Activity Summary
Monday 15th May - Day 256
Travel to Lanquin / Semuc Champey
Chill at Hostel Vista Verde
Tuesday 16th May - Day 257
Tour to Semuc Champey:
Caving
Lower waterfalls point
Tubing
Hike to high viewpoint
Upper waterfalls point
Luke re-lived uni drinking beers with the 19 year olds
Summary
Lanquin
Small town with a lot of accomodation options for Semuc. These are all fairly spread out and quite remote so the ones that are picked are pretty much the food choices available during your stay (food at Vista Verde was actually pretty decent). Choosing Lanquin to base ourselves rather than deep into Semuc was preferable purely for the bus transports being closer and easier for us.
Semuc Champey
Touted as one of the best things to do in Guatemala and in Luke’s opinion it was a really good day out. The landscape was beautiful, being able to swim and jump off things into the water was good fun and the locals' effort to sell beer was equally painful and hilarious.
The caving was pretty sketch, without any health and safety and was not overly enjoyable to traverse freezing cold and holding candles. Could have easily skipped this part.
Transport
Lanquin
Flores hotel -> [walk] -> Flores bus ‘terminal’ -> [minibus] -> Lanquin
Savage 10 hour bus across very windy and remote roads. But it was either Semuc or Antigua and both are pretty far away from Flores so it would have been a long uncomfortable ride nonetheless.
Semuc Champey
There are collectivos that run to Semuc but for ease we booked a tour through our hostel (and most places it seemed ran them). Pretty entertaining 30+ minute ride in the back of a Yute with only standing room.
Accommodation
Lanquin - Hotel Vista Lodge
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £9
For the price we paid the hostel wasn’t too bad. The food was decent, the communal area was pretty nice with open space, a pool table, hammock and overlooking the jungle. The private room we had was stuffy as hell but that was a result of being too scared to open the windows for fear of bugs but at least we had a fan - the dorm rooms had nada.
Zephyr is the party hostel in the area and we could hear the music kicking off to the early hours from across the hillside. It wasn’t too loud so we could faze it out after a while but we are glad we didn’t stay there after being suggested it. Drinking and partying we would be all for if we didn’t have some of the roughest travelling days either side of our time in Semuc.
Diary
Nicola was a bit anxious the night before as she isn’t a fan of travelling such long distances without easy access to a toilet with travel sickness considerations to bear in mind. To try and ease this we arrived at the bus well ahead of the 8am time and were fortunate enough to be the first on board giving Nicola the choice of the seats. Shortly afterwards the number of travelling backpacking tourists exploded so we were pretty well timed.
From there we were on our 10 hour bus to Semuc Champey. Eating cereal, bananas and yoghurt on a moving minivan was not the easiest. It wasn’t the worst journey we’ve taken, just long and got pretty uncomfortable after sitting down for 2.5 hour stints but having the front ish seats with a bit more space helped.
The bus stopped only twice which in turn meant we more or less dehydrated ourselves to avoid needing to urinate when it wasn’t our time to stop. The first was a 15 minute stop somewhere remote but it had a shop, small cafe type joint and a toilet. Some of the passengers had opted for the cafe food but this took a whole lot longer than our allocated time available here. The driver was furious and his horn felt his wrath - actually surprised he didn’t leave them.
The last stop was supposed to be a 45 minute break at the Mcds in Coban. This turned into an hour and a half and none of us knew where the hell he was, all of us with Apple AirTags tracking his lack of movement. Turns out he was getting brakes fixed. We weren’t quite sure when these stopped working but once armed with this knowledge everyone became less irate. The last parts to Lanquin were pretty steep in places so it was probably best this was resolved for our sakes.
At Coban we got a mcds snack(ish) & walked around the shopping mall to stretch our legs before waiting on the curb for our driver to arrive back.
Once in Lanquin there was a fair amount of chaos as people were shepherded over to organised transport to various hostels. We were under the impression we wouldn’t be in the fortunate group of free rides and given it wasn’t too far to go in terms of distance we were happy walking which was half confirmed when a tuk tuk driver said he was going to charge. In the end, being some of the last left, a tuk tuk gave us a free lift to our hostel along with a number of other vehicles shepherding others. It turns out it would have been a pretty hilly walk with our big bags so we did appreciate our lives being made a whole lot easier.
Once dropped at the gates of Hostel Vista there was a pretty huge slog up a paved hill to the entrance which was pretty savage. At check in there were over 10 people waiting around the desk to get their keys and the lack of order was a bit baffling. The guy would flick between each of the groups, take some details and leave every hanging for their key. Nicola was really keen to get to the room and was incredibly unhappy with the situation after the long bus ride. Eventually the receptionist gave his overly drawn out speech to everyone about Semuc, food etc etc and we were shown to our room.
It was definitely not a room we would be getting much comfort from. Two single beds were great because we only had a fan and mosquito net for the heat and bugs. In a way we had timed our trip fairly well as the temperature had dropped to the high 20’s and was pretty cloudy so we didn’t cook while here.
