Cliff diving in the mountains? Semuc Champey

From Coban, it's a beautiful mountain drive in a mini-chicken bus to get to Lanquin, the town nearest the national park of Semuc Champey. The road weaves up through the mountains, and the jungle gets denser and lusher, and greener as you go. You can peer down into misty green valley with tiny villages of palapa houses with thatched palm rooves, or you can peer up into the endless highland jungle mountains which disappear into the mist. Our chicken bus actually had a chicken this time, too - large rooster held between an indigenous woman's legs in the seat in front of us.
At Languin, we switched transport to a pickup truck. Not just the luggage, but the tourists as well are shoved into the bed of the truck. It's standing-room only, and you feel as if you're on some sort of amusement park ride as you go up and down through the hills, except that there are no safety restraints, only a the small pipe railing to clutch on to.
We stayed at the hostel Las Marias near the park, though we'd recommend anyone to continue a bit further up the the hill to the red hostel even nearer the park. It's cleaner, the people are nicer, and you actually have choices as to what food to eat. That being said, we survived the mosquitos and the over-priced vegetarian dinner (with no form of protein to speak of), and really enjoyed the pools, the raging river, cliff diving into deep, clear pools (OK, Erik was jumping off high rocks, not cliffs...), etc. It's a very beautiful, special place, though even as remote as it is, it was still relatively crowded thanks to a Lonely Planet write up! We spent a half day there and then headed back to Copan and then on to Rio Dulce...