Our first stop in Guatemala was Flores, a cool little red town on island in the middle of a lake. Most of the streets had the old cobblestone roads which looked nice... But not the best to walk on but it gave the town character and cool to look at.
The main Mayan temple to see throughout Central America was the tekal temple, about an hours bus ride from Flores. Was a decent walk through the jungle to get to the temple, the tour guide was telling us all about the Mayan sacred trees, berries with natural mozzi repellant, how to write time like the Mayans and a little on the history... But it wasn't even 5am and we were all walking round like zombies... Tired and non of us had food with us! Not really able to take in the abundance of information he had. Walking through the jungle we saw plenty of howling monkeys and they actually used their cry as a basis for the noise the dinosaurs made in Jurassic park. They were stupidly loud. We also got to see a tranchula, the tour guide we had just randomly picked up the massive spider and said oh don't worry they don't usually bite.. And started offering it out to people to hold..! It was amazing to see the temples still standing after 4000 years. The sheer size of them was astounding.! Although it's not the largest Mayan temple it was amazing to climb to the top and be another 15m above the tree line and just able to see jungle for miles around and a few tops of temples in the tekal area. No idea how they managed to build these temples out of all this stone.. Even before the wheel was invented.. They used to lay a load off wood and rool materials up the hill. Crazy stuff!!!

The journey to Chempey was pretty rough to say the least. Not only was it a 11 hour journey on a minibus.. But the roads were horrendous.! I dunno if I was expecting tarmac all the way, but in some parts you needed a 4x4 to get anywhere and most areas you could only really fit 1 car through. Going through these mountain passes was very pretty, felt like we were driving through the jungle.

Going through the cave system was insane. Probably one of the funnest things I've done since travelling. Every other person was handed a candle to walk through the cave and illuminate the way. We were pretty lucky that we were the first group to head in for the day so there were no hold ups. Except that meant we had to put other candles up on the walls to see where we were all going. For the majority of the cave, the water came up to our chest and was pretty difficult to wade through holding the candle in one arm. About halfway through the cave we came across about a 4m high waterfall with a rope attached from the top. The tour guide told us that there was 3 foot settings up the fall. I managed to find the first two... But the 3rd one eluded me. Bearing in mind you really couldn't see a thing with all this water pounding into your face, so I literally dragged myself up the rest of the way... Then a little Canadian girl hopped up effortlessly like a bunny.! Right at the end of the cave system, which was about 250/300m in the was a small rock pool, we climbed up a pretty narrow piece of the wall about 3/4m and rather sketchily jumped into this dark pool. Baring inundated there were only a few candles around semi light up part of the cave... I made the square meter hole I was aiming for.. And after I counted.. Yep all my teeth were still there.!
After the cave they took us down the river to a giant rope swing into the water. Was about 10/15m from branch to the seat so we managed to get some decent speed up and a nice bit of height into the water. Well I tried doing a backflip off it.. But the momentum from the swing was pulling mr back into the set so I couldn't leave.. Well I felt that I had pretty much reached the full length of the swing as it came to stop so I had to throw myself off... And I just full on belly flopped. Safe to say it stung a little.!! After we went further down the river to a massive waterfall, which a few of us swam across to, although I had to give Seb a little help getting across and back. The current was stupidly strong, made worse by undercurrents. Once we got to the other side, we had a bit of a sketchy climb up some mossy rocks where at the top there was a 10m sheer drop into the entrance of a cave with almost a sheet of water half covering the entrance. Was cool when we landed just sitting in the entrance with half of it covered with falling water, felt like we were secluded from everyone else.! After we swam back we hopped into our rubber rings and went tubbing down the river.. A group of about 25 was just floating down this river in rubber rings. We linked up a group of 10 and just took the scenery in. Was a little different to tubbing in Laos, there weren't any bars to hop off into.. But there were kids that when we floated past jumped in the river with a mini cooler box full of beer. Little legends.

After an epic lunch we started our hike to the 7 pools view point. A series of natural pools that flow into each other with this amazing green/blue colour. The hike to the top took about 45mins and was almost vertical for most of it, but well worth the effort. The views and colours were insane.! Although I wasn't too keen on the height I got used to it after a while. I definitely needed a swim in the pools after that hike, the first thing I did was run and dive straight in.! Was cool moving from pool to pool going off a few diving spots and natural slides. Was unreal when it started to rain through the channel, was still about 30 degrees so it was still hot in the middle of the Forrest, just a neat sensation to have.

As always the bus rides from location to location were as awful as ever. No leg room and although you pay a little bit extra for AC they Say it's broken.. Yeah right. So we're all just in the back sweating one out.! Lake Atitilan was definitely a sight to see. High up in the mountain ranges there was massive lake surrounded by mountains on all sides, about 12 square miles. At the hostel we stayed at we were in big Tee Pee's right on the lake front with amazing sun rises in the morning, rising between the mountain peaks. I tried my luck at another rope swing at the hostel, but this time I didn't try any fancy flips or anything, just jumped off at the peak and