Stu and Anna's travels

After a dusty drive from the border, we arrived in Flores. It´s a pretty little town built on an island in the middle of a lake. We found a hostel with a room, not that great, but a really nice roof deck with stunning lake views, and hammocks! After chilling for a day, the next morning our alarms went off at 3am in order to get the bus to Tikal. 2 hours later, following a drive and a 40 min hike in the dark, we were climbing Temple 4. The sun rise viewed from the top of the temple is supposed to be amazing but unfortunately the Mayan gods obviously had other ideas and we got a magnificent view of steadily lightening grey cloud and mist! After that anti-climax the rest of the tour was amazing, the temples and structures are some of the highest in the Mayan world and have also been very well restored. We climbed up Temple 5 (not something I´d recommend if you have vertigo!) and were treated to some amazing views of the stone structures emerging out of the jungle. We also saw toucans, howler and spider monkeys and as it was cloudy avoided getting sunburnt!!

The next day we hopped on a bus and headed south to Coban, however our bus mates managed to persuade us that we ought to continue directly to Lanquin rather than staying in Coban. So after a little bit of bus hopping, and a very enjoyable chicken bus ride through the jungle-covered hills (machete clad farmers, and 50kg bags of flour were our travelling companions), we arrived at El Retiro in Lanquin. El Retiro is an "Eco Hostel" set on a hillside by a river: the buildings are all natural materials; the restaurant cooks really good vegetarian food (even Stuart admitted it didn´t need meat!); the river was clear and perfect for cooling off in. The only slight drawback was the "eco toilets" that we probably don´t need to describe!

Just down the road from Lanquin is Semuc Champey, one of the many natural parks in Guatemala, and we took a trip there the day after we arrived. It started off with a little dip in the river, off a rope swing you have to jump off as if you let the swing come back you hit the bank... After that we went caving by candlelight, complete with
climbing up waterfalls and squeezing through rock crevices. It was a really surreal experience - I mean who thought up trying to swim along an underground river whilst holding a candle!! Next on the to-do list was a
quick (if you’re a mountain goat) climb up to the mirador overlooking the limestone pools (where we also saw a wild tarantula). These are naturally formed pools on a massive limestone bridge over the main river. After the climb the pools were wonderful to cool off in, then our ever-energetic guide Matteo unrolled a rope ladder to allow the group to climb down the final waterfall and dive off an 18 foot cliff. Anna summed the day up by saying it was like completing an army assault course in a bikini!!

We decided to stay in Lanquin for a few more days just chilling out. Our main activities included reading, sleeping in hammocks, swimming in the river, drinking licuardos and, if feeling very energetic, playing volleyball! After 3 more days in paradise we had to move on, mainly in case we ended up never leaving, but also as we had run out of cash (the nearest ATM is a 6-hour round trip away). We took a somewhat eventful shuttle bus to Antigua where we spent one night, then a couple of chicken buses (brightly painted school buses originally from the States)
on to Xela.