Semuc Champeyons

"Semuc! Semuc!" Not knowing how the hell we'd make it out to the Semuc Champey National Park, Erik, Carrie, Chris and I had wandered out to the driveway of our hostal looking for... something. And something we most certainly found. A camioneta, the small trucks that serve as mass transit for Guatemala's rural (are there any other kind?) regions, was revving it's motor right out in front. Like it was looking for us, like it was destined to take us to the park and it's famous crystal waters. We made ourselves comfortable on the bags of concrete in the truckbed and settled in for the "difficult" ten kilometer dirt roads out to paradise.

About five minutes later we rolled into "downtown" Lanquin during prime time on market day. We were joined by about twenty five men, women and children in our once roomy pickup bed. One child wrapped his arms around Chris' leg for stability against the more unrestful jars on the road and a tired man rested his cheek on the hand I was using to desperately grip the guardrail, possibly to feel closer in spirit to his fellow traveler that day. There is a different notion of "personal space" here, inasmuch as it relates to the daily commute.

But the vehicular sardine can did the job and got us to where we needed to go.

Now being from Oregon, and the rest of my gang from simarily blessed geographic regions, we were used to messing around with rivers and pools. But a collective release of breath we didn't know we held swept the group when we emerged from the jungle for our first glimpse of Semuc. It was like a vast, terraced network of small Carribean seas, so blue were it's happy waters. We stripped and joined the heady blue, slipping down chutes of water or jumping off limestone ledges into yet another level of water and green grasses and hidden caves.

I have absolutly no confirmation on this, but somewhere in the thousands of conversations that seep into your head backpacking I've heard that "Semuc Champey" is Q’eqchi’, the local Mayan dialect, for "land of the hidden waters." Which is wierd because I just told you all about waters and didn't really make them seem hard to find, because they weren't and those waters are hardly hidden. But after further exploration of the new coolest locale I've ever been turned up confirmation of the Mayas nomenclature. The whole chain of pools, it turns out, is one massive land bridge. We followed them up to their far end and found, to our surprise that a beast of a river beat it's way into the limestone underneath the pools, a massive churning network of semi underwater caves. We sat at the mouth of these and considered the import of hydro power in our modern age. Water, man.

And then we tramped up the sweatiest thirty minutes of my life to the mirador and gorged ourselves on a view that encapsulated it all into one cohesive picture, river and tree and pool and cave. And then we played with a hot pink and black butterfly that wanted nothing more than a friendship with an option to lead to more with my camera. And then we swam some more and I kept my eyes open underwater (a new, dearly beloved skill). And my giardia (I have giardia) barely bothered me because how can amoebas compete with a whole ecosystem for your attention?

They can't. And neither can much anything else, apparently, because we missed the last public camioneta and had to pay an exorbitant amount that very nearly approached the price of a two block taxi ride Stateside for somebody's buddy to drive out from Lanquin and save the silly, naturedrunk gringos. And we drank dark Moza, my Latin American pick for brew, in the dusk of a hostal bar with little electricity and zero phone service to it's name and basically felt very good about the whole situation indeed.

Guatemala rocks. I've bought a palm frond fan we use for our nightly bonfires for about 13 cents, two bowls made out of large seeds and a woven plant fiber bag that a couple of fetchingly old Mayan woman convinced Erik would be perfect for his market days. Thus outfitted, we can conquer the world.

Can't wait,
CD