So after an early night, after watching a horror movie in our room we get up early and hit the trail early. Our mini bus arrived at 7am and it's a long ride to Champey. We got totally shafted on the bus, being the last 2 to get on we get the fold out seats and not together:( virtually no backrest and no legroom, lucky it's only 9 hours.. Ha.. Weirdly we stop an hour into our trip to pick a couple from a fancy hotel, I thought the bus was full but there's a seat at the back.. Sweet!! So we jump in ... Virtual luxury.. For all of 5 seconds. The driver has reserved the rear bench seat for these 'VIP!' Italians... Wow.. If I could speak Spanish I would have had a lot to say to the driver.. Anyway, it's stinking hot and some annoying Americans and some embarrassing Aussies won't shut up about botany.. Valium anyone?? It's about 6pm when we arrive in a small town just out of semuc Champey, we head to a bar where we wait for our pick up truck to pick us up. We also find out the place we want to stay at, utopia, is full:( but after a couple of phone calls, it's not full and we take the 1/2 hour 4wd trip to utopia. It's a treetop kinda place and we have a little cabin on the river.. Nice. We met some Byron bay couple in the 4wd collectivo on the way in and hang with them for the night., funny guys!!
The next day is action day, a hike up to a look out, it's so hot!! And humid!! Back down to a limestone bridge over the river that is covered in blue pools.. Oh and we spent a couple of hours in an underwater cave system.. Pretty freaky. At the end of the day we decide instead of taking the 30 min bumpy track home, we shall jump in a tyre tube and take the rapids home.. Hilarious. Anyway, a German girl and an Aussie girl joined us and we ended up playing yahtzee or as she called it kniffle.. All night. The German was serious and Jess winning everything didn't help..ha. Early start again tomorrow. Early bus to punta gorda, it's where the road stops and the boats start.. Which is awesome because the drive there is the bumpiest yet, at one point we all had to get out and push the mini bus over a section where a landslide had recently covered the road.. The road was manic and the driver even more so. We later find out that he had an ear infection and hadn't slept the night before.. That drive was not safe!!!