Semuc Champey & the Caves

From Xela we moved on to Semuc Champey, a beautiful park midway up the country. We made a brief stop in Momostenango to see los riscos, craggy eroded sandstone formations on the edge of town. The trash-strewn park is not really worth the extra stop and multiple extra buses to get back on the main road but it was nice to see the little town. This was a few days after Christmas and several people were worshipping in front of the twinkling creche near the church altar.








Several buses later we arrived in Lanquín, a little mountain community. The way these mini-buses get packed with people is making us miss the chicken buses! After a false start at El Portal, a hostel that said it had a private room available but didn't, we landed at Jam Bamboo, a tranquilo place with nice staff, funny animals, and rooms at less than half the price. We took a free shuttle out to Semuc Champey and spent the day hiking around and swimming in the amazingly beautiful pools on the river.










We had a late afternoon walk back from the park after buying some coarse but delicious chocolate from two little girls at the entrance. Much of the farming here is of cacao and the ripe fruits are funny purple pods that grow directly from the tree's trunk and branches. There is also a lot of cardamom grown and the chocolate flavored with cardomom is excellent.





On the last day of 2009 we visited the Lanquín caves. They reminded me a lot of visits to Mammoth Cave and Luray Caverns, and have a pleasantly old-fashioned lighting scheme and signs pointing out particular formations. We got there early to avoid the tour groups that show up right before twilight and we had the cave to ourselves. Afterward Mike swam in the river and we whiled away an hour until the bats started to wake up. As at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico the nightly departure of the bats is a big draw and they did not disappoint. An endless stream of them, as thick as a swarm of insects and completely silent fluttered past our heads, at times a few inches away, for at least an hour and a half. We were told that they take about 3 hours to leave the depths of the mainly still unexplored cave system.















We celebrated on New Year's Eve much less explosively than on Christmas Eve. We had only one firecracker and we spent most of the evening chatting with our fellow guest Stephen from Colorado. We also kept searching for Maya, a painfully skinny dog who had visited us at every meal. We had bought her a New Year's bag of chicharrón and a cow liver but she never appeared so the cat who slept outside our room and the much healthier Superkan made out like bandits.





Our last day we said goodbye to the great people at Jam Bamboo: Darwin who lured us there with his disarmingly unconcerned sales pitch when we arrived. The ever smiling Rudi and his wife Liliana who manage the hotel in an efficient and utterly stressfree style. Hector who cooks marvelously. And Mike or Miguel, or Mek as his name is in Q'eqchi, who managed the money and the bar and along with Darwin taught us a lot of the Mayan language predominant in this area.




This was our view on our ride out of Lanquín, a misty ride and a free one.