Diving

We came to Utila for the scuba diving.  After a few days of just enjoying island life, David started his PADI Open Water course, and of course turned out to be a natural.  I waited for him to get through the book and skill stuff, and then joined him out on the boat for a "scuba tune-up", which was advisable since my last dive was in Puerto Rico in 2002.  So while David was getting his first taste of breathing 60 feet underwater, I was off with a divemaster practicing all the same things he was learning - taking your mask off and putting it back on underwater, finding your regulator should a shark startle you and make you accidentally spit it out in surprise, that sort of thing.

All the divemasters at our school were straight out of central casting.  Young, tanned and beautiful, and all with fun accents.  David was primarily with Ethan from Australia, and mine was Alice from Norway.  I was really spoiled my first dive because it was just Alice and me on our own, so we just swum around and she kept finding moray eels and parrotfish and some totally amazing sea cucumbers for me to see.

After David finished his course, he had two more dives scheduled, so I got to join him.  We had been hoping to go to the north side of the island, which is where the elusive whale sharks tend to be sighted, but the weather was too rough to make it.  In fact, while I would have suffered through any seasickness if it meant I would get to see a whale shark, not a single one was sighted the entire ten days we were on the island, even though this is technically the season.  The whale shark may have eluded me for now, but while whale sharks can run, whale sharks can´t hide, at least not forever.  Another time we will have to go to Holbox in Mexico or maybe Ningaloo in Australia to hunt one down.

In any case, both our dives were excellent.  The water was warm and the visibility was high.  We saw several lionfish, which are gorgeous with these feathery spines fanning out, a warning to everyone of how poisonous they are.  (As a general rule of thumb, if anything is the ocean is especially ugly or especially gorgeous, it is probably lethal.)  While David proved quite adept at handling himself underwater, not everyone else on our dive was quite as graceful underwater.  One guy seemed to crash down to the bottom or up into rocks with an almost purposeful drive.  My tendancy is always to stick close to the guides, so you can see the cool things before other people scare them away (or in this case, steps on them).  However there were a couple of girls who couldn´t quite figure out the concept of "personal space" underwater and kept crashing on top of me.  So David and I retreated to the back of the pack, and contented ourselves to finding the things the others swam right by. 

The best example of this came right at the end of the second dive.  Diving for me is like flying, and I really enjoy swooping down to just about the sand to sail through tight spaces between the rocks.  As I came through one particular passageway, the first thing I realized was there was a hidden cave underneath the rocks, and the second thing I realized was there was a six foot long nurse shark sitting in it looking at me.  I managed NOT to spit out my regulator in surprise, and just admired it for a second.  Then I swam up to David and the rest to make them come back and look.  This was Alice´s 80th dive on the island, and it was the first time she had seen a nurse shark, so we were all pretty excited to have found it.

Our last day on the island we hiked up and around to the north side.  It was great to see the water, but kind of depressing to see all the trash that had washed up from the sea, plastic bottles and the soles of shoes mostly.  But we have enjoyed the wildlife.  There are two types of iguana here, one that is endemic and endangered, but that lived right in the backyard of our hotel which we could watch over lunch.  Another lizard we enjoyed was maybe eight inches long, bright green and with a vivid blue belly.  It would run a few inches, and then stop and wave at you.  Yes, you read that right.  Every time it would stop it would wave its front paw like it was saying hello (or perhaps a hopeful goodbye to get you to leave?).  We looked it up and it is called the Shakey-paw lizard or something like that.  The third kind was bigger, and when it would run away from you it would do it on its back legs, its front legs just sort of dangling there, which was always funny to watch.  Finally we found another spider, hairy and mean looking.  It ignored us when we took its picture, and we weren´t sure if it was alive or not, so David poked it with a stick.  It attacked and bit the stick with rapid vengance, and we screamed like little girls and jumped back about ten feet.  So yeah, alive.

Besides not finding a whale shark, the other tragedy was the fact that our dive shop was out of t-shirts, so we don´t get to show off our PADI cred.  Hate that.

