El Salvador

After another two night stay in Antigua at our favorite hostel (The Yellow House) with our favorite hostel staff (Julia!), we decided to chicken bus it to El Salvador.  The tourist shuttles are always easier (and more than twice as expensive), but generally go from one capitol to the next, and we wanted to stop before San Salvador.  We found a rough guide online for which busses we wanted to catch, and we crossed our fingers it would work out.  At our first stop, we knew what we were looking for, but then a friendly guide looked at us as he was getting off and said "Are you going to the border?"  We said yes, so he motioned for us to follow him.  We have had really good luck with friendly strangers helping us figure out where to go, so we followed him off the bus, and, as is the custom in bus stations, were immediately beset upon by 15 guys hustling us over to a bus.  We loaded our packs, and barely had time to sit down before the bus took off.  It only took us about five minutes to realize something was wrong from the direction we were heading, and the bus assistant soon confirmed our worst fear.  Yes, we were heading to the border, but instead of El Salvador, we were going to Mexico.  D`oh!

We got off at the next little town and grabbed another chicken bus in the opposite direction.  (I´m afraid our helper was a little embarassed to have "helped" us, but it wasn´t his fault!)  Back in town we were more careful about stating WHICH border we wanted to go to, and quickly found the right bus.  From there we made it to the border, did the customary long walk from one side´s bus stop to the other side´s bus stop, and after just two more busses made it to the pretty mountain town of Juayùa.  Finding street addresses is always difficult.  Even if the streets are marked, which they often aren´t, most people use the age-old method of "It is two blocks down and three blocks over from the yellow and white gas station".  We asked a local guy if he knew the way to the hotel we wanted to go to, and he pointed us down a street.  We cautiously headed in that direction, but I guess he could see our hesitancy because he ran up behind us and proceeded to walk us the rest of the way.  Many travelers opt to skip El Salvador altogether.  While the country has its share of volcanoes and waterfalls and jungle, you can find all of that bigger and better in surrounding countries.  Added to that is that the country is still trying to get tourists to trust it as a safe and interesting destination.  While options for tourists are expanding, the infastructure is still pretty basic.  But what the country does have is an extremely friendly and outgoing population.  Everywhere we went people smiled at us and said hello.  From little kids to old grandmothers, everyone who passed us had a friendly greeting.

We came to Juayùa specifically for the feria gastronomico, a food fair they have every weekend.  Booths were set up all around the main square, and we walked around looking for something weird to try.  We finally settled on frog.  It was marianated in a green sauce, almost like a pesto, and was served with rice, a tortilla with a weird white paste stuff inside, a small salad, and some delicious fried plantain.  I´ve never had frog before, and it tickles me to say it, but it tastes like chicken, only chewier.  For dessert we had a chocolate covered frozen banana.  There was a piragua guy, which is sort of like a snow cone, but then they put all sort of weird thick goop and powder and stuff on it, so the banana just looked more appealing.  Maybe we´ll try a piragua another time.

We also found a little place to get haircuts.  The lady was great, and it only cost $1.25 each!  We found that the hotels were expensive, but just about everything else is really cheap.  Our original plan had been to scoot through the country after this, but since we were enjoying it we decided we could spare another night.  In an unusual decision for us, we decided not on the cute little colonial town, but instead decided to spend a night in San Salvador, the capitol.  Our first hour-long bus went smoothly, and at the bus station we quickly found our next bus and got on.  It was still fairly empty so we figured we´d have a few minutes to wait, but it started to fill up fairly quickly.  Then a man got on and started making some kind of announcement.  This happens often on the busses, and is usually someone trying to sell something or give a sermon or whatever, so I´ve stopped even trying to figure out what they are saying.  But then he got off, and a few people followed him.  At first we wondered if there was going to be another bus that left sooner, but most people stayed on the bus so we weren´t sure.  We waited a few more minutes, and then someone else got on and said something, too quietly for us to make out, but again a few but not all the other people got off.  We decided something was up, so David got off the bus to take a look around, and sure enough across the street he found another bus station.  We unloaded and went across, and were even lucky enough to find a deluxe bus with more comfortable seats and curtains over the windows which was leaving promptly.  After we got on, a very nice lady came over to us to ask what we had paid for our seats, just checking to make sure we hadn´t been overcharged.  (We hadn´t, the two hour bus ride was just $1.25 each.)  These El Salvadoreans are just nice!  I still can´t figure out why so many people stayed on the original bus though.

We arrived at a rather chaotic bus terminal in San Salvador, and were able to quickly jump in a cab.  The neighborhoods in San Salvador are pretty clearly demarcated between the good side of town, the bad side of town, and the stuff in between.  We chose the good part of course, up near the university where the college students and most of the backpackers go.  Unfortunately we hadn´t really thought about it being a Sunday, and to our chagrin most things were closed.  We tried walking around, but with so few people around we just couldn´t be sure of how safe we were, not to mention there just wasn´t much to look at anyways.  We did end up in a mall at one point, which was a little weird.  They even have Cinnabon here!  Sadly it was at American prices, and I wasn´t willing to pay $4 for it.  ;)

Still we found a little local joint to have lunch.  For dinner we caved to convenience and went to Pizza Hut.  (The street was loaded with American fast food joints, there were even two Burger King´s less than a block away from each other.)  The Pizza Hut was fancified though, with waiters and a full menu of pastas and sandwiches and other stuff.  We went for a special take out deal, two pizzas for $9.  When we got back to our place we found one pizza was thin crust and one was thick crust.  Who knows why.  While we were waiting though, there were two young local guys sitting near us, talking in a mixture of spanish and unaccented english.  They had some tattoos and piercings, but were wearing jeans and polo shirts.   We started talking, and they told us they had each grown up in Los Angeles since they were little kids.

"But I got into a little trouble, and so I got sent back here a year ago.  It was really weird having to come back to a country I didn´t even remember.  I wish I could go back to the US, but I guess it will be alright here.  Gotta make the best of it anyways!"

