Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. I turned 29 yesterday. Feeling old :-p

Pero qué cumpleaño tan estupendo... what an AMAZING birthday!! It started at midnight on Wednesday when Callum decided to tell the bar staff that it was my birthday... which was a BAD move! ;-) Then, incredibly hung-over yesterday morning, we went to Semuc Champey, an absolutely astounding natural formation... essentially a huge platform (they call it a "natural bridge" but that doesn't quite capture the size of this thing) of cascading pools with a crazy raging river flowing UNDER it... it's totally mad! We did this seemingly death-defying free climb down the waterfall and swung under the bridge into the underground cavern where the river flows, water crashing all around us... though the really scary bit for me was trying to get back up -- imagine this:

You are perched on a bit of rock with the river raging around you, tumbling out of the cavern and dropping below you quite a long way, and what you have to do is hop up onto the seemingly smooth rock face hanging above your head and climb back up using the few niches available in the rock, except all this time water is gushing down from above and smashing into your face... your guide is yelling "Mire! Mire!" / "Watch (me carefully and follow)!" as he demonstrates how to do all this but you can't see a thing for all the water in your eyes...

Needless to say, my adrenaline, endorphine, serotonin, dopamine -- EVERYTHING -- levels were just OFF THE SCALE!!!

Back at the hotel in the evening, the Dutch contingent I had kind of met the day before surprised me with a bottle of champagne and some local sweets as a birthday present, and sang 'Happy Birthday' to me in Dutch! They were intending to make me a little crown -- apparently that's what they do back home -- as well but they didn't quite managed that so this morning they just gave me the roll of card they were going to use to make it! Really sweet.

Unfortunately I am having trouble posting pictures to my blog so for now you can look at Callum's website to see some pictures of us at the house in San Pedro and more recently pictures from Semuc Champey:
http://callumg.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

If that site is too slow to load and/or you want more pictures of Semuc, see
http://www.guate360.com/galeria/categories.php?cat_id=18

I hope you guys enjoy this return to standard traveller blogging... though I think we are all still processing what's happened in recent weeks and I hope to write a little more about it soon. Also hoping to return to San Pedro for a few days before I go to Mexico as I feel I didn't get a chance to say my goodbyes properly at the time of the evacuation.

take care
h