Utila town

We arrived for the ferry early, so we had plenty of time to experience ferry envy.  The Bay Islands of Honduras is made up of three separate islands.  Roatan is the more upscale, Utila is more backpackery, and the other one is lightly populated with super fancy resorts, and basically no casual travelers go there.  The ferries for Roatan and Utila were sitting side by side.  Our little blue boat sitting next to this gigantic ferry that just dwarfed our poor little launch.  Ah well.

As we waited David caught a group of young European girls making eyes not at me, but at all the patches on my backpack.  I played it cool though and pretended not to notice. Secretly though, showing off your travels brings the sweetest kind of enjoyment any backpacker knows.  People often ask how long we are travelling for, and knowing we are American are always surprised by our answer of "Six months, more or less".  The ones only out for a few weeks (or months) without fail express envy, which we eat up like the sweet nectar it is.  Then there are the ones like a girl I met yesterday from Norway.  At my "six months" answer, she nodded approvingly, but didn't say more, knowing that the next step in the protocol is for me to ask her back, which of course I did.  "Well," she answered as non-chalantly as she could muster "I've been out for about eight months already, and probably have another eight before my money runs out."  Now it was my turn to be envious, her slight smile betraying her inner pleasure at trumping me.

Utila is a small-ish place, with the main town situated around a circular bay.  As it was not created for tourists, but instead discovered by tourists, it is not particularly ideal for showing off what it has.  The main road is separated from the water by a thick line of buildings.  Many are now dive shops (the reason most people come here) or restaurants with decks that extend out over the water.  But many are homes, shops, or worse empty half demolished buildings that serve no purpose but to block the view.  There are only a handful of trucks on the island, most people get around by scooter, golf cart, bicycle or ATV.  The road however is extremely narrow, with just enough room for two golf carts to pass each other.  Add in the vehicles parked on the side, not to mention all the people wandering around on foot, and you have a very uncomfortable situation.  Especially since both local and tourist alike find no greater thrill than to riding down the crowded street on a motorcycle as fast as they can go.  I have yet to see an accident, which is a constant surprise.  A scooter will scream by with two adults, each holding a toddler in their laps.  In the states the feds would take your children away for doing that, but here they are just going to the store and would surely be offended at the suggestion they were acting as unfit parents.

From the main road a low hill rises up inland, and it is up one of these roads where our hotel is.  The walk isn't far, though is somewhat tiring when everything else in town is so close together.  However we can't move.  Our mattresses are old and both have body sized depressions in them, however we are both sleeping just fine.  But, importantly, we each have a powerful fan, and the icing on the cake is the shower that has water in three temperatures to choose from.  Cold, warm, and hot, and with water pressure to spare!  This is a rarity here, and we are making the most of it.  The weather here has been varied, with cold rainy days leading into hot sunny ones, so we have enjoyed all three settings.  The water heater, which is an electric device stuck onto the end of the shower head, doesn't even have any exposed wires!

We are also enjoying multiple showers a day, as we have run out of deoderant.  The supermarkets here only carry antipersperant, which we reluctantly tried using, but both of us developed ugly itchy rashes.  So until we can find a place with plain old deoderant, we are both on the stinky side.  Island life is better suited to this than city life, so at least we are in the right locale.

The backpackers here tend to be on the young and foolish side, with a surprising number of spring breakers thrown in the mix.  For St. Patricks Day one of the restaurants hosted the "Beer Olympics", which somehow David and I ended up missing.  However, as with any place, we are good at finding our niche.  While the food in the restaurants has been largely expensive and disappointing, we found a guy who operates out of an empty lot who makes the most amazing tacos.  He even has David salivating over the smell of the roasting onions!  We did find a place last night that is only open three days a week, but we both had huge plates of carbs (mashed potatos, rice, corn on the cob and garlic bread) and then I had a huge tuna steak and David went for marlin.  It was so good we didn't even have room for the chocolate cake, which is saying something.