They didn´t elaborate on what kind of trouble they had been in, but coming from LA and knowing the history El Salvador has with gang troubles, I could imagine.  But I was really impressed with their attitudes about it.  Neither tried to complain about how the mean old USA had treated them unfairly.  Whatever they had done, they were taking responsibility for it, and for the consequences they were now facing.  They weren´t thrilled with their new life, but they were making the best of it.  They got their food and as they said goodbye they directed us down the street to where we could find some "ladies".

It´s good enough for me, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...

Our stop in Lanquin was the sublimely located "El Retiro", which is right on a river deep in a lush valley of green rolling hills.  This was our third experience with a jungle lodge, and it didn´t disappoint.  Well, truth be told we didn´t have many bug sightings, but we did get to chase out an adorable black and red snake from our room one night.  Obeying the rule that if anything is especially flashy it is probably poisonous, we treated it with caution, but it was only maybe 18 inches long and couldn´t get any traction on the concrete floor, so it was throwing itself around in a most amusing way trying to get away from us.  As soon as it hit the grass and had something to hold on to though it literally disappeared.

The big draw here is the nearby Semuc Champey, which is billed as the most beautiful spot in Guatemala, or, depending on who you talk to, in all of Central America.  A river comes crashing down a canyon and then plunges underground before coming back to the surface farther downstream.  But a small amount of water from the river and from the surrounding canyon flows along the surface in a stepped series of natural pools.  The river water here was colder than anywhere else we´ve gone yet, but the water in the pools is heated by the sun.  After swimming around at the bottom where the pools form a waterfall to rejoin the river coming out of the ground, we sat around in the pools, where little fish swam all over nibbling at our skin.  That last part was a little creepy.  One little fish might have been kind of cute, but there were dozens around each of us.  We then hiked up a very steep but scenic trail up to the top of the canyon for a view of the pools from above.  On the way down we ran into a family of howler monkeys, including an adorable little baby.  We were glad they weren´t feeling territorial and didn´t throw their poop at us (as howler monkeys are known to do).

We then went to the cave.  Unlike the ATM cave in Belize where we wore fancy helmets with headlamps, here we went in holding candles, which gave the whole experience a very different feel.  One little candle doesn´t illuminate much, but when you get ten, it was surprising how great it looked.  We swam through parts, climbed up a rope through a waterfall, and jumped into some deep pools.  (We had to trust the guide that the pool was deep enough, cause we couldn´t see, and David was the first one to try it.)  We´ve had several experiences where we feel like Indiana Jones coming across some ancient artifact, but this adventure was decidedly straight out of The Goonies.  We didn´t find any pirate treasure, but we still had a great time.  Afterwards we jumped in the river with innertubes and floated down some rapids for a bit.  We even got to stand in the back of a pickup truck for a crowded ride back to the hostel.  Another very fun day.

We are now back in Antigua (again), and for our last hurrah took a trip out to Volcan Pacaya.  It turns out caves and waterfalls and ruins aren´t all Guatemala has to offer.  You can also get up close and personal with hot lava.  Magma.  It is just fun to say, magma.  Say it.  Magma.  Told you so.  The crater was spewing smoke when we arrived, but besides the lava it has a tendancy to spew poisonous gas, so is strictly off limits.  We were underneath the peak, watching a river of lava flowing rapidly down the side before slowing and spreading out across the lava field.  It was unbelievable how close we got.  We knew there had been an accident and some people had been killed a few weeks ago, so we were determined not to get ourselves in trouble.  But the lava was flowing so strongly that we didn´t have to go very deep into the field at all, and were able to do so above the flow where we didn´t have to worry about it falling down on us.

We got within a few feet of one of the flows, which was moving much faster than I´d imagined, a couple of feet a minute.  The heat coming off it was incredible.  The rock in front would crumble away, exposing the red lava which had a consistency of sandy molasses, or molten glass maybe.  Then the outer layer would cool and turn black again, until it pushed foward another few feet and another chunk would crumble down.  We watched a small ledge we stood on initially get completely engulfed by the flow, it was mezmerizing.  Up above we could see where the lava was much hotter, running like water, and every few minutes there would come a loud rumbly belch from the crater overhead.  Just incredible.

On the way down we found a gigantic grub on the trail, bigger than my thumb.  David, surprisingly, wouldn´t touch it though.  "Grubs gross me out." he said.

We are still trying to figure out our route, but I think we will be heading to Juayua in El Salvador for the food festival this weekend.  You never know what to expect with internet access in a new country, but hopefully I´ll have another update soon.

Belize it or not, we swam with a manatee!

Sleep deprived from several nights spent sweating instead of snoozing, we boarded a chicken bus to Belize City.  The bus was packed with folks headed to an "Agricultural Fair", which from the street seemed to be the equivalent of a state fair, so we had to sit with our bags in our laps.  It was hot, but the bus was using the latest in AC technology, Model 4-50, which is four windows down driving at 50mph.  (People love telling that joke down here.)

From the Belize City bus station we got in a cab for a quick ride to the water taxi terminal, and soon were on our way to Caye Caulker.  There are lots of cayes in Belize (pronouced "key"), but Caye Caulker is the favorite of the backpacker set.  The town was surprisingly empty, it turns out May is a quiet season caught between the dryer weather of April and the beginning of summer vacations in June.  We happily splurged on a room with air conditioning, and since it was off-season were able to negotiate the rate from $60 a night down to $35.  This was still a big splurge on our $50 a day budget, but we didn´t regret it for a minute.

