Coban & Semuc Champey

Dangettttt. Sorry, I can't make the photo's upright, you'll have to look at them sideways.

This is after 40billion stairs. Diiiiiisgusting.
Looking down on the limestone bridge and pools (where we hiked down to and swam!) from the lookout. 

Here are photo's of Coban and Semuc Champey. Coban is a small city in northeastern Guatemala, and though the city isn't very exciting...at all...it's a hotspot because of all the incredible jungle tours that are available in the surrounding areas. I did a tour of Semuc Champey, which is a natural limestone bridge wayyyy deep in the jungle a couple hours east of Coban. The entire hike and tour is amazing, but limestone bridge itself is absolutely incredible because on top of it is a series of turquoise fresh water pools that have collected there from the waterfall and rainwater. We did a pretty short but seriously grueling hike up to a lookout and then down to the pools. Most of the hike to the lookout was up almost completely vertical wooden stairs, whoever made them was not thinking clearly because they were built for a giant, I seriously felt like Alice in Wonderland when she gets all shrunk up by that mushroom and then everything is huge for her. Especially I don't know what they were thinking because most Guatemalan people are a lot smaller than me. At the bottom we swam across 4 of the pools, it was so cool. They are tiered as the river goes down, so we would swim across one and then jump over the waterfall down into the next one and so on. Except for the elevation between the pools got progressively huger as they go down and by the last one the guide threw a rope down so that after you did the bajillion foot jump over the waterfall you could haul yourself back up by scrambling up the limestone cliff holding the rope. I did not do this one. Shocker. 

We also did a cave tour, with candles because no one had headlamps, which was really creepy and really cool and also full of stairs and steps for people much taller than myself. For the Mayan people this particular limestone cave is a very holy place, our guide compared it to a cathedral. There are several altars where people still come to make sacrifices and offerings to the Gods. There are a lot of legends and beliefs associated with this cave because there is only one entrance and after years and years no one has been able to find a different one, some people believe it leads to Mexico or Xela, while others believe it is the entrance to hell and that if you walk deep enough into the cave you will eventually end up there. At one point our guide had us all blow out our candles and it was the most bizarre, darkest black I have ever been in and at that point, listening to the screeching bats and imagining spiders the size of my hand crawling down my shirt, the whole hell theory seemed very probable. 

Our bus had 14 people in it on the way back and was not a happy camper and was sputtering and sliding all the way out. So in the dark dark night we stopped to switch busses and I didn't know this but we were parked on top of a cattle guard and so of course I stepped right off the bus and into it. This sounds hilarious but it wasn't at all. It totally annihilated my leg and my ankle and so that was not a fun way to end the day:( Luckily the man behind the desk at my hostel was really sweet and he gave me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some cotton balls and a german guy on my bus gave me two band aids.