We have been waking with the sunrise, and generally go for a walk every morning.  Though the island is far more rocky than beachy, there are small beaches on either side of town and we usually spend an hour or two just wandering around.  The pace here is just right, a perfect spot to slow down and chill out.  There is the issue of the spiders.  Fortunately they tend to keep to themselves, spreading their webs up between the trees or tall bushes, occasionally in the power lines.  There is a fantastic restaruant here called the Jade Seahorse, which has been decked out with fantastical sculptures and twisted pathways and treehouses, every surface a mosaic of glass or beads or bottles.  It is fun to walk through and we'd love to go at night for dinner, but with all the trees it is infested with these spiders.  The spiders are large anyway, but they also seem to be communal, building their webs in huge sheets connected to each other - a single sheet between two distant trees might be made up of a dozen individual spider lairs, and these webs can easily encroach into the human living space.  As much as I love the look of the place, no restaurant is worth getting a spider in the face.

Exploring the backside of water is even more exciting than it sounds

Our last day in Copán was marred slightly by an unexpected 16-hour power outage.  Things were still open (restaurants all cook with gas), and was mostly obnoxious because we couldn´t get some laundry done as we had hoped.  We were also cut off from the internet which I had been hoping on using.  But oh well, we sat in the town square and enjoyed just hanging out for a while.  And fortunately the power came back on about 7pm, so we were able to turn on the fans when we went to bed.  (Otherwise we would not have gone to bed, way too hot!)

We caught a 7am bus up to San Pedro Sula.  A horrifying new trend for me is that I´m starting to experience carsickness on some of these busses.  This has never been a problem for me before, and I´m really quite annoyed with it.  I´d bought some corn muffins from a corner store next to the bus station just before we boarded, and they turned out to be quite stale, but at least it got me over the hump.  From San Pedro we walked along a surprisingly large bus station and found a connecting chicken bus to our next destination, a small town called Los Naranjos on Lake Yajoa.

I thought I was catching movement out of the corner of my eye as we boarded, but when I sat down my worst suspicions were confirmed when a flurry of cockroaches scattered out from around the seat, up the windows, over the ceiling, across the floor, up over the back of the next seat.  There wasn't much we could do but flick them away when they got too close.  Fortunately my memory of a similar experience in Indonesia proved reliable, and once the bus started moving, they all retreated to whence they came and we didn't see another for the rest of the ride.  At least the bus was cheap, only $1.50 for the two hour journey.

We were dropped off along the road by a sign pointing the way to the guesthouse we were headed for, D&D Brewery.  The guy who owns it operates a small brewery, and one of the draws of the place is that thanks to that process, even the water that comes out of the shower and the sinks is purified, so you don't have to worry about keeping your mouth closed while you shower like in most places.  Both of our guidebooks raved about the place, so we were pretty excited to go, although the reality was more sobering.  A note to whomever it is that writes lodging reviews for Lonely Planet in Honduras (you too Rough Guide!): Stop pretending things are so awesome when, in fact, they are not.  Don't get me wrong, overall the place was fine, and I'd even recommend it.  We are even savvy enough travelers not to have had super high expectations, reviews nonetheless.  But still we couldn't help be disappointed.  The food was ok, but expensive. (Why is it that it is always the most expensive restaurants that never INCLUDE the food taxes in their prices, which adds an additional 15%?)  The room was barely adequate, the kind of room where the toilet is next to the bed - I've certainly stayed in worse, but when you are expecting something nice, adequate doesn't cover it.  Every other traveler we talked to was also very disappointed with what they found, most staying less time than they had intended.

On the plus side, there is a nice (but cold!) swimming pool, that was great for cooling off our feet on the first and very hot day we arrived.  The garden setting is lovely, we saw some great birds and a few awesome bugs.  But in the end, the hotel is just a means to an end to get to the lake.  Even if it was the worst hotel in the world (and it isn't), I'd still recommend you come here.  Here's why.