When we arrived the island was in the middle of a huge windstorm, which kepts things comfortably cool but stirred up sediment in the water so made for less desirable snorkelling or diving.  So we spent several days napping and walking along the beach and watching the sunrises and sunsets, and didn´t begrudge the wind for a second.  When it finally died down we scheduled a snorkelling tour of the barrier reef (second in size only to the one in Australia I believe).  We got in the boat with a pair of Aussie girls, and took a 25 minute boat ride down the reef.  As soon as we pulled up, a six foot long nurse shark passed under our boat in water that was only four or five feet deep.  As soon as we got in the water, a school of jackfish and a gigantic grouper swam through us.  We went to four different sites, and we saw just about everything we could have hoped for, including a frenzy of feeding nurse sharks, green turtles, a moray eel, sting rays almost as big as me, a school of barracuda, porcupine fish, puffer fish, a parrotfish as big as my torso, and even a manatee (otherwise known as the sea cow).  Our driver saw a boat cleaning their fish over the side, so stopped to let us watch the feeding going on underneath the boat.  A huge swarm of sting ray and even a huge spotted eagle ray were swarming around, and right in the middle was a gigantic Loggerhead Turtle.  I was amazed by the size of the turtle, and just as I was thinking "I could easily fit my entire fist in its mouth" it turned and swam right towards me.  I backpedaled furiously (we were only about ten feet away) and crashed into one of the Aussies behind me, but just as it reached me it decided it wasn´t done with the fish guts and turned around and went back into the frenzy.  I´m willing to bet turtle attacks are relatively rare, but still.

Our day of snorkelling was so successful we decided we didn´t need to go out for a dive, which would have been fun, but I´m pretty sure we just would have seen more of the same.  (The exception being the famed Blue Hole, but we´ll save that for next time.)  Caye Caulker is a great spot that I´d recommend to anyone that is ready to live by the local motto, "Go slow". 

This morning though we took the water taxi back to the mainland and took a shuttle back to Flores in Guatemala.  Our travel was delayed for a half hour when traffic suddenly halted to allow a funeral procession to march over a mile down the road - the highway! - to the cemetary.  It was a full military funeral with lots of people in uniform and even a marching band.  Our driver was extremely frustrated, but it was kind of interesting for us.  Tomorrow morning we are headed to another jungle lodge in what is billed as the "most beautiful spot in Guatemala".  I never trust hype, but I´m sure it will be a nice place to see for a few days.  We are still a little irked that we missed a week of Spanish class thanks to my dental adventure, but I´m not sure we want to spend any more time in Guatemala, as much as we love it here we are itching to get down to El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Hopefully we will find another spot to take some classes along the way, but I´m guessing we will be out of Guatemala by the end of next week.

A visitor and the end of a 90-day visa

Our little adventure down here took a different kind of twist and we had a visit from our friend Erin.  She lives in Albuquerque, which according to my nephew Jackson is pronounced "Albert Cookie".  We spent a couple of days in Antigua shopping and looking at ruins and shopping and eating and then shopping some more.  It was fun for David and I, not just to share a fun place with a friend, but also to have an excuse to live a little and spend a little more money than usual.  We went to the fanciest restaurant in town, the kind with a chef instead of a cook, and had the most amazing meal.  Mine was so fancy I couldn´t even pronounce it.  For a 5-star meal, set inside the most gorgeous ruin of an old monastary, for three people we paid less than $100.  We´d practically pay that for TGI Fridays back at home.  In fact we enjoyed it so much we did it again at a different fancy restaurant a few days later.  I am so spoiled.

We did a day trip up to Tikal to show her some toucans, lizards, crocodiles, howler monkeys and an agouti.  Also there are some ruins there, which she also thought were pretty cool.  Then we did a few days around Lake Atitlàn.  We found a much nicer hotel in San Marcos than we stayed before, the Aaculaax, that along with a great lake view also included spiders, lizards and scorpions for our enjoyment.  In Pana we fed bananas to some spider monkeys.  It turns out they ignore you if you are skimpy and throw them a bit of banana, but if you throw the whole thing in the peel they love it!  Actually saw a squirrel in San Marcos grab a banana out of a tree and kindly stopped in full view of the balcony to let us watch it eat it.  There was also a cross-eyed dog that loved to play.  Hmmm, was Erin´s trip all about animals, or it is just me?

We were also excited that she got to experience an earthquake, which was just a little rumble but lasted a good 15 seconds.  Later that day we saw a volcano erupt in the distance, with a huge plume of smoke rising up into the sky.  We didn't really notice the ash fall, but the hotel staff were complaining about all the extra dusting they were having to do that day.  I'm not sure she enjoyed the large spider she found in her room, but it is always good to go home from the tropics with a good bug story.  We even did some hard bargaining at the local market, and she found one of the items she bought at the airport for almost 200% more than she paid, so I guess we did pretty well.

We didn't get the chance to ride a chicken bus, but we told her all the stories of crazy driving and bad road conditions.  So as we were leaving San Pedro in a shuttle bus, we come to a section of road where there has been a landslide and a huge boulder is blocking the road.  Several guys were already there, and our driver and a few others got out to help, and they muscled it off the road over the other edge.  Nothing like a little necessity to get some road work done!

Now our little vacation within a vacation is over, and it is time to get back to some travelling.  Actually, to my astonishment our 90 day visa expires on Tuesday.  Where does the time go?  So after much consideration, we are heading to Belize tomorrow, taking a night bus back up to Flores (our third visit!) and then will jump on a local bus to and across the border.  We haven't exactly decided what to do in Belize, as we are expecting some pretty hefty sticker shock.  But I'm sure we will enjoy it.

Guatemalan dentistry

Thursday night I started to get a little tooth-ache.  By the time we arrived in Antigua Saturday night, the tooth had stopped hurting but my face was starting to swell up.  I figured that wasn´t a good sign.  Of course Sunday nothing was open, so I took advantage of my nursing background and the prescription-free pharmacies here and started myself on some amoxicillin.

Choosing a dentist in a foreign country is a little nerve-wracking, but as it turns out a lot of Americans actually come to Guatemala specifically for dentistry services, a little dental tourism.  Many of the dentists here have an American level of education, but the prices are about 1/10th of the cost.  But rather than finding the cheapest option, I went with the most-recommended.  The dentists even spoke english, which was a definite plus.  They kept me on the amoxicillin (he didn´t seem remotely surprised that I had already started an antibiotic) just at a higher dosage.  And they had me come back Wednesday to meet with the root canal specialist.

