Lakes, Rivers, Coffee and Caves

A tip from another Kiwi helped us to find beautiful San Pedro, a quiet, laid-back village, lake side of Lago de Atitlan (a 340 m deep lake which is the result of an eruption thousands of years ago). Lake side breakfasts were a great way to ease into the day.

All the villages surrounding the lake are Mayan (indigenous people of Central America), with each village wearing their own weaved patterns on their traditional dress.

A trip in a chicken bus round to the next village we found our way to the base of Mayan Nariz (indian nose). The hill in the picture given the name as it supposidly looked like a nose. Halfway up we found this cross and statue. Stifling hot and me pretty sick after a day on the toilet the day before, it was quite a struggle. Rewarding views at the top though.

We stumbled upon a local artist and decided to get a textured oil painting depicting a chaotic guatemalen market.

San Pedro also had little mayan ladies carrying large bowls on their heads selling delicious cakes and buns. Nice and sugary just what a funny tummy needs for dessert.

We took a 10 mins boat trip around the lake to San Marcos. As we were strolling along the lake side, we were suddenly aware this dog was eating something. On closer inspection we saw it was a fish. We then found fresh wet dog footprints leading from the lake and the wet hair of the dog indicated that this dog had just been fishing... for its lunch.

A few days later we found ourselves in the small town of Coban. The main attraction in the town we visited is the german initiated, Dieseldorff Coffee plantation. Here we were shown the whole coffee producing process from the growning and pruning of the tree (see pic below), to the picking, selecting, drying and roasting.

Unknown to Ken and I.... coffee beans are actually a creamy white colour (see pic below). They only get their brown colour after being roasted. I now have a great appreciation for the coffee I drink as the coffee bean selection process is laboursome and done by hand. One bad bean in a handfull of 50 beans will ruin the coffee.

A crazy bus trip, squashed in amoungst the local which took an hour longer than it should, due to a break down on the windy one lane gravel road, took us down to Semuc Champey. A great little get away after the hussle bustle of Coban. Our place was river side thankfully as the temperatures here were still very hot. Rocks and bridges to jump off.... Ken was happy.

We ventured into the Semuc Champey park not real knowing what we would find. Turned out it was pretty impressive. There were a stepped series of turquoise pools great for swimming in.

Then to our amazement we found the pools were actually a natural 300m limestone bridge, as the river Cahabon paseed underneath the pools.

After a fairly steep climp up the surrounding cliff, we were able to appreciate the entire site from above.

And then at the base of the pools was a large cascading waterfall with dark caves under neath. A desperate swim against the current and a tricky climp up the waterfall and down into the caves turned out to be worth it as it enabled us to jump off the waterfall to get back.

Just back down the gravel road 11km we stayed the night at Lanquin to visit the caves. Probably the biggests caves we've seen. They just went on and on with some pretty impressive stalictites and mites.