I hope this kid knows what he´s doing

There was a lot of confusion over what the hell was happening with our tour this morning. Our ticket said it started at 7. Our hostel, despite being officially affiliated with this tour company, seemed to have no idea what was going on. Eventually, it turned out that we had breakfast at 7, got picked up at 8, and headed for Lanquín. We arrived in Semuc Champey first, relatively without incident. Semuc Champey is a series of natural pools and it is AMAZING. We did the Guatemalan equivalent of the Grouse Grind to get up to a viewpoint over it, and it was lovely from there (see photo). Then we hiked down the hill and ate a pretty spectacular sandwich they gave us, then we went swimming.

We were guided by a kid who looked like he was maybe 15, who didn't speak much English but seemed to get a kick out of us and led us safely down all the slippery rocks between pools. Out of the 6 of us on the tour, only three swam down all the pools, which surprised me a little (but two of the people were older and apparently one couldn't swim, so I guess that's an acceptable excuse). Did you know Teryn is afraid of swimming with fish? That's what I learned yesterday. Also, she learned that I am afraid of swimming with vegetation (which probably makes less sense), and we both learned that I am a little more afraid of heights than I realized. I totally chickened out of jumping off a cliff, but that's okay. I don't regret that. About halfway down the pools (I couldn't even tell you how many there were) I began to wonder how the hell we were going to get back up and if this kid wasn't luring us to our deaths. But overall it was SO NICE. Seriously. All the BS it took to get here was worth it for that swim.

From there, we took a sketchy ride down to Lanquín. It had started to rain, and the dirt roads were not in the best condition. They actually stopped, let some air out of the tires, and made everyone move to the back of the shuttle. I thought we were going to die. Multiple times. But our driver made it out okay and we got to the caves at Lanquín fine. The caves were cool, though most of the photos didn't really turn out due to bad lighting. There are a bunch of rock formations they say look like particular things. This photo is for the physio kids.


At the end of the day, it was raining but we were happy. I eventually stopped looking at what we were doing on the drive home because it was foggy, the roads were winding, and we were speeding. For a while we tailgated a cop, and then we passed him. And honked as we did it.