I asked a lot of questions, and the specialist was quite comforting.  But as I lay back in the chair, he said "I think it will be better if we do this without anesthesia."  Say what?!  I was more than a little terrified, but by this point I trusted him.  And he was right, I didn´t feel a thing, and it was over in maybe ten minutes.  Just before he filled it he said "OK, now I am going to fill the canal with Clorox." ::sigh::

The root canal was finished with another visit (still no anesthesia used), and then I was back to see the regular dentist again.  I had the option of getting a crown done, or of just having a permanent filling put in, which would last long enough for me to get back to the States before needing the crown.  Since the crown would mean I'd have to stay here in Antigua another week or two, I opted for the filling.  As much as I like Antigua, I am definitely ready to get moving again.

Three dentist visits, no novocaine, I was in and out in twenty to thirty minutes each time.  Not bad.  When I was paying the final bill ($137 all included), we glanced up at the TV, and they were playing a section from the Matt Harding dancing video that we participated in for the DC clip.  It is really weird to be at the dentist in Guatemala and see yourself on TV.

The angel from Guatemala City

We decided to pull ourselves away from the finca and head back to Antigua to do another week of language school.  We walked our packs down to the main road and waited for a passing bus to stop.  When it did, the handler jumped out and opened the luggage compartment underneath for us to put our bags in, and pointed for us to put them behind a burlap sack.  As I heaved mine over it hit the sack, which began to move and chirp - the sack was full of live chickens!  I jumped and the luggage guy laughed at me for almost squishing the chickens.

We had to change busses only once, and we arrived into Guatemala City about three, so still had plenty of time to find a cab over to a different bus station where we could get a chicken bus out to Antigua.  Guat City has a few ritzy, nice areas, but in general is not thought of as a safe (or interesting) place for travelers.  Just before our bus stopped, a girl sitting across from us leaned over and asked if we knew where we were going.  We started talking, and she told us she lived close by where the Antigua busses went, and if we wanted she could take us.  Since we weren´t sure of where we were or even which bus station to tell a cab driver to take us to, we readily agreed.   She walked us over and we got on a local city bus, which travelers are always warned never to take, and that we never would have been able to figure out which bus to take even had we wanted to.  Her name was Claudia, and she is getting ready to graduate with a masters in architecture.  We rode the bus out quite a ways, with Claudia pointing out various landmarks for us.  When we got off the bus we had to walk through a back alley, and I was thinking, OK, here is where the sweet angel girl turns out to be luring us to our doom.  But no, on the other side of the alley was a huge shopping mall, and on the other side was a big bus stop.  She waited with us and even helped explain to us some of the method to the madness of the chicken busses, how they are named and painted according to their routes.  It won´t suprise anyone in my family to learn she is LDS.

So our Guatemala City angel got us through town and onto the right bus, saving us a ten dollar cab ride and giving us a far more interesting experience.  It is experiences like this that make me love travelling.  People are just awesome the whole world over.  It isn´t easy to approach strangers, especially with a language barrier (though her english was better than my spanish), and we sure appreciated her going out of her way for us.

Spiders, bugs, and the smell of freshly baked bread.

From Flores, we had about five different plans of where we wanted to go next, and kept changing our minds every five minutes.  The only thing I like more than making plans is changing plans.  The day we were going to leave, we arrived at the bus station an hour before the bus to Cobán was supposed to leave, only to find out that the bus line we were looking for was out of business, and the bus that took over the route had just left 15 minutes earlier.  Thank you Lonely Planet.  We weren´t prepared to wait another four hours for the next bus, so what else could we do but immediately hop on a bus going the opposite direction?

The bus dropped is off in a little town of Poptún, and we hopped in a tuk-tuk out to the Finca Ixobel.  The finca is a working farm, but also a guest house.  We had skipped staying here on our way to Flores because we´d heard it was booked solid over Easter week.  Arriving just afterwards, things were very quiet.  In fact our first night we stayed in an eight bed dorm but had the whole room to ourselves.  The next night we moved to our own little bungalow, which was up on stilts and very rustic.  Our cabin had no electricity, so we had to use candles at night, but then we´ve long been in the habit of going to bed not long after the sun goes down and getting up with the sunrise, so that wasn´t a big deal. 

Finca Ixobel was basically a jungle lodge set on a farm instead of the jungle.  But where the jungle so far has surprised us with the lack of creepy-crawlies, the farm gave up the goods from almost the moment we arrived.  Our first treat was a nice big tarantula crawling across the lawn.  As we looked around, we saw dozens of holes in the grass, with tarantulas just barely peeking out at us.  Unlike the wolf spider we saw in Honduras though, these were not aggressive, and we surmised that these were a kind you could probably pick up, although we did not test our theory.  Next we found a giant stick bug that was probably a foot and a half long, probably twice as big as what I´ve seen before.  We found another bug that I can´t even describe, and I am dying that I can´t post the picture I took cause it is totally awesome and freaky.  We also saw three different types of fireflies.  One was gigantic, and instead of flashing would light up and then fly around for five or ten seconds.  The first time I saw it I thought it was someone with a flashlight it was so bright. We saw ant lions and leaf-cutter ants and a huge praying mantis, not to mention several different kinds of lizards, some of them a couple of feet long (but not iguanas).

We also found some frogs, one big one that was covered in these giant disgusting ticks.  Luckily it put us on the alert, because we both found ticks on us as well (albeit a different kind, much smaller).  I love bugs, but ticks are just gross.  We did manage one hike up a huge hill outside the finca, but after we found the ticks we stuck to more well-worn paths.

We met some great people, including a family from Ireland who had rented an RV and were driving from Florida down to Panama and back.  They had two pre-teen girls who weren´t quite sure if they were having fun or not, though they did shyly admit to liking snorkelling in Belize and horseback riding there at the finca.  Very cute.

The finca also had a working bakery and restaurant, so besides eating yummy cinnanon rolls for breakfast we also had fresh bread every night for dinner.  We ended up staying five days, and the food was a big part of that.  A happy belly is not something to mess with.

