The sparkling pools of Semuc Champey
No photoshop - promise! The water at Semuc Champey really is this colour.
Taking the advice of a local we met in the hot springs of Xela, we boarded a Pullman coach from the main bus station in the direction of Guatemala City.
I have to admit I was feeling pretty smug. After my stream-of-consciousness complaints about chicken buses, I’d finally got my wish. A comfortable, reclining seat. Leg room. Bags stowed in a luggage compartment. Air conditioning. What more could I ask for?!
Our first journey to Guatemala City took about an hour longer than scheduled - a positive victory by the Latin America standards we are used to. We hopped across town in a taxi (politely working our way through another classic “the bus you want doesn’t leave from there, it leaves from the bus station across town” attempted scam by the taxi driver) and bought a ticket for our next bus. It was all going swimmingly.
Then the bus left. And it crawled along the main highway we were promised would be super fast. There wasn’t much traffic; lorries, vans, everything was overtaking us as we crawled along. The three and a half hour journey took us seven. Long. Excruciating. Hours.
And there was me, so excited to be on the coach. A classic case of be careful what you wish for!
We’ve done much longer journeys, it was just the promise of a quick and painless trip that made it sting. We arrived in Coban at 9pm to find all the restaurants closed, and the dominoes pizza we ordered never turned up. Thank god our Airbnb host left teabags and a tin of shortbread biscuits for us! After a breakfast of supermarket cake and a lunch of service station crisps, our shortbread dinner rounded off by far the worst day of our trip when it comes to food. We fell into uneasy sleep accompanied by the sounds of our rumbling stomachs.
In truth we only stopped in Coban to break up our journey, but we’d made vague plans to have one last attempt at spotting a quetzal at a nearby bio-reserve. Nearby…so we thought. We discovered it was around 2 hours back down the road we had just crawled up, and we would need to be on the road by 7am latest for the best chance of bird spotting in the early morning. When our alarms went off at 6am, one look at each other was all we needed to decide. Sorry, quetzals. If you were really as resplendent as you claim to be, you wouldn’t be so damn elusive.
Instead we spent the day wondering around Coban and it was… fine. The highlight was going for an early dinner and finding the restaurant scene pretty good, when open!
Like I said, Coban was just a stop to break up the long journey, and the next day we were back on a bus to our next destination, lanquin: the nearest town to the natural pools of Semuc Champey.
Nestled in the Guatemalan jungle, Semuc Champey is a natural marvel renowned for its turquoise pools cascading over limestone formations. Formed by the Cahabón River, the pools stretch over 300 meters and offer visitors a chance for a refreshing dip in its crystal-clear waters. Surrounded by green forest and limestone cliffs, it's a truly extraordinary place to visit.
By this point it had been about ten days since we had done any real active “sightseeing,” so we were positively giddy about jumping into the back of a pick up truck for an hour long ride from town to the pools.
A lot of visitors do this trip on a tour that includes a visit to nearby caves and tubing in the river. To be honest, after reading a few blogs and speaking to people about their experience, the visit to the caves sounded like a nightmare to me. Having to hold a candle whilst wading through water up to your neck, climbing down rickety ladders and jumping into pitch black pools? No thank you, im not paying for a death cave experience! So we decided to do the trip independently and not only was it easy, it was super affordable.
Our pick up truck dropped us right at the entrance to the pools, where we paid our entry and immediately hiked up to the viewpoint - better to get sweaty first and cool off after, we thought. It was a pretty intense and uphill walk but my god was it worth it. The view over the limestone pools was incredible - the turquoise of the water has to be seen to be believed. I’m that kind of cynic that thought the photos must be photoshopped but no: it really is that blue.
We practically ran down the other side of the trail to get a dip in those cool waters. It was blissful. We spent the next few hours relaxing in the pools in relative peace before the tour groups returned from the caves to join us. There are so many pools it’s quite easy to find a little corner for yourself, which is exactly what we did.
Words of warning: the rocks are quite slippery. Water shoes would have been a lifesaver for my middle toe, which I tripped and stubbed so hard that it went a vivid shade of purple for the next ten days. I reckon it was bruised rather than broken, but to be honest the experience of soaking in the clear water whilst surrounded by the Guatemalan jungle was probably worth the pain. Also: don’t forget bug spray. I ended up covered in bites, a pain I personally found much harder to bear than the potential broken toe. On reflection, writing this down makes it sound like it wasn’t a such great day… but I loved it!
As we had passed on the death cave experience, we decided to stick around in town another day and visit caves that are within walking distance to lanquin.
The Grutas de Lanquin turned out to be amazing! It was like walking through the mines of Moria (probably).
These limestone caves are believed to be millions of years old, formed through the slow dissolution of limestone by underground rivers. A maze-like path ran through different of chambers of the cave, which was covered with impressive stalactites and stalagmites - and other formations I don’t have enough geological knowledge to name.
It was one of those experiences that I was simultaneously in awe of but also terrified by. The caves were lit but it was still dark - you couldn’t always see your next step. The rocks were smooth and slippery like slides in some places. They were bat droppings - famously vectors of rabies - everywhere. The path wasn’t clear, and the handrails were inconsistent. Did I think it was an amazing natural sight that filled me with appreciation for our beautiful planet? Yes. Did I think at times I could slip and fall into a dark abyss never to be seen again? Also yes. But we made it through - I’ve said it many times over the last ten months, doing things that scare you is the best way to grow!
As alluded to, the caves are famous for being home to thousands of bats, which supposedly fly out of the caves in a spectacular fashion at sunset. I say supposedly because we stuck around after our visit to see this sight. The sun set at 18:08, and by 19:00 we had seen only a handful of bats emerge. In hindsight, it was pretty cool to see the bats that we did! But of course our expectations had been warped by internet reviews and guidebooks that told us we would see thousands of bats flying off into the night.
Standing in the pitch black, we realised that even if a swarm were to come out, it was now so dark that we wouldn’t be able to see them anyway, so we left. It’s another reminder that Mother Nature doesn’t perform on demand, and to be grateful for what we are lucky enough to experience.
One of the most welcome surprises of our trip to Lanquin was just how affordable everything was - for the first time since El Salvador we felt like we could make the most of everything on offer to us without worrying about costs. Truthfully, I would have happily paid more for the experiences we had in the town. Those turquoise pools reenergised us after 10 days of broken plans and bleak busses. It felt like our Guatemalan adventure was finally back on track.
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