Our first morning we walked through an "Eco-archeological" park nearby, with a boardwalk through some marshland.  We saw lots of birds (and ran into an amusing bunch of Mennonites who were brimming with frustrated excitement because they could hear - but not see - a very elusive bird they had been hunting for months) and walked by some unexcavated ruins.  The weather had cooled significantly from the day before and we had a great time just walking through the woods.

When we returned we ran into a quartet of teachers, three from England and one American who were traveling around teaching English to schoolkids.  We joined up with them and we all headed out to the main draw of the region, Pulhapanzak Falls.  (Don't worry, I couldn't pronounce it either.)  We walked around and enjoyed the view, and once we'd talked the one girl teacher into it, we hired the guide.

Stripped down to our swim trunks and sandals, the guide led us down to the bottom of the falls.  We went through a locked gate, and made our way along a rocky, muddy path along one side of the falls - you can barely see the path in the photo, sorry I don't have more but my camera isn't waterproof!  We were soaked with spray long before we even approached the water.  We reached the first pool, and headed in.  The water was cool but warmer than I'd expected, which was a good thing because after wading through a series of small pools our guide led us right underneath the roaring curtain of water.  The sound was deafening, and we just barely made out our instructions to always look down and breathe through our mouths, as the rush of water made it impossible to inhale otherwise.  We went under and through several times to a couple of different little caverns, and at one point had to get down and wiggle through a small hole on our bellies into a cave that opened up behind the water.  It was exhilarating.  The girl was rather scared about it all (and humorously kept almost losing her bikini in the rush of water) but the guide was great and literally held her hand almost the entire way.  We were just blindly following him through sheets of water with no idea what was on the other side, so it was a good thing he knew where he was going.  With each step you didn't know whether you would sink to your shins in the water or up to your chest, or whether you would step on the bottom or have to balance on the tip of a rock. The strength of the falling water was impressive and humbling.  On the way out we jumped off an overhang into a pool below, which is one of those things that you do knowing how stupid it really is.  I did hit bottom, but comfortably so.

A tour like that could never happen in the States.  There would have to be handrails and insurance and everyone would have to wear life vests and helmets and be hooked to a line.  You really do take your safety in your own hands when you come to countries like this, which can be a little intimidating at times, but also quite liberating.  No one is going to take care of you, or keep you from doing something "for your own good".  There is a certain downside to that too of course, but it also makes you realize what a sterile place the "civilized" world can be.  I think I could spend a lot of evenings talking about and trying to decide exactly what I think about the merits of keeping people safe versus giving the freedom to live as they want to.  Anyway, this was definitely a highlight of our entire trip so far.

The second reason why a stay at D&D is a must, is to meet Malcolm, the resident bird nerd and tour guide.  A self-proclaimed wanderer, he has been traveling away from his native England for most of his life, and does things like travel to the India/Pakistan border by himself just to see a rare kind of bird that lives there.  (He said it was kind of a cross between a chicken and an ostrich, so it does sound intriguing.)  He has been living in Honduras for about three years now, and leads birdwatching tours on the lake.  After making the arrangements over dinner the night before, we met him at 6am along with a local guy who rowed our boat for us.  After a quick snack of fresh papaya at his place, we spent four hours paddling through the marsh and along the edge of the lake.  We saw all sorts of great birds, including hawks, five kinds of herons, and even the keel-billed toucan.  In all he was able to identify 57 species for us, giving us lots of tidbits of trivia along the way.  This was my first bird tour, but we really got into it and had a fantastic time.

From there we were back on the chicken bus up to San Pedro Sula (since we caught the bus mid-route the cockroaches were nowhere to be seen), and then on another "nicer" bus to La Ceiba, which is the jumping off point for catching the ferry over to the Bay Islands.  We stayed at the Banana Republic Hostel, and since we arrived late in the evening the only thing they had available were the dorms.  The beds were surprisingly comfortable, but overall the place was pretty dumpy and the bathrooms were just gross.   We arrived at the same time as a few other people, and we tried to find a neighboring place to go to instead, but turns out it has moved across town, and we didn't feel comfortable walking around in the dark.  The best thing about the place though is just a block away is a fast-food joint called "Super Baleada".  A baleada is a local meal, a tortilla filled with beans and cheese as a base, then you can have them add in egg or different kinds of meats or whatever.  There were two girls standing outside the place who were making the tortillas fresh for each customer.  They were cheap and delicious, and after a day of travel totally hit the spot.