The perils of public computers

Ok, a little hold on the narrative for a little housecleaning.  After some time where we didn´t have a good internet connection, I am trying to get caught up.  However it seems we have picked up a virus on my camera memory cards, so for the time being I can´t upload any photos.  Argh!  I can still see the pictures via my camera, so I know they are all still there, but I can´t wade through the spanish operating system on the computer to figure out how to get to them.  I´m optimistic I will after we get home, but I don´t really know for sure.  We will start using a new card today, so hopefully more pics will be coming eventually.

Tikal

A lot of people had cautioned us that Flores wasn´t a "real" Guatemalan city, but we take everything people tell us with a grain of salt.  We didn´t actually DO much on Flores except swim in the lake, but we really enjoyed it.  We loved walking along the water in the evenings when everyone came out to enjoy the cool breeze off the lake.  We were also there for the Santa Semana procession.  The procession here isn´t as big as it is in some of the bigger cities, but the street murals made of colored sawdust and flowers and candles were still big and beautiful.

But we weren´t here to swim or to admire religious parades.  We were here to make a big check off our list of Places To See Before We Die.  And that place, of course, is Tikal.

You never know how it is going to go, when you visit a place you´ve been dreaming about going for years.  Will it be what you expected?  Will it live up to the hype?  Hype is the biggest enemy of all, leading you to be disappointed with something amazing just because you were expecting more.  Luckily for us, Tikal met and exceeded what we were hoping for.  (I´m still not sure if we were more excited about seeing the temples or at the wildlife.)

Our hotel, the Jaguar Inn, was located just outside the main gates, and was a good base for an overnight visit.  Most people to day trips to Tikal from Flores, but by staying overnight we got to visit the park in the evening when it is much less crowded.  The wildlife was surprisingly active, and we saw a pair of spider monkeys and a new kind of toucan before we´d even left the grounds of the hotel, playing in the trees right outside of our bungalow.

The ruins themselves were, as expected, big and spectacular.  We climbed sevearal of the temples for great views overlooking the tops of the trees in all directions.  One of the temples is accessed by climbing a "staircase" that is really more of a ladder.  I´m not terribly afraid of heights, but even so it was a pretty humbling experience for those that braved the ascent. (Heck, the descent was worse.)  It was so hot, that even with a bottle of water at my side I must have gotten a little dehydrated and I started to get cramps in my legs from all the climbing.  A nice rest in the shade with a tall drink of water fixed that though.

We wandered around the backs of most temples looking for animals, and did cross several agoutis.  At one point we cleared a corner and up ahead we saw the unmistakable profile of a coatamundi, which is sort of a cross between a racoon and a ferret, and has a ringed tail it sticks straight up in the air as it walks.  We slowly started walking towards it to get a better look, when it turned and ran.  We were surprised we could have scared it at that distance, but then we saw what it was really running from as a trio of tourists came around the corner running at it at full speed hooting and hollering.  I can´t imagine what they were thinking, I mean is chasing an animal into the bushes really that much of a thrill?  But they paid a price, as David and I proceeded to mock them for the rest of the afternoon.  I am sure they would be devastated if they only knew.

The next morning we were back at 6am.  By that point we had seen all of the main temples, but wandered around sort of looking at the more minor structures but really looking for more jungle creatures.  We were rewarded when a group of about two dozen coatamundi´s walked by us.  They are the most adorable little creatures, David was desperate to get one as a pet.  They were rather tame and got surprisingly close to us, obviously hoping we would feed them.  (We resisted the temptation, but it was hard, they were so darn cute! I even got a video of one of them sniffing at the camera, if only I had had a wide angle lens!)

Later on we were treated to the wild screams of the howler monkeys.  Signs warn that if you get too close they will throw their poop at you, but we were spared that behavior.  Still, pretty awesome to be standing in the jungle, a howler monkey screaming over your head, several spider monkeys jumping about the next tree over, and a group of coatis running around practically under your feet sniffing for dropped bits of cookie.  And I haven´t even talked about the birds.  (Three kinds of toucan, parrots, the wild oscillated turkey, and even the Woody Woodpecker woodpecker.)

Yes, Tikal was a success.

North to Tikal

[Note: Sorry I'm so far behind, I will get caught up soon, and will add some photos to this post as soon as I get to a better internet connection.]

We left Utila on the 6am ferry, took a cab to the bus station and hopped on a bus to San Pedro Sula.  Three hours later we were on a colectivo to Puerto Cortez, where we transferred to a chicken bus going to Omoa, our destination for the night.  We stayed at Roli´s Place, which is a nice little hotel run by a Swiss expat with a habit of posting lists of rules on every conceivable surface.  None of the rules were particularly unusual (Don´t light candles, Don´t be loud at night, Don´t pick the fruit on my fruit trees), but the sheer number of them was a little intimidating.

Here is a little experiment.  We visited an old fort.  Sounds kind of boring, huh?  Now try this.  We visited an old fort used for fighting pirates.  Just add pirates and suddenly everything gets more exciting.  My biggest disorientation of the day though came that evening as we walked up to the beach, which faces the Caribbean Sea, and the sun was setting quite nicely out over the watery horizon.  Suddenly my entire frame of reference was off, watching the sun set in the East.  Or, obviously, what I thought was the East.  It is so easy to forget that the Honduran coast is actually to the North, not the east, and I guess the bay we were on was particularly curvy towards the West.  But it totally threw me for a moment, high school did not prepare me for the intricacies of Central American geography.

The next day we chicken bussed it to the Guatemalan border, where my mind was blown and neither the Honduran or the Guatemalan officials asked for a "border fee".  First and last time, I am sure.  Another shuttle and boat taxi later and we were in the little town of Livingston, which was memorable only for its very distinct Caribbean culture.  We only stayed for breakfast, and then were on another boat up the river to the Finca Tatin, a secluded jungle lodge.

The lodge is up a small fork off the main river, sitting back in the jungle with a bunch of individual cabins of varying degrees of fanciness, but all with a rustic charm.  The main hall was open to the elements on all sides, with a thick thatch roof.  The thick wooden beams were strewn with hammocks, which we quickly got acquainted with.  Nothing like a relaxing swing in a hammock listening to the sounds of the jungle.  There was also a large dining hall, where everyone gathered to eat a communal family-style dinner every night.  This was the best part, and we met and talked with many of the other travelers over simple but filling food.  Out front there was always a group swimming off the dock.  The water was just cool enough to be refreshing from the heat of the day, and the mix of fresh with the salt water provided an extra boost to your buoyancy so you could float around with ease.

