El viaje

As soon as the sun went down it started raining cats and dogs. For hours. Lu and i listened to it for quite some time before falling asleep. This morning every one was tired.

Julio , a professional dreamer with quite the brains, i got to know last night, invited us to his house on the seaside right at the border to El Salvador. I hope to see you there my friend!

Quick fare you wells before a very yummy breakfast.

The manager of the hotel, Pia, a German chica from Münsterland ( more about her later) organized us a guide and gave us a map on how to find him. So off we went.

We immediately got lost but it didnt matter because we found these flowers on the way:

These are banana flowers:

And of course Cacao everywhere. And every time i see a Cacao fruit i have to think of my most beloved doctor. So shout outs to the man! I will dedicate him an entire Cacao post, since he , and the fruit are important indeed.

I also found a couple of mushrooms.

This one in particular i liked since i have never seen it before. Apparently it only grows on and from Bamboo.

Finally we met our Guide. Armando!

Armando is from Lanquin. I called him Mando, because , you know, this is the way. He , like every other local here, has Mayan ancestry, speaks the local Q’eqchi Mayan dialect and was friendly enough to teach us some . He also was constantly making fun of the way British people pronounce Spanish and i think we gave him enough material that he will make fun of Germans too on his next tours. I am not sure who was laughing more the entire time, us or him.

Semuc Champey in Q’eqchi means: „where the river goes below“ or „ where the rives hides under the earth“. There is a big limestone formation and the river literally goes below it. The beauty here is that there is tons of little wells everywhere in the jungle left and right of the formation, constantly filling the pools with fresh jungle water.This is what it looks like from up top.

Where all the water flows into the surface pools from every possible angle, already back down.

This is where the river „hides“ or goes below:

And then the pools themselves.

Quick lunch after which i got surrounded by the local hustlers trying to sell me chocolate.

I could not resist long and we struck a deal.

It was delicious!!

After lunch we went to Kan-Ba cave. Kan-Ba is a massive limestone cavern that got washed out by thousands of years of rain. Apparently it goes 10km into the mountain but i am sure it is just one of its „arms“. There is so much rain and so much limestone here. The entire cave and tunnel system must be ridiculously huge.

Ignoring all german safety measures you get armed with only a candle and your bathing suit. „Watch out for the holes“ while you walk through hip deep water in a pitch black cave.

We walked in around 300 m or so, climbing two ladders in the pitch black, to find a waterfall inside the cave that produced so much wind that it blew out 3 of our 2 candles..

On the way out we had to squeeze through a hole that is maybe 30 cm in diameter or so with tons of water flowing through it too..Lu wasnt all too impressed and even our fearless guide Mando was glad to be outside again!

Quick walk up the river were the river comes out from hiding (above the fall are the turquoise pools)

On the wayback i tried to lift one of the mango sacks that the locals swiftly carry up and down the riverpaths. I could hardly even lift it..

This is the 5 meter long alligator that attacked us before i wrestled it down with my left hand.

The lies that they tell you here is that some kid found it when it was very small, picked it up by hand and locked it in a watercage….pff..

Quite exhausted now, we put our butts in a couple of old truck tubes to float a couple of kilometers on the river, back to our beautiful lodge Utopia.

Now having a mezcalito , chatting with our nice hosts. It will be an early night.

But before i forget a quick vid of my buddies working their butts off. Amazing!