Guatemala Part 4 — Las Conchas (Sort Of) and the Serpent Caves

Las Conchas was supposed to be the payoff on the drive north to Flores. It’s a natural park famous for calm, deep blue pools spilling over limestone shelves — the sign at the entrance shows this dreamy turquoise paradise. What we got instead was rainy season: the whole thing flooded into a chocolate-brown monster, one giant wall of whitewater roaring across the entire river. Absolutely no swimming. The boys posed on the viewing deck in front of what was basically Guatemalan Niagara. The only people in the water were two locals out there chest-deep fishing with a net like the river wasn’t actively trying to kill them. Different breed.

So we pushed on to Flores for the night, and the next morning went underground instead: Actún Kan, the Serpent Caves, $17. No guide, no tour group — they hand you helmets and headlamps and you follow numbered signs into the dark. Over a kilometer of route through caverns full of stalactites, flowstone curtains, and formations with names like “El Paso de la Serpiente.” Axel and I kept finding passages that dropped into deeper and deeper caverns and had to keep talking ourselves into one more. The boys’ headlamps bouncing around in the dark made the whole thing feel like a video game. We never did find out the story behind the serpent name, which is honestly the right amount of mystery for a cave.

Next up: the reason everyone comes to Flores.

#unpavedparenting