Semuc Champey!

We had some awesome 3 day weekends this past year and for one of them I was dying to go to Semuc Champey. This is a really beautiful river area near Lanquin, Guatemala. It can be tricky to get to because the roads are mostly dirt and twist and turn up and down mountains. During rainy season they are basically impassable.

We took a bus to Coban, spent one night in a semi sketch hotel and then grabbed a shuttle bus the next morning to our hostel near Semuc. We stayed in Zephyr Lodge, a beautiful hostel. It is perched on top of an incredibly steep hill and has gorgeous views of the surrounding hillsides. The pool is particularly nice, too. 

Mary and Claire in the pool

 Crazily enough while floating around in the pool, I bumped into a guy who had been in Arusha, Tanzania the year before and actually visited the St. Constantine's campus to play soccer with some of the faculty. (For those of you who don't know, I used to work at St. Constantine's) Such a crazy, small world!

My room was in the tippy top of one of these thatched roof hut things. I had to climb two sets of rickety stairs to get there. (I had to pee in the middle of the night one time and I managed to fall down the second set and land on my face on the ground, graceful, I know.) Cockroaches also lived in the thatch and would come out at night. I never found any on me but I made the mistake of leaving my bag unzipped one night and they all crawled in there. It took a lot of shaking to get them all out.

                               

We all loaded up in the back of a truck to drive us up and down and around to get to Semuc Champey. Those trucks went pretty fast and the ride was intense. We had to hang out pretty tight!

Once there, we first did the candle lit cave tour. I LOVED this! We walked through the pitch black water while holding lit candles. At times we had to clutch the candle while climbing up rocks or sliding down cave walls. We held onto ropes and swam across deep sections of water. At one point we hauled ourselves up a slippery water fall.

After that, we hiked for about an hour up to a lookout that gave us amazing views of the river itself. The hike was very uphill and a bit intense at times. 

Woo! Red excercize-y faces!

Then we continued hiking down to the water. It was cool and refreshing. The river was segmented by these rocky outcroppings that stretched across the lake. They were slippery, but fun to climb up on (if you could) and then jump off of. 

After a while here, we headed back to the trucks to load up and drive back to the hostel. The next day we learned that the people around Semuc Champey had closed it, protested where the revenue from it goes. (At this point, it doesnt go towards the people that live there) They closed all of the roads around the area and some tourists who were staying in the park actually had to hike for miles with all of their stuff to get out of the area. Our hostel, luckily, wasn't right in the park so we were fine.

The next day we purchased a whole bunch of beers and went tubing down the river near our hostel! The water was pretty low so there were a few incidents where our butts scraped hard on rocks. Ouch! Only one person popped their tube, so I consider that a success. We drank our beers, floated down the river, and soaked up some sun. It was nice.

After one more night in Zephyr lodge we headed out the next morning. We took a shuttle back to Guatemala City. It was a looooooong journey. 

Girl's Weekend in San Pedro

This year there was a whole bunch of 20 something teachers hired. (Most of whom were women.) So we decided to have a girl's weekend on Lake Atitlan in San Pedro. San Pedro is the "hippie" town on the lake, for reasons easily guessed.

We hired a shuttle to drive us to the dock in Panajachel (on the way, we stopped to look at the view). We then took the 45 minute boat ride across the lake. Our boat guy was a speed demon so it was a pretty exciting ride.

We stayed at a really cool hostel with a nice pool. We even managed to cram all 7 of us into one room. (poor Amy got the mattress on the floor.)

During the day we mainly ate delicious food, took naps, wandered around, shopped, hung out by the pool, and had drinks. At night, we went out on the town (and by that I mean that we went to the one bar in the town). I rained a bit each day, but it didn't cramp our style too much.

  

Fun stuff, fun stuff. Final shuttle back to Guate City not so fun as the roads curve A LOT and I was not properly recovered from the night before. Not to mention, I'd managed to leave my phone at the hostel, so that was a bummer and a half, but good weekend none the less!

Hike up Volcan Ipala

Eventually my summer festivities had to end and I flew back to Guatemala to get back to work!

A little bit after school started, a group of us planned a day trip to Ipala, a volcano a few hours from the City. This volcano is really cool because it has a crater lake at the top.

Our bus driver gave us a bit of a scare because he didn't seem to know exactly where he was going, but he figured it out. We had the bus park at the bottom of the volcano and began our hike. The path was clearly marked and there were other people going up and down. It was pretty steep and rocky, but definitely not as bad as some other volcanoes I've climbed in Guatemala.  Some of the path was lined with barbed wire on the sides, cause people live and farm on this volcano and were trying to keep their cows from wandering out and random tourists from wandering in.

It was probably an 1 1/2 or 2 hour climb. We were all breathing heavy and a bit red faced. The lake at the top is actually a park so we had to pay a small fee to get in. We then climbed up to the lookout platform, which was beautiful! It really gave you a good view of the whole lake!

We then headed back down to the lake edge to eat out lunch. We managed to secure a nice dock location and only had to shoo away a few dogs, some wading cows, a slightly scary bull and swarms of minnows to defend our spot.

After our lunch and some shallow wading with the minnows nibbling our toes, we hiked back down the volcano and headed back to the City!

Big ol' chicken bus hanging out in the parking lot at the bottom!