Cobán - Alta Verapaz

I had already told you that I went to Coban before entering school, but now I'll show you some pictures of what it was like there.

This was taken during all the hours I spent in the car. It was crazy! we went from desert to a foggy forest to mountains, and from hot to cold in just a few hours!

The first place we went to was Semuc Champey. This is a place where the Cahabon river comes out from the underground and fall in this little waterfalls that form little pools that have turquoise water. This view is taken from and observatory up in the mountain. And believe me! getting up there was the hardest thing I did during the whole journey!! The path up the mountian was just so steep and muddy! but like you can see it was worth the climb, haha.

This is the place where the water comes out of. It was really dangerous getting there (there were people checking so you wouldn't fall)  but once you got there you could see an amazing waterfall going down into darkness, scary... haha

Then down the pools I got to get in and the water was really nice. I also got to know a lot of nice people. Some people liked to jump from waterfall to waterfall! And when the pools end the river gets really rough and it's really good for rafting.

This is me and my sister down by the pools. (I'm the tall one btw, and she is my older sister! haha) By this point I had already lost my favorite black shorts that I had taken off after they got wet when I got inside one of the pools.... I'm still sad that I lost it....

This is "La Cueva de Candelaria" that we also went to. It was really big and the best thing is that just under this photo there was a river where you could go floating down with a tube and a lantern, and then you could see all this underground caves that went along the river, it was really cool!! Sadly I don't have photos of this because the camera would have gotten really wet!

Then we went to the "El Rey Marcos" caves. They were discovered in 2001, I think, and they were fully explored by guys of National Geographic. I got to wear a minning hat (that is really useful when you're hitting your head all the time with the low ceiling...) and boots to go into the underground river. It was quite an adventure because you sometimes have to crawl into a one meter tall tunnel and most of the rocks are slippery because of the water that covers them all of the time. You really have to take care to don't fall down! There is even a lagoon inside!! And you have to hop from rock to rock to cross underground rivers!

But it was amazing to see rocks that took million of years to form! The guide said that this rock looked like the tower of Piza. Do you think so?? haha

There was even a point in the tour when the guide really got into his role and asked us to turn off all the lights (which was scary!) and turned all spiritual. He even said that people traveled all the way there from everywhere to get their wishes granted and there were stories of some miracles.... haha but the guide was really funny!

And this is the river that got out from the mountains. Amazing isn't it?