The first day we took out a kayak and went paddling up the river, and through some of the mangrove thickets along the rivers edge.  We also, for the first time, got sunburned.  This could have sucked, except it gave us the excuse to stay at the lodge a few extra days while we "recovered".

We saw plenty of wildlife, a bunch of kinds of crabs, spiders, some cool grasshoppers.  David ran across a six foot long snake on a pathway, and we saw what we think is called a paya, a rabbit-sized jungle rodent.  (It was cute, more squirrel/rabbit than rat.)  Somewhere along the way David had even learned to identify the call of the toucan, which sounds nothing like a bird and totally like a frog.  I kept teasing him, but early one morning (we were almost always up with the sunrise) we spotted four toucans in the trees across the river from us, clearly making their weird frog call.

Easter Week is called Santa Semana here, and is when just about every local goes on vacation.  This has the effect of pushing a lot of backpackers out of the cities and into the jungle lodges, so everything gets crowded for the week.  The lodge was full while we were there, and though they found room for us we had to change rooms three times in the four nights we were there.  Our first night was the best, a very fancy room with a private deck and fancy glass shower, all up on stilts.  Though, surprisingly, bugs weren´t a problem for most (except a few girls who were bitten by a horsefly which caused a lot of swelling, poor things) all the beds were decked out with mosquito netting which was great for atmosphere.  Our last room was in the dorms, and with eight beds with mosquito netting, the place looked like a malaria ward.

We are now in the town of Flores, which is a gorgeous tiny town on a small island in a lake up in northern Guatemala.  Everything is brightly painted, and the roofs are all a rusty red.  Though it cools down at night, it is pretty hot during the day, which  makes swimming in the lake off a pier a highlight of the day for tourists and locals alike.  Indeed, you have to watch out that you don´t get creamed by a pre-teen flinging himself off the dock and into the water.  For the third time we have run into a guy from Seattle we met in Xela two months ago at our first school.  We joke that he is our oldest friend in Central America.

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.

From the cheering coming from the sports bar, I'm assuming someone just won a gold medal.

It is a quiet week on the blog, but that is because it has been a quiet week in Guatemala.  We stayed two days in Pana, enjoying our hot shower and an abundance of pretty good, cheap food.  We did spend a day at a small reserve where we saw some spider monkeys, although we were eluded by the coatamundi (for now, I will not rest until I lay my eyes on one!!)

We then went to a much smaller town called San Marcos.  The town is gorgeous.  The area down around the lake where all the travelers are has no roads, just little dirt and stone paths that snake through the banana trees to take you to the different guesthouses and restaurants and yoga schools.  This is where all the hippies go to meditate and align their chakrahs, so the food is all organic and highly vegetarian.  We considered taking some courses as we arrived just days before the next full moon cycle was to begin, but in the end we just weren't in the mood to be THAT chilled out. (Though we are still interested in taking some yoga.)

So we took a boat across the lake to another town, San Pedro, where the majority of the backpackers hang out.  At 10,000 strong, the town is twice the size of San Marcos, yet with so many more foreigners it seems even bigger than that.  The food here is decidedly international, though while I had the best burger yet in Central America, David can't seem to get a break with the pasta dishes, which are always a little...odd.  But the food is cheap, with many of the restaurants offering unbeatable atmosphere with views right over the lake.  It is the kind of place we wish we could bring people to meet up for meals.

We were wandering around today and found another spanish school, and before we knew what we were doing we had signed up for another week, so we will be staying here a while.  Our hotel is only $6.25 a night, which gives us plenty of room to eat like kings and still stay on budget.  But then we are eating like kings anyway - there is a local woman who walks around selling bread from a basket, and I am unable to resist her $1 loaves of banana bread.  (Or chocolate-banana bread, or cinnamon rolls that aren't quite like home but as close as I'm gonna get.)  She is aware I'm an easy target and beelines over to me whenever she sees me.

Right now I am having difficulty with the keyboard, which looks like an American keyboard, but it works like a Guatemalan one with all the extra buttons, so I'm having to remember where all the different keys are. I'm actually surprised at how well I'm doing, but still.  Tonight we have the difficult task of choosing a new restaurant to try, then review our spanish lessons to be ready for tomorrow.  Getting a new teacher is always scary, I feel like a kid on the first day of school.  Who knows what to expect?  Will we get the teacher jaded by experience, or the over-eager novice?  Hopefully we will get the baby bear teacher that is juuuuust riiiight.

Earthquake!

We were woken up this morning about 4:30am, not from fireworks, but because our room was moving.  There were a couple of good shakes, but it was over before I had woken up enough even to stand up (and run for the safety of outdoors, down here I´m not trusting a doorjam, and yes, I´ve thought about this scenario).  It was much stronger than any of the quakes we ever felt when we were living in California, but not strong enough to cause any damage, at least none we were aware of.  For a moment we thought maybe the volcano had erupted, but no such luck.

We got up and a little after nine we were packed and waiting for a bus out of Xela.  As we stood there an aftershock hit, not as strong as the first but still enough for us to stumble a bit and cause all the power lines to sway in the air.  All in all, pretty awesome!  Just looked it up online, and it was a 5.4 quake with an epicenter not too far north of where we were. 

We got on our bus with relative ease, they slow as they pass groups of people and scream out where they are going.  We were about 45 minutes early for the direct bus, so we just got on a bus headed for Guatemala City knowing we´d change busses when we got to Los Encuentros.  As we headed out of town, we made fun of the people who are afraid of chicken busses.  Here we were, saving almost 2/3rds of the cost over taking a tourist shuttle.  We´d even seen a guy with two goats at the bus stop, but unfortunately he didn´t get on our bus. 

