The Lanquin river valley is paradise on Earth

The morning after the $10 icky room(80 quetzal or just Q), we escaped Flores in a new little colectivo headed for the Lanquin river valley. It was a very long 6.5 hours, but so worth it because the valley was truly spectacularly beautiful. Rolling mountains of brilliant, lush green, sporting coffee, cardamom, and unbelievable amounts of corn. Corn, corn and more corn, planted on the steep hillsides. What a pain to harvest! But it all made for a breathtaking picture, and all of us in the colectivo (us two Americanos, two kiwis, three people who spoke Hebrew so maybe Israelis, and four Italians. Central America is hugely popular with Italians for some reason.) kept trying to take pictures through the glass until the kindly older driver stopped at a lookout point. Here´s what we got--




I don´t think pictures even really do the countryside justice.

The driver wanted to drop us all in Lanquin, which was fair, but I didn´t want to have to pay a new driver to take us to our hotel, El Retiro, so I just tipped this one 20Q to do it. And El Retiro itself....I could have stayed there forEVER. This hammock and view were directly outside our room.




Those are cows dotting the hill!

Down a winding stone path, there was a sauna (we missed out), reception, the hotel restaurant and a small area for you to get into the Lanquin river and let yourself hang from a rope in the strong current. And since it was nearly sunset when we arrived, by the time Eric and I got in the water, the famous bats from the Lanquin caves were on their nightly exodus for food.....and every one of them prowled the river, swooping over our heads and filling the sky with their sonar.


You can´t see the bats here, but it´s a good representation of the river and rope. Deep water!

After our day at Semuc the next morning, we understood why El Retiro offers family-style buffet dinners every single night. We began with a 12 km ride in the bed of a pickup truck (it had a cage on it for standing and holding on) on a really rough gravel road, which I found incredibly fun because I just find weird things fun. We chatted with our other passengers-- three Swedes, a German, and a British girl, and got pretty comfortable with each other. We started our all-day excursion at the Ka´anba caves, a newly discovered system really close to the river. Since we´d be wading with candles through waist and neck-deep water in some places within the caves, we were encouraged to acclimate ourselves by sitting on a really long swing, swinging and jumping directly into the middle of the Lanquin river. Of course, as the loud American girl, I was the only one who screeched on her way off the swing and into the water. Super fun!! I wish I´d had another go. The only people who didn´t were some other people who spoke Hebrew, and actually one of those girls was really prissy and I had NO IDEA what she was doing outside of a city, much less scrambling through cold water over sharp rocks in a cave.

So anyway, after the swing, we all got our candles and proceeded into the cave with our guide, sixteen-year-old Guate native, Cokie. It probably lasted an hour and a half and was....yeah, I think I´m out of adjectives here. It was like a movie. The water was first knee-deep, then just puddles, then waist-deep, then it was so deep I couldn´t stand and had to swim with my candle, an interesting experience. We didn´t bring our camera in because I´m a dolt and left our awesome waterproof one on the plane and this new one is not waterproof. We climbed over rocks, climbed a knotted rope through a waterfall inside the cave, slid into the water on natural formations that were like slides, and I got to jump into a deep pool of water from the very top of the cave. (I hit the bottom and don´t recommend it for anyone over like 80 lbs.) The caves were crazy, one of the coolest things we´ve ever seen, honestly.

After the caves, we got inner tubes and floated for about an hour down the Lanquin, and it was supremely relaxing and exceptionally pretty. Then it was lunchtime, and after lunch we did another crazy thing...we jumped off a bridge into the river. Including Eric!!! It was really scary but really fun, and both of us would do it again in a heartbeat. Here´s Eric on the way down!



Here´s me next to a Swede girl, deliberating over who should go first. (It was me.)



And finally, after all that awesomeness, we made our way into the nacionale parque Semuc Champey. Eric and I hiked a grueling 20 minutes (seriously, it was hard) with the Swedes to a lookout point aptly named El Mirador, where we got these heartstoppingly high pictures--





Then we hiked back down and went to swim in the pozas, or pools, of Semuc.


Here´s where the Lanquin drops 300 meters and rushes underneath a natural limestone bridge before it comes raging out the other end in whitewater rapids.



Incredible day.

Since we sadly didn´t have another day at El Retiro, we decided to also visit the Lanquin cave, from whence had come swarming the thousands or maybe millions of bats from the night before while we. El Retiro runs a short tour specifically so you can see the countless bats leaving. And it was also awesome! It was hard to get good pictures since it was so dark, but here are a couple.





We ended our day with a huge, well-earned dinner and cervezas. I was really sad to leave El Retiro the next day and honestly feel like I could live amongst such beauty, serenity, cameraderie and fun for the rest of my life. I totally understand why some backpackers make it there and never leave. But leave we did, and onto la proxima aventura!