There is a huge bug museum in La Ceiba that we wanted to go to (they have specimins of both the largest moth and the heaviest beetle in the world), so the next morning we got up early and went looking for another place to stay.  The other place we checked - again recommended by both our guide books - was even worse, a huge concrete nightmare over an admittedly nice-smelling bakery, and our walk through town revealed very little of interest.  Both we and the people we had met (a nurse and her husband from Canada and a girl from Liechtenstein) all decided La Ceiba was definitely not worth it.  The couple left for a bus to Trujillo, the girl went to the mountains, and David and I, though a little sad to miss the museum, grabbed the ferry over to Utila.

Into the mouth of the serpent in Copán

Rather than suffering several chicken bus transfers, we broke down and splurged on a six-hour, $11 (each) tourist shuttle from Antigua to Copán, Honduras.  This made things easier as we went direct, and the shuttle waited for us as we ran through a quick and efficient border crossing.  However I never realized a shuttle could be less comfortable than a chicken bus.  We were packed in, and as we left Antigua at 5am we were sleepy, but the seat backs were so low and the leg room so limited the only way to sleep was to hang your neck down onto your chest, which is never comfortable enough to actually sleep.  The girl next to me was a good deal shorter, and still kept getting embarrassed when she would fall asleep and her head would fall onto my shoulder.  The good bit was we had a nice conversation with a father and son traveling together and got some good recommendations of things to do.  We also met a guy who owns the only locally owned (rather than foreigner owned) dive shop on Utila, where we are planning on diving.  He is a real character, and we are definitely considering going to his shop.

The city of Copán Ruinas is just a small place, with the area around the town square lined with some hotels and restaurants that cater to all the tourists.  Compared to other gateway towns to ruins though, it is decidedly quiet, a drab, dusty town livened up only by the tendancy of the local population to hang out in the town square.  Guys in cowboy hats selling ice-cream and girls with carts selling fruit or a small homemade meal, and all of their friends who are just hanging out with them.  In places without air con, it is almost always cooler outside than in, and of course is much less lonely and boring.

Our hotel, La Posada de Belssy, was a simple but clean and comfortable place, run by a friendly and helpful family.  [BACKPACKER NOTE:  Be wary of hotel reviews in the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides to Honduras.  Each one we have stayed at has certainly been oversold.  In this case the place was fine, but forget about "views of the city", and the rooftop terrace wasn´t much to write home about, although I might have felt a little differently had the small pool not been under repair.  I think I was only disappointed because it didn´t live up to the review, not because I had any problems with the room itself.]  An unusual perk was a TV in the room, so we watched the last half to "I, Robot" one night which was deliciously decadant.  ;)

The first afternoon we went out to a bird park, which was set down in a river ravine a ways up into the forest.  The first aviary we came to was the scarlet macaws.  There were two pathways, one that led around the enclosure, and one that led to a door and path that went right through the center.  Having spent a great deal of time at the San Diego aviary, and with no one around to ask (we were the only people there), we just assumed we could walk through.  This was a little scary with over a dozen huge birds eying us as we snapped a few pictures.  I was determined not to be intimidated, but I will admit our pace picked up considerably after one of the birds flapped its wings.  Later in the day we saw another small group walking around with a tour guide, and he took them right down the path that led AROUND the cage.  Oops!  Glad I have both of my eyes still!  Actually I don´t think we were in any extra danger, as there were several more of the birds sitting on the top of the cage on the outside, wild birds who had flown in to be near to their buddies I guess.  All of the birds in the park are rescued from homes and smugglers and such and for whatever reason couldn´t take care of themselves in the wild, but these kinds of birds are all out there in the jungles just doing there thing.

