Six hours into our 8 hour bus ride towards Semuc Champey, the girl sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I spoke spanish.  “A little”, I said.  “Can you ask the driver if we’re going to stop for a bathroom break?” she asked.

“I can!” I exclaimed.  It feels nice to be able to speak a little of the local language, but it sucks when I don’t know certain words or phrases.  This was a question I knew.  So I asked the driver and he told me that we would stop in Coban.  I asked how long it would be and he said 45 minutes. I relayed this information and she said, “Ok” but her face said “Not ok”.  Not ten minutes later, I got another tap on the shoulder.  “I don’t think I can make it 45 minutes, can you ask him to stop”  You gotta go, you gotta go, so the driver begrudgingly pulled over and the girl disappeared into the woods and all the guys got out to go too.

Forty five minutes later, we pulled into a Mcdonalds in Coban, Guatemala along with a few other shuttle busses full of backpackers.  We all got out, ate some cheeseburgers, used the free wifi, exchanged travel stories, and were on our way once again.

Our destination was Lanquin and when we arrived at this small hillside village, there were easily 20 other backpacker busses full of people, and all sorts of other transport options to take you to your hostel.  There are a few different places to stay, each catering to a different type of crowd. The most popular one is called Zephyr Lodge and it’s known as the party hostel.  Indeed, the 19 year old kid on our bus ride here wouldn’t shut up about ‘getting so wasted, man’ there.  We had arranged our stay at a place that was within walking distance of Semuc, up the road from Lanquin about 30 minutes away along the bumpiest road we’ve experienced yet, but it was all worth it.  The place we picked was perfect.  El Portal is about 100 meters from the entrance to Semuc Champey so when we wanted to go, we just went and didn’t have to ride the 30 minutes along the bumpy road in the back of a truck like all the other people staying in Lanquin had to do when it was time to come to Semuc, which is a beautiful park with huge pools of blue/green water from a river upstream.  The pools are stacked and all flow down into each other and eventually over a waterfall. Most people take tours and it starts with a long walk up a hill and into caves full of water which are illuminated by a candle you hold in one hand as you try and navigate through.  You’re then led to the pools and eventually down onto the river, where you ride a tube the rest of the way down the river.

That’s what people told us anyway.  We didn’t do the caves because the water was absolutely freezing!  We simply walked to Semuc and got into the first pool, about up to our knees.  It was cloudy the entire time we were there, and with no sun to warm neither ourselves nor the water, we decided to skip the caves which would have been full of the same freezing cold water.  We actually saw someone we recognized from our bus and asked her how the caves were and all she could say was, “IT WAS SO COLD!” I think we made a wise decision.

At night it got so cold that we ended up pulling clothes out of our bags that we hadn’t planned on wearing until we got to New Zealand during their Autumn.  During the day, when it was much warmer, we spent our downtime hanging out near the river which ran right in front of our hostel.  It was gorgeous.

Our only complaint was about the food options here.  You’re in such a remote place that you’re forced to eat whatever food they have available at the restaurant/bar and the food was not very good.  One night we saw a sign for pizza and got excited, so we ordered a slice and it came out with mushrooms and green peppers on it.  Someone sitting near us asked how it was and the look on our faces told them everything they needed to know.  I think they ended up ordering spaghetti, which…I mean there were noodles and some sort of red sauce on top, but you’d be hard pressed to get me to call that dish spaghetti.  The best thing I ate there was from a lady who had a roadside stand where she was cooking chicken that had probably been walking around earlier in the day and I ordered a thigh and some beans and it was delicious.  Or maybe I had just been eating crap food, who knows.

Two days were plenty in Semuc and we got up early on the third and boarded the nicest bus we’ve been on yet on our way to Guatemala City, and into Antigua, whose reputation preceeded it by a long shot it turns out.