Pretty tired, we spent a little bit of time in the communal area with a drink and a plate of surprisingly tasty veggie nachos. There were a number of kittens roaming around that took a liking to our leftovers but we decided it probably wouldn’t be a sensible food choice.
While our alarms were set for an 8.45am meet to join our Semuc Champey tour we were up a fair bit earlier.
The room door we had didn’t fit the frame so to open and close it we had to really force it which created a lot of noise and shook the whole wooden structure somewhat. We also didn’t have a lock so Luke took to using his flip flop to wedge the door shut, just in case. With all this in mind, along with curtains that did nothing to maintain privacy or stop light, Luke didn’t sleep all that well and Nicola was up a lot earlier than her alarm intended. We got some decent chorizo omelettes for breakfast and at 8.45am the tour nearly left while Luke was having his morning twos. A bit rude on their part and he ended up having to run down the hill - this was just the first example of an absolutely chaotic tour.
The tour group was a young one. There were 5 Eton educated 19 year olds, some early 20 year old girls, and a young Dutch couple. Bringing up the oldies were us and a lone 30 year old Aussie traveller. The group dynamic was much alike to being in school, the girls bonded in what can only be described as an unbelievably superficial travelling friendship, led by an over the top American who in all fairness to her, was loving life but she was grating. Her stories included her 72h fling with a leader of a drug cartel. Basically not Nicola’s cup of tea so she ended up a bit on the outside as Luke got friendly with the teenage boys group.
The tour to Semuc Champey started with a rather uncomfortable for all involved, bar those 3 sitting in the front of which one was Nicola after Luke secured her a spot. The other 10 of us were standing in the back of a yute, holding on to whatever welded metal bar we could get ahold of as the car drove up and down steep roads, avoiding potholes and massive rocks and dust ridden roads blinding everyone in the back.
This went on for about 30 minutes plus a 15 minute stop to enable a load of kids, 10 years old and younger, to quite aggressively start peddling wetsuit shoes and beer. One of the kids managed to weave himself into the tiny amount of space left on the yute in order to get his pitch across and the whole experience was a bit baffling. These kids would more or less follow all the tourist cars as everyone continued into Semuc and they really weren’t great at taking no for an answer.
When we got to the start of the caving everyone got into their swimmers and shoes and everything was locked in the flimsiest of lockers, a wooden and mesh hatchet jobby that would have stopped absolutely none from breaking in. Luke carried all our valuables in his dry bag as he usually does for any water based activities.
The organisation to get the group together, aware of what was going on and what we needed to do was absolutely appalling from our guide Ronaldo. He communicated absolutely fuck all of the time apart from shouting slow down and vamos to speed up. This was absolutely infuriating and it took individuals of our group to determine what the plan was and then communicate this to the others. We were the last group organised at the caving entrance and in turn spent frikin ages down there.
The cave entrance was fairly high into the hillside and it was nice to know that a flash flood wasn’t going to strand us. Carrying long wax candles as our main source of light (the guide had a head torch) would have been a fairly interesting novelty had we not been down in the cave for so long that these all but burned out so everyone needed a new one. Burning wax on the hands while wading and in some parts full blown swimming one handed was a pain in the ass.
Walking the cave and even the parts when swimming was all alright. There was a substantial queue to get through the first parts and up some sketchy ladders which was hella boring after a while. After spending so long standing around in the cold water, naturally everyone got cold and there were a whole lot of complaints from most of the group, one of the loudest being Luke who’s travel fitness clearly has taken away all his warming fat insulation. By the last quarter of the caving he couldn’t stop shivering which isn’t great when holding a small wax candle.
Of note in the experience were the rope climbing up one of the walls (Nicola refused to do this and used the ladder) and an area where people could climb up the rocks and jump into a cave pool. Neither of us could be bothered for this at all, Luke because he was too cold and Nicola would have taken no joy from it. There was a pretty savage rock jutting from the opposite side of the wall where the group were jumping from and there were a few close calls from those who opted to jump out rather than just straight down. We met someone the next day who had slipped when climbing this rock and smashed his head in, required stitches and was fortunate enough to have a travelling doctor in his group who patched him up. Although this patch up happened 10 hours after the incident as no one in their hostel was prepared for bad shit to happen. This was very much true for our group where there were no first aid kits in sight and we bet Ronaldo would have had zero clue about what to do.
One of the worst parts was a requirement to squeeze and climb down a narrow gap in the rock and drop into a pool of water. It was so awkward and the risk of smashing something was pretty high. No one seemed to do it elegantly and one guy even got stuck for a bit. Once through this everyone was well and truly done. Nicola felt light headed from the lack of oxygen and constant soot build up from the burning candles so more or less ran outside when the exit became clear.
