to Lanquin. It is high up in the mountains and our hostel has awesome 360 degree views, a river, and puppies! We get settled in, make some friends, and all sign up for a tour of the Kan´ba Cave and Semuc Champey Natural Reserve for the following day.
The next day we are up with the sun and watch the sunrise from our tree house loft. The group packs into the bed of a truck that has metal bars around it to hold onto as we ascend the mountain roads up to the Kan´ba caves going through the mountain village of Lanquin. Forty five minutes of bouncing and we reach the entrance to the Kan´ba caves. Our guide quickly picks up a certain type of seed pod that has soft red seeds in it. He squishes the seeds and paints stripes on our cheeks to protect us from the evil spirits in the cave. Unlike ATM cave, where we had headlamps, in Kan´ba you hold candles as you navigate through the cave, climbing waterfalls inside, and swimming through tunnel-like passages. After chanting our way to the end of the cave where we jumped off rocks into a deep pool, we headed back out to the daylight and the natural wonder of Semuc Champey.
Semuc Champey is a natural limestone bridge floating over a raging river that cuts through steep jungle walls. On the bridge are descending idyllic turquoise pools. Our guide takes us on a hike to the viewpoint or ¨Mirador¨ and then leads us back down to explore the pools. He has us swimming, going down natural water-slides, and diving off rocks. A full day of swimming and hiking, and then a very bumpy ride back down to our Hostel, and the whole group was ready for some beers and hot food.
The next day was Christmas Eve and mostly everyone in our group to Semuc Champey: two Aussie sisters, two Germans, a China man named Sailor, a New Yorker, and us, wanted to head down to Antigua for the holiday. But it is very hard to find a travel company willing to drive 9 hours on Christmas Eve. So after some swift negotiations we hired a collectivo to take us down to Antigua at 6 am the following morning. That night we played a rousing game of giant Jenga (literally made out of 2x4s) that was converted into a drinking game.