The park was fun, with a bunch of different kinds of birds including some very young toucans, several different kinds of parrots (a few of which talked to us), and a couple of awesome bugs we dug up along the way.  There was a swimming hole along the river that we soaked our feet in for a while which was nice too.  However at $10 USD a head, we were just beginning to figure out that Honduras was going to massacre our carefully minded budget.

The next day we went to the Mayan ruins bright and early at opening time.  At the gate we ran into a couple who had searched out a highly recommended local guide, and were looking for a few more people to join the group to defray the cost.  We hadn´t ever hired a guide for the other ruins we´ve been to, but decided we could give it a try.  Our guide was great, and led us around the ruins for about three hours.  There are definitely pros and cons to getting a guide though.  Besides the cost (we split his $40 five ways), we were tied to his schedule and direction, and there were several times I would have been interested to spend more time exploring some little nook or wandering off in a different direction altogether.  On the other hand, he pointed out several things I probably never would have noticed on my own.  Best of all, Copán is famous for its carvings, and he was able to decipher and point out what exactly we were seeing, which wasn´t always obvious to us.  A crocodile here, a beheaded enemy there.  There was a large round rock, and he said "This is where the winners of the ball game would be laid down and sacrificed, their blood running down this passageway to be caught in a bowl here."  Grusome, but not something I would have ever known just looking at the rock myself.

Another fun moment was when we first walked in the gate to the park.  About a dozen scarlet macaws were flying around in the trees, and they decided to give us a show, with several swooping down near us right at eye level.  They are gorgeous birds, and their red feathers really caught your attention in the morning sun amongst all the green trees.  Then we looked down and we saw several agouti running around.  If you don´t remember them from your local zoo, they are big rodents, sort of like a hugely overgrown guinea pig or something.  Just running around in the bushes.  Awesome!

The couple we met were a pair of Brits, whom we met up with later for dinner.  If you think David and I are weird for traveling out here for six months, these two are going for two years!  They arrived here from Africa, and were talking about Asia coming up.  So jealous.

Robb: 0 Clown: 1

Our week in San Pedro went by quickly of course.  Our last day we took a hike up to what is called "Indian Nose", due to the fact that if you kind of squint the top of the mountains kind of sort of look like the profile of a person, and the peak is on the nose part.  We took a pickup to through the nearby town of San Juan, and started the hike up through a coffee plantation.  From our first overview we could see that, typical of many towns down here, the town is fairly ordinary and relatively poor, except for a state of the art pristine soccer field.  The people down here love their soccer, I cannot emphasize that point enough.

Anyway, the hike was typically harder than expected, but luckily our guide was the elderly gardener from our school so he didn´t push us too hard.  The view from the top was fantastic, overlooking the entire lake.  From there we hiked down the other side to another village that was having market day, which we got to walk around.  We had some kids approach us just to talk, and happily they didn´t try and pull out my arm hairs this time which was a special treat for me.

From here we got in the back of another pickup which took us down the hill again back to town.  So far I´ve only been in pickups that we hired especially for whatever group I was with, but this time we just piled into the back of a regular service one, which meant that they were going to take every last person that was willing to climb on.  So as we are making our way down this super steep and windy mountain road, in addition to several large bags of produce, we had 17 people and at least one chicken standing in the back holding on to the rails and each other for dear life.  The grandma standing in front of me was only about four feet tall so at least I had a little arm room above her.  (The benefits of being tall here are few, but are nice when they work out.)  The people here do not have the same ideas about personal space and are not shy about cramming up to other people when necessary, and in this case it was certainly necessary.  Luckily our driver was very considerate and took the road down at a slow enough speed that no one was lost along the way.

That night as we were heading to dinner there was a power outage in town.  Fortunately all the restaurants cook with gas, so with few exceptions everyone was operating in candlelight.  It was a memorable farewell to town.