Just as we hit the edge of town we made a stop, and about 50 people got on board to sell us stuff.  First it was the fruit guys, then the candy and gum girls, then guys with breads and then sandwiches and then tortillas and then drinks and then ice cream and then fruit again and finally a nice newspaper to read while you ate everything you just bought.  In the middle of it a burn victim stood at the front telling us his story, but the other salesman were all yelling over him and we couldn´t hear anything.  It was totally crazy and terrific. 

Then we took off, and I mean took off.  I am quite certain our bus driver had sold his soul to the devil, because were in clear violation of the laws of physics as we took corners at speeds the bus absolutely should have tipped over.  We whipped through this high mountain road, passing other cars (and other chicken busses!) gripping the seat in front of us trying not to fall over.  (We were seated, but at these speeds we were still in danger of falling over.)  We white knuckled it, and were not at all surprised to find that our driver had cut a half hour off a two hour drive.  Think about that for a minute.  Totally crazy.

It took us two more quick busses, but we are now in Panajachel, the main city on the shores of Lake Atitlán.  The important thing is our hotel has a kick-ass hot shower, so we may stay here a day or two before heading off to one of the smaller towns across the lake.

Volcano, check. Earthquake, check.  Gravity-defying chicken bus ride?  Check.  Guatemala is being generous. Let´s just hope Honduras comes through with the whale sharks.

We climbed a volcano, and watched one of six others erupt. In other words, a good day.

It is hard to believe we have now been in Xela for almost three weeks.  And today is, I believe, only day 41 of our trip.  School is really a time-sucker!  Friday was our last day of class, at least in Xela, I´m sure we will take more in other cities as we go along.  We both learned a ton over these two weeks (50 hours of one-on-one instruction!), and now we need a little time to absorb the information before we try and learn any more.  David especially got a crash course in conjugation, but the upshot is he learned past tense as well, so now we can practice with each other, which I think is going to be even more useful than class.

(Those teenage boys are here again tonight, and their wild giggles as they play whatever they are playing tonight makes me pee with internal laughter.)

Saturday we had made tentative plans to go climb a volcano, but Friday morning was terribly overcast, and the weather report predicted more clouds and rain for Saturday, so we cancelled the trip.  We haven´t been paying much attention to weather reports, as the weather has been rather cooperative with us, with only the occasional brief rain shower as we´ve gone along.  Trusting technology turned out to be a mistake, and Saturday morning was absolutely perfect and would have made great hiking weather.  The report for Sunday was identically poor, calling for clouds and rain, so we learned our lesson and booked the tour.

The tour company was supposed to pick us up at 5am, so we set the alarm for 4:30.  I woke up at 4 though, not sure why but sure I had heard something.  A minute later, I heard a loud explosion that echoed through the courtyard and into our room.  It went off again several more times, and then was quiet.  David was up by this time too, and we were having a hard time explaining the noise.  Was it kids playing a prank with fireworks nearby?  Then it started up again, with a bang going off every minute or so.  The other woman who is staying at our place came out of her room, and we were hoping that since she has been living here for so many months maybe she would be able to explain it, but she was just as uneasy as we were.  After a half hour we were pretty sure it wasn´t kids, because they would be moving around to avoid getting caught.  It hadn´t been a wet night, but when we´d been in Campeche, after a heavy rain we had heard a series of loud explosions when an electical box got wet and shorted out, leaving half our neighborhood without electricity for a few hours.  So then I started to worry that there was an electrical problem next door, and we would leave for our tour and come back to a burned out room.

About 4:30 I finally had had enough speculation, so we ventured out into the dark street.  There was a heavy fog (which did not bode well for our hike), but I walked out cautiously hoping to see or hear where the noises were coming from, ready to bolt back to the door if I saw any suspicious characters about.  Of course as soon as I went out it was silent, and I slowly walked up the block waiting to hear it again.  A flash lit up the sky and the noise started up again, but this time I could at least tell it was coming from at least a few blocks away, which made me feel better about my doomsday fire scenario at least.  (There had been a fire a few days earlier in a hotel just off the main square, but the fire department had been able to contain it from spreading to any of the adjoining connected buildings, so I felt good about that anyways.)  I couldn´t make out anything through the fog, it was just a white flash, but from outside we could hear the explosion echoing across the city.  We speculated that if it wasn´t an electrical problem somewhere, maybe it was some kind of weird military thing, which didn´t really make sense nor did it make us feel any better.  The explosions continued, five or six at a time, then silence of a few minutes, then another rally.  Everytime it would get quiet we would hope it had stopped, but inevitably it would start up again.  We continued to get ready, and by five were out on the porch waiting for our ride.  The fog had cleared a bit by now, and as I craned my neck to see down the street without unlocking the gate, suddenly over the buildings I saw what was clearly a firework.  Just a simple little white flash, but definitely a firework.  Our original guess had been right, someone was shooting off bottle rockets!

Turns out Catholics are totally weird in this part of the world.  We knew last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and Friday was a huge celebration with a big firework show over the main square.  But apparently Sunday morning at 4am was time to celebrate or at least be a reminder for the residents of town to get ready for church or something.  I´m probably making light of something terribly important, but after an hour of being totally freaked out I think I´m entitled.  :)

Our tour bus picked up another four people, and we headed out to the foot of Santa Maria, a huge volcano just outside of town.  [Warning, the following information was not googled and is my interpretation of what the tour guide told me in Spanish, so take it with a grain of salt.]  The volcano last erupted in about 1902, destroying the city and actually opening a new vent and starting a new volcano on the (I think) westward slopes, which is called Santiaguito.  While Santa Maria has been dormant since, Santiaguito erupts every hour or so with steam and ash, and is rated one of the world´s ten most dangerous volcanos.  We were climbling Santa Maria, but it was Santiaguito we wanted to see.

The van drove us about twenty minutes outside the city, and dropped us off literally at the end of the road.  It was still dark, with just the barest glow of the coming morning starting to push through the fog, so for the first half hour we walked with flashlights up a steep path, following behind a guy with a donkey.  As soon as we got off the bus our local tour guide showed up to join us, a remarkably attractive and healthy looking dog.  As has happened to David and I several other times along our trip, the dog attached itself to us and started following us the mountainside in the dark.

