Coban Part Two

I must say at this moment I am not fond of Blogger. I apologize that the fonts are all different, but for some reason I can't change them.

After jumping out of the tree, Jose led us down more of the pools to the last one, where he tied a rope to a water fall going down. It was a small water fall, more of a trickle, so it seemed pretty easy when we told us we should rappel down it. He made it look easy to. I was told after the fact that there were even foot holds, that everybody else was aware of, but I didn't see or need them. The very end was the only slightly challenging part, because there was a drop of about three feet at the end, that you couldn't see from the top, and so weren't expecting at all. I ended up dunking myself under the water fall since I went second, and getting a little disoriented. Overall though, people came down uneventfully.

At that point we got to go into what looked like a cave. Jose told us that this was where the original river was, so we both both below and above water, but completely dry. You couldn't go very far back, because nobody has explored it, and doens't know what to expect, but it was still very cool. Looking out from the mouth of the cave was one of the prettiest views I've ever seen though. In movies, they always show paradise as being green dripping with water, and water all over. Well this was a real life paradise scene. Absolutely gorgeous. And because we were swimming through water to get there, nobody had cameras at this point. It's too bad, but there is no way the view will ever leave my mind at least.

At this point though, everybody was a little cold, because there was cold water dripping down from the cave roof, and we weren't in the sun. After climbing back up the water fall, we went to have the sandwiches the restaurant has prepared for us. We were so hungry that we wolfed down about have of them, and a lot of people couldn't finish it, because they were so disgusting. Soggy white bread, with bologna and something else. I forced mine down because I knew I needed the food, but it was far from pleasant. We sat in the sun in the pools for a while after that.

When we left the Semuc Champey area, we had to cross a bridge above the water to get to our next destination. As we were walking across, Jose asked me if I wanted to jump off the bridge. I laughed, because I thought he was joking. It was the kind of thing someone would say in the US, and mean basically the opposite. But he promptly told me to take off my shoes and showed the spot I should jump from. At this point I balked a little bit, not sure I really wanted to jump off a forty foot bridge. But then I thought, "when am I ever going to get another experience like this one?" So I jumped off. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!! A little bit more painful than the tree, because I didn't go in exactly vertically, but I have absolutely no regrets. This time only one other person jumped with me.

After that, we finished crossing the river, to where there was a little building. Here they tied our shows onto our feet, for the adventure in the caves. We were handed handles about five inches long, and then told to follow a guide. We came to a little cave in the side of the mountain, that didn't look very big. The water was only about two feet deep at the entrance. One of the girls with us was Guatemalan, and couldn't swim. She'd never tried a life jacket before and so didn't trust it at all. She freaked right away and didn't come with us, but everybody else was fine, at least to begin with. They lit our candles, and that was our only source of light in the entire place.

At the beginning, we simply waded through knee-deep water for a while. There were stalactites, stalagmites, and cave bacon all over the walls. And a bunch of other cool formations that I can't really name or describe. Again, we didn't have cameras, because we had only one hand to swim with. Later on in the cave it got fairly deep, and we actually had to swim across lengths of deep water, and we usually couldn't tell where the end was. I really enjoyed the whole experience, but some people were a little freaked out from the caves and the dark and everything. There was a little waterfall inside we got to climb (using a rope) and at the end there was a little pool they let me jump into. Nothing high, just hard to climb up to in the dark.

After that we went outside again to choose tubes because we were going to float down the river for a little while. There was a sort of rope swing going out into the river that everybody wanted to do, so of course we did it to. Unfortunately, it twisted as I was going out, so I had to go over the back of the swing. That sounds fine, but I ended up doing a back flop into the river, which was really painful. Honestly I think it hurt more than jumping off the bridge or the tree. That's not supposed to happen. But almost everybody hurt themselves a little on the swing, so I don't feel so bad I guess.

The float down the river was really nice afterward though, it was really fast flowing, so we all talked and floated for forty-five minutes or so. The only unfortunate part about that was that when we got out, we had to walk back on the dirt road bare-foot because we didn't have any of our things with you. That was the end of the day, and then we got to ride back to our hotel. We had red paint all over our faces that Jose put there for fun, and so everybody who saw us laughed. It was fun though, because a lot of times even the kids are really serious. We didn't really mind that the source of their laughter was us.

After dinner we all collapsed in bed, only to wake up at five-thirty the next morning to get on the road for an eight hour bus ride again. Despite the fact that we broke our rule saying that you have to stay longer than it takes to get there, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had down here, or ever.
***Credit to Joni Paranka for most of the pictures in this entry