From there we took a bus to Antigua, which was notable only for the fact that our driver kept falling asleep as he drove.  Luckily when he would doze he would just slow down, so other than a few people on bicycles passing us (on the freeway!), we arrived without injury to Antigua.  We jumped around to a couple of hotels, and ran into several groups of people we´d met in other places, but since we are intending to return to Antigua later in the trip we didn´t really do much but eat and sleep and look at ruins of churches.  (There is a ruin of an old church like every three blocks, I kid you not.)  I did get a $2 haircut from a local barber, which is on one hand pretty terrible, but on the other hand looks just fine.  So there ya go.  We also ate dinner one night at a place where the owner was in a Peruvian band and gave a live concert.  They were pretty good and we had a great time.

Antigua is famous for their Santa Semana (Easter Week) celebrations, where they have huge parades that trample over these gorgeous flower "paintings" they make on the streets beforehand.  To go to this you have to make reservations months in advance, and we had no intention of doing so.  But by happy coincidence while we were walking around we stumbled on a mini-parade doing the exact same thing.  I don´t know if it was a prequel, or even just a practice run, but there were hordes of guys in purple robes and floats and bands and the whole shebang.  So we were pretty excited about getting to see that, even if our non-Catholic roots hadn´t prepared us for what any of it meant.

One thing I have to admit to, was that I broke my ten year stretch of abstinence and ate a meal at McDonalds.  But before you judge me, I had several very good reasons!  The first was that David and I started our malaria meds, which are best taken with a fatty meal, and I could think of no more fatty meal than a quarter pounder with cheese and fries.  The second is that this was the most posh McDonalds I have ever seen.  After you order the back of the restaurant opens into several different seating areas, one indoors with a play area, two seperate internet cafés, an outdoor patio garden with a big fountain.  My favorite were these fancy mahogony tables that overlooked the patio with views right out onto the huge volcano that overlooks the city.  Totally ridiculous.  Actually most of the fast food joints in town (and practically every American chain was represented) were decked out similarily.  They take their fast food seriously down here.

Travel Tips

I´ve started to notice that I am getting some hits from other backpackers out on the road, so I thought I would put in a little traveler info that someone might find useful.


Xela:

We stayed at a guesthouse called the White Home (according to the sign) and known as Casa Blanca to the locals.  The woman who runs it does not live on site, so unless you are lucky to catch her there (which was usually in the afternoons), just call the number on the sign.  She only lives a few blocks away.  I´m sure cost varies seasonally and maybe depending on which room you get (we had one of two that open up into the main courtyard) but we paid 500Q for two people for a week.  The bathrooms are shared, and the back shower get the hottest, but even so with the chill in the air I found it best to shower in the afternoons when it was warmer.  The kitchen has a fridge (that you may have to plug in to use) and plenty of pots and pans.  We even had a TV in our room and a bigger one in a common room.  Nothing fancy, but comfortable and easy, and Dona Blanca was delightfully friendly.

For spanish school we went to INEPAS, which was a good school that went out of their way to accomodate our requests for specific exursions in the afternoons.  (which were terrific and cheap.)  Maria, who runs the school, is a force.  She doesn´t speak any english (only spanish and french), but somehow is able to get across the important stuff. David really liked his teacher Gloria.

San Pedro on Lake Atitlan:

This is a very easy place to stay of course.  But our school recommended a great little hotel called Hotel Peneleu, which is up the street from the Santiago dock.  Look for the signs to the Hotel San Francisco and it is just up from there on a side street to the left. We were lucky and got one of the two penthouse rooms, so our room opened up onto a rooftop terrace with a terrific view of the lake.  Best of all for two of us we paid just 50Q a night.  Definitely nothing fancy here, but the shower was super hot and there was a hammock just outside our door (another perk of being on the roof).  The owners were very friendly and live on site.  There was a gas stove and a few pots and pans, but unless you are really stretching a budget there is no need as food is so cheap (and good) in town.