All in all, a pretty weird experience. Not really fun, rather uncomfortable / painful and far too long. Both of us could really have done without the tour - apparently the ATM caves are infinitely safer, calmer and more impressive. But everyone got off without any serious damage.
Luke warmed up pretty quickly once back in the world of the outside and again after failing to effectively direct the group, we eventually worked out we were heading to a waterfall point and required tubes to float down the river. On our walk down we got the hard sell on some beers which most of the group took up, including Luke.
The lower waterfall point was really nice. The water was a bit cold but it had two pretty awesome spots for jumping off into the water. The first was about 5m and pretty easy to get to so it made a nice warm up.
The second was at least 10m and was a lot sketchier. Luke had ascended with most of the tour group and the first few people Ronaldo tried to guide to the edge stacked it on the slippery rocks and nearly went off the edge. They probably would have been fine given there wasn’t any significant lower overhang but it was some serious heart in mouth stuff for those guys. Nicola got on film the guide and one of the girls jumping in together as another slipped and fell behind them, making it look like she pushed them in. Luke had a fun non-slip jump that brought out some expletives as he went down.
The whole area was pretty nice and we would have sat and chilled some more but after everyone had done the big jumps Ronaldo had vamos’d us along in his typical no chill style.
At a sensible entrance to the river we all descended in our rubber rings and floated down the pretty calm water. There was only really one point where the water got a little fast and people should have been using their legs to push off rocks but this was a little hard to do with a beer in hand and the rubber rings not being overly buoyant.
The tubing brought out the most hilarious part of the day involved selling beer. The competition between all of the vendors was nuts, each shouting their own name as they tried selling stuff throughout our time here as if we were supposed to remember it. Fortunately we just had to remember how many cans we’d had and Ronaldo sorted out the rest (it was Q25 for a beer so not cheap at all for a can). The locals on seeing a load of gringos floating down the river, some with beers in hand some not, saw this as another opportunity to sell their wares and it was absolute bedlam.
One guy ran fully clothed into the river to hand someone a beer while another took this one step further and threw a rubber ring into the water and vaulted with absolute perfection into the saddle to drift over to another. It was so good that one of the eton lads tried recreating at the end and failed every time. One of the guys launched a gallo beer towards Luke, which he didn’t even want, and while he completely missed it somehow ended up attached to Luke’s rubber ring. Guess he had no choice really.
The best was when we hit the bridge. When the guy on the bridge shouted who wanted beers, one of the lads said yes and the guy launched it from up high and over to us from waaaaaay downtown. This was hilarious and on being egged on a few times, had ended up launching 3 cans wildly into the river and nowhere near us. They did eventually make their way over to us so it wasn’t without result.
Now plenty stocked up on beers we walked the rings back to the lockers, grabbed all our stuff and had our burrito lunches from the hostel by the bridge. We actually did get some peace and quiet to ourselves this time which was a relief, minus one lady proclaiming it was ‘happy hour’ and beers were now Q10. A few within the group decided to take them up on this and one decided to piss off the bridge for (we expect) all the locals to see and us below the bridge seeing the crescendo of urine hitting the water. It was actually pretty funny but a very 19 years old Brit abroad thing to do. Luke being the old man he is, settled for the nearby bush.
Next on the tour itinerary was a short hike up a reasonably steep hillside to a high viewpoint overlooking the Semuc pools & waterfalls money shot. It was fairly steep and involved a lot of steps so naturally Luke ran off by himself and loved it, leaving the rest of the group to arrive when they did. Hiking in the humidity and heat again wasn't all that fun and brought some serious sweat on.
The views from up high were really beautiful. The colours were vivid and much akin to Erawan falls in Thailand just on a larger scale.
After some time here we walked down to the pools, put some bags in lockers (we had a lock so we were able to secure Nicola’s bag) and set off swimming, jumping and slipping all over the rocks. It was a much nicer chilled end to the day.
We left Semuc in the back of the yute, this time Luke standing on and holding onto the outside of the car. Pretty fun and super dodgy on the winding and bumpy roads but he got his ‘locals’ travel experience. Again they stopped for a while to allow the kids to pedal more booze which no one was interested in at this point.
Overall, in Luke’s opinion, the tour was good fun and well worth the visit. Nicola was less enthused but we could both agree more ‘chill’ time would have been nice and the caves were completely unnecessary. It was all a very different experience than we had had for a long time, not really since New Zealand.
Back at the hostel we showered and had a calming sit down, chill with some more veggie nachos. Nicola sat in the hammocks and played switch until the biting insects became too much and retreated to the room.
Luke on the other hand carried on drinking with the eton boys and Tom, stopping short of joining in ring of fire before they all went to Zephyr hostel to have a big old party. Luke on the other hand didn’t fancy being hungover and getting a 10 hour bus at 8am the next day so was pretty well behaved. While the Zephyr hostel party was clearly pumping (we could hear it from across the hillside at our hostel), our hostel doors would be locked at midnight so the whole thing didn’t sound overly appealing anyway.
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