Cave Adventures

Okay, so this weekend I took a trip to Semuc Champey, and it was amazing. Part of the tour was a cave tour into which I couldn't take my camera because we had to swim around, so for right now I'm just going to write about that so that I don't forget about it.  Before I start I want to mention that I went on this trip with another volunteer and three of her Guatemalan friends.  This is important to note because most Guatemalans don't have the privilege of learning how to swim as kids, and so some of their activities on the cave adventure were all the more impressive if you keep that in mind.

So after a 30 minute ride in the back of a pickup standing up (which required me to be very attentive of where we were going so that I wasn't flayed by branches) we got to a bridge and our guide had us get out of the truck.  We didn't cross the bridge, but instead walked about 100 meters (yes I'm going to use meters, we ought to learn to use them anyway since the Metric System is so much more logical than the English System) to a little office-shack where we took off all our non-swimming clothes and put all our stuff into a big lock-box.  The guide gave out life-jackets to all the people who weren't comfortable swimming, and we climbed the 30 meters to the entrance to the cave.  At that point our guide gave us each a candle and lit them all and we started in.

Now as a rather tall person, I found myself oscillating between having a major advantage over everyone else to having a major disadvantage, depending on the situation.  I started out at a marked disadvantage as we passed under low hanging stalactites and I had to crouch down where some of our Guatemalan friends could walk without stooping at all.  Pretty soon, though, it turned out to be quite fortunate that I am a giant as we got to the swimming section.  Two of the Guatemalan girls were kind of okay paddling along in their life jackets, but one of them was a little more reluctant, so I decided to help her a little.  First I tried to just give her instruction on how to position her body and kick her legs, and I thought it was going to work out until she started to get nervous and unexpectedly grabbed onto me.  Now this wouldn't have been as much of an issue if I wasn't holding my candle in one hand, making it much harder for me to tread water, but as it turned out, I was mostly able to touch the ground and stretch my neck out to get my mouth out of the water to breathe.  There did come fun moments when that wasn't the case and she put a bunch of weight on me and dunked me completely under the water, but I knew that I could get a breath if I needed it, so it didn't freak me out much.  As it was, it was kind of a fun for me, but I was really impressed with these girls, going into caves like that when they can't swim and keeping it together so well.  A lot of people would have just freaked out and left.

At one point we got to a place where there was the option to climb up a ladder or to climb a rope up a waterfall.  Impressively, one of our friends took the challenge and went straight up that waterfall.  Unfortunately I don't know how to say, badass, or courageous, or hardcore in Spanish, so I had some trouble expressing how I felt about seeing her do that.  I just think it's always interesting to see people step outside of their comfort zones and have a new experience like that.

The craziest part of the cave tour was close to the end.  The guide led us to a place where the water was rushing down through a hole, and he basically helped us to slide ourselves down through it as well.  There is something about being in a dark cave and pushing yourself through a hole that isn't much bigger than your body that evokes a bit of an adrenaline rush, but it wasn't actually very risky, once I was out the other side and understood what had just happened.

All in all it was a very fun part of the trip, but the crazy-beautifulness was yet to come. Semuc Champey is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.