For Spanish school we went to the Cooperativa, which I think may be a bit more expensive than others, but I liked the social projects they support.  For a great teacher ask for Flory. She speaks relatively good english when pressed, and was super friendly and fun to talk to.  I paid $90 for four hours a day.

San Marcos on Lake Atitlan:

If you come here, you have to go to the Japanese restaurant for dinner.  I don´t remember the name, and it is off the beaten track so you will have to ask someone for directions.  We were a little underwhelmed with the food options in town, and this place was just great.  (And cheap!)

The Daily Grind

This week has flown by.  Which is surprising since on one hand it seems like we've done so little, but I guess that is part of the appeal of San Pedro.  Our daily schedule:

7am  Out of bed
While we have a "kitchen" at our hostel, all it really consists of is a gas burner and a couple of well-battered dishes.  From what we have been told hardly anyone living here owns a refrigerator.  Since restaurants serving the backpacker crowd are abundant and, more importantly, cheap, David made a few attempts at simple pasta and that was it.  Neither of us wanted to get up early enough to go to a restaurant for breakfast, so we usually bought some banana bread or a sweet roll from a local woman who roams the streets with a basket of breads every evening to eat the next morning.

8am - 12pm  Class
School here has been great.  Our school was located on a hillside garden, and we each sat in these individual palapas amongst the fruit and flowers that overlooked the lake. In Xela David had not one but two different teachers that he really liked.  My teacher was awesome teaching grammar, but for whatever reason we didn't really click when it came to just talking and practicing the grammar.  This time I am the one who got the great teacher, and boy what a difference did it make.  We didn't actually go over all that much new material (although we did review command forms so now I can tell David what to do which is of course enjoyable).  But we talked and talked about everything and anything.  For example, she could not get enough of the fact that I do not like clowns, which came up when I learned the phrase "creeps me out".  In fact she thought that was the funniest thing ever.  But she was so nice I had to forgive her, even though it was against my better judgement.

We met another couple at school from Hawaii, who are moseying down to Costa Rica and are thinking about moving there for a while (he is a boat captain and thinks he can get work pretty easily there).  This is very dangerous thinking for me to be around, but Costa Rica is still such a distant point in my future I only spent a little bit of time thinking about getting a job at a hospital and moving there.  Now if I run into them again IN Costa Rica, then I´m in trouble.  :)

12pm - 1:30pm  Lunch
Like I said, there are no shortages of restaurants here, and we've been sampling many of them.  It feels a little guilty, because we are eating a lot of American fare, hamburgers and pasta such, rather than the local food like we were doing in Mexico.  But when you can get a plate of beef medalions in red sauce with rice and grilled vegetables for less than $5, it is hard to turn down.  So we haven't.  Yesterday we went to a middle eastern restaurant where we sat on the floor on grass mats and pillows.  There was even a hammock to lounge in while we waited for the food to arrive.  Yeah, we are really "roughing it" here in Guatemala.

1:30pm - 2:30pm  Nap
I've taken a siesta every day we've been here.  Sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes a full hour.  A guy could get used to this.

2:30 - 7pm  Homework
Unfortunately learning a language requires a lot of homework.  The funny thing is, when you want to learn what you are learning, homework isn't a bad thing.  David especially is making huge strides, and we are hoping to get to the point where we can have full converstations in spanish very soon.

7pm - 8:30pm  Dinner
We'd head back to the strip for dinner.  Did we want to go to the place with the upstairs dining room that overlooked the street, or the one with the balcony out over the lake?  Or maybe the little hole in the wall place that was showing a movie and had real fudge brownies with ice-cream for dessert?  This was easily the toughest decision we had to make all day.

8:30-10pm  Lounge
If we watched a movie we might get home later, but we had the penthouse room at our hostel, so right out our front door was a balcony where we could sit and watch the stars and the lights from the other lake towns twinkling away across the lake.  We´d sit here in the afternoons too and birdwatch.

If you feel moved enough by our plight, feel free to contact me for information on where you can make monetary donations to help improve our desperate conditions.