Two days ago I picked up my girlfriend in Guatemala City. She flew in to spend the last week of my trip with me. We spent the next two nights in Antigua (one of my favorite cities so far) but today we made our way across the country (it sounds far but it isn’t too bad) to the tiny town of Lanquin. Lanquin doesn’t consists of very much but is home to some amazing bat caves, and even more importantly, is just a short drive to one of Guatemala’s national treasures, Semuc Champey. We’ll be tackling Semuc Champey tomorrow, but in the mean time we took a short tour of the Lanquin caves, and I was pleasantly surprised with one of the more memorable adventures of this trip.
We started the tour with a view of the Lanquin River gushing out from the caverns. As you can see it was escaping with quite a bit of force and created an impressive current.
Once we entered the cave we were treated to amazing caverns and multiple formations that the locals have named such as The Tortoise (pictured above)
The Tiger (attacking Danielle)
The Pig
and The Elephant
Many of the caverns towered high above our heads.
Our guide slipped away into a cavern for a few minutes and came back to us with a small bat in his shirt to show us what they looked like up close.
At the end of the tour we went back to the opening of the cave, they then turned off all of the artificial lighting and we were treated with a show of over a million bats leaving the cave.
My zoom provided a few up close shots of the bats leaving the cave.
And finally our guide walked us into the pitch black of the cavern, with bats swooping down all around us, and snapped this shot of us.
Caroline
Eeeeew. I am not so fond of bats. But I like caves and that one looks cool. Looking forward to hearing what you think of Semuc Champey.
megan
gosh who is that cute brunette.. what a looker!
i miss you guys but it looks like youre having a great time 🙂 hopefully we can talk soon! (ps i miss her more)
Donna
Great pictures!
Laura A
Aw looks like fun. ps danielle is the best part of this post. JUST SAYIN
Brooklyn
Love these pics! Danielle youre so brave…im proud!
Leng | Globe Nomads
Never been inside a bat cave, looks creepy but interesting.
Matt
a little creepy yes, but definitely worth it.
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[…] 1 Swimsuit – While in Lanquin I visited Semuc Champey and spent a majority of the day either in the water of getting rained on. […]