After riding on the shuttle for an hour and a half and climbing for another hour or so you reach the crest of the crater and then you climb down into it. The crater itself is huge and filled with hardened lava. The frozen flows and bursts of steam give the place an eerie, moon-like look. The heat keeps rising as you go further into the crater and at some point you realize that the magma is flowing under your feet and you start fearing for your shoes, your camera, and your life. Not necessarily in that order.
Then you see the rivers of lava... and you realize that in other countries the authorities would probably not allow people to get this close to the action.
Early the following morning we took a shuttle to Honduras so we could explore the Mayan ruins at Copan.
We were both feeling the effects of our lack of sleep but we still hiked through the nature trail and the large archaeological site there. It was quite impressive and is probably a good place to start as preparation for our visit to Tikal (which we plan to visit in a few days).
The ride back was fun - there were a lot of people in the shuttle and at some point we lost the breaks. We parked the car and started working on the breaks. Luckily we all made it back safely to Antigua.
We left Antigua for the very last time (so far) and made our way to Coban. We used this as a base from which to go to the Biotop del Quetzal. We hoped to see Guatemala's national bird - the Quetzal - in its natural habitat. We didn't. Nor did we see any other animals. We did however get completely soaked. So that's why they call it "rain forest". Right, got it.
From Coban we drove to the small town of Lanquin which is nestled in a picturesque valley. We explored some of the caves there and stood at the very entrance as thousands of bats emerged from the caves at dusk. They were flying all around us in complete silence...
The following day we went to a place called Semuc Champey where a natural bridge dotted with crystal clear pools runs over a gushing river. We climbed up to the view point and then back down. We swam around in the pools, stood under the waterfalls, and finished up by walking down the river. All in all it truly is a beautiful place.
We decided our next stop would be Rio Dulce and so we waited another day in Lanquin for the direct shuttle. We relaxed and decided to use some abuvim to go down the river from the caves to the hostel. It was nice and fun until I ran my ass over a freaking boulder hiding beneath the water. Ouch.
I was a little worried about the trip to Rio Dulce seeing as my butt wasn't in the best of conditions but it turned out that many other things were also in poor condition. The car's roof for example. As soon as we started driving the roof started making "I'm not going to carry your bags for you" noises. Soon after the engine decided to join in and started making hissing sounds. We used up all of our water trying to cool the engine down. We even took water from a nearby well and later on from a small river. It did however make us forget about the roof for a while.
Having successfully cooled down the engine we were sure that we were done with our problems. Aha. A bridge we were supposed to cross had kind of collapsed... actually, it looked more like a giant was trying to make origami out of it.
We had to cross over by foot and negotiate a price with a new shuttle on the other side. Of course this meant that we would get to ride with the usual variety of chicken, fish, and elbowing Mayans.
Since we were making our way toward Belize we took a boat ride from Rio Dulce to Livingston. This has to be one of the best places to take a boat ride in the world - you go through a lake and narrow canyons filled with birds and trees, water lilies, and sun bathing tourists. Well, maybe you can skip the tourists thing but the rest was great.
From Livingston it was just two boats (ouch my butt), a 2 hour bus ride (OUCH MY BUTT), and another water taxi (O-U-C-H M-Y B-U-T-T!) to the Belizean town of Placencia.
Butt that's another story.
No comments:
Post a Comment