Hold on a minute, this is important so I´m gonna google.  The city of Xela sits at 7656 feet above sea level, and it has taken me the last two weeks to be able to climb around the hilly city without losing my breath.  The summit of Santa Maria sits at 12375 feet, which means we had another mile up to climb.  The tour was rated as "moderately difficult".  In the states, moderately difficult generally means not that big of a deal, at least for avid hikers like we are.  So we were mentally unprepared for just how hard this hike was going to be.

From the first steps we were climbling probably a foot with each step, so I guess you could think about it like we were climbing uneven stairs for three hours straight.  Look at that photo again, and you can see that Santa Maria is not some mountain with nice Sound-Of-Music gentle slopes.   Fortunately for the five boys that were making the hike, there was one girl along too.  Since she had no male ego to worry about, she had no problem being the slow one of the group, which I have no doubt each and every one of us boys was grateful for.  "Oh, let´s be gentleman and wait for the poor girl."  (GASP, GASP, GASP.)

The fog soon cleared and the sun shone down, and it turned into a beautiful morning marred only by the increasing difficulty of breathing.  We made more and more frequent stops, the dog panting along with us, not being pushy but clearly in favor of any handouts of food when someone opened up something from their bag.  Having learned our lesson in the past on a 20 mile hike to the Cirque of Towers in Colorado, we at least had plenty of water with us, which I´m sure helped a great deal. The cold of the morning soon wore away and our extra shirts and sweatshirts were soon tied around our waists.  Thank goodness we had to keep waiting for the girl to catch up again.

It took three hours, but suddenly the pine forest thinned and disappeared, and another 15 minutes of hard climbing got us to the peak.  There were only a couple of other local guys at the top, and we just stared all around ourselves in awe.  We could see (again, assuming I was correctly understanding my guide) seven other volcanoes, as well as other plain old mountains.  The air was thin and it took a long time for my heart to return to a normal beat, but boy was it worth it.  The clouds were all below us, but we were lucky and they didn´t really obscure the things we wanted to look at.  We made our way over to the (I think) westward side where we could see huge amounts of steam seeping out of the Santiaguito crater and rising lazily into the air.  We sat to eat, quickly putting back on all of our extra layers as the brisk wind on this side made it suddenly very cold again despite the seeming nearness of the sun.

We heard it before we saw anything.  In fact at first I ignored it as background noise, thinking I was hearing an airplane flying overhead.  But then it got louder, and our attention was quickly drawn to the crater below us as the white steam started growing and getting much darker in color.  A huge cloud of steam and ash suddenly burst through a layer of clouds that had started to obscure Santiaguito, spewing rapidly high up into the air.  It was totally awesome.  The cloud rose up and up until finally the wind caught it and blew it towards us.  Fortunately it curved around the mountain to our left, but even that was gorgeous.  At night apparently you can see the glow of the lava, but I can´t imagine making that hike in the dark the whole way.

After the eruption (I love that I just said that) we made our way around to the lee-side of the mountain.  Though we weren´t more than 20 feet away from where we had started, the lack of wind warmed us right up.  The poor dog was panting away, so David cupped his hands together and we gave it some water to drink.  I´m sure this is exactly what it counts on, but any dog that will climb a mile certainly deserves a little food and water for the effort.  We stayed up top about two hours in all, and soon droves of other people began arriving, almost all locals.  When we were ready to go, two hours after arriving, I was still short of breath in the thin atmosphere, and suddenly there are all these old grandmothers around me, having just climbed up in flip-flops.  Many gathered into groups and started having what seemed like church services, singing and praying.  One of the other guys commented to me "I know plenty of people who have a hard time getting up to go to church.  Imagine if you had to climb a volcano every Sunday morning."

After a long rest, we eventually started back down, which, as I had suspected, was practically worse than going up.  Though my heart wasn´t pounding as before, my legs were soon trembling with the effort it took to descend down such a steep and slippery trail.  You Albuquerque peeps know how the La Luz trail has those massive switchbacks that are so annoying because you walk so far to climb so little?  I was desperate for a switchback that was more than five feet in either direction.  Going up or coming down, there were exactly three places where I had the luxury of walking five or six steps of flat.  Everything else was slippery, uneven and, of course, steep.

At least the breathing got easier as we descended.  All in all, I think it was the hardest, most difficult hike I´ve ever made.  While I can´t say it was enjoyable exactly, I can certainly say it was totally, without a doubt, worth it.

The take away is that I did NOT start an international incident.

Classes are going well.  I have no expectations of being fluent by the time we come home, but I´m sure going to know a lot more than I did coming in.  My instructor continues to crack me up, with long side conversations detailing the difficulty he has deciding whether Salma Hayek or Sharon Stone is the sexier star.

Thursday after class Maria, the woman who runs the school took David and I and another student (from Montreal) to another village close to town called Xunil.  We saw another beautiful church, and went to a weaving cooperative where the local woman sold their clothes.  Interestingly the patterns, colors and style of their clothes was quite distinct from the village we had visited on Tuesday, even though they are but a few kilometers apart.  

We also visited San Simón, an effigy of what I think is an evil spirit of vice, but one that the locals take very seriously.  Maria only speaks Spanish, so a lot of what she told us about him went over our heads, but the short version is that he is worshiped in several villages across Guatemala, and each village depicts him in a different way.  Here he was a plastic mannequin with shades and a cane or, as David put it, sort of like Michael Jackson.  He was located in the garage of somebodies house, and is moved to a different home every year so no one family has a monopoly.  People would come in and light candles for him, and there were far more people here than we saw at the church up the road.  Even Maria lit a candle for him as we left.  I wasn´t able to find anything googling him, but definitely need to get some more information on what I was seeing there.  (Also, I wasn´t going to post the photo, which I had to pay about sixty cents to take, but I´ve seen other photos up and around so I don´t think I´m violating any beliefs by doing so.)

Part of the reason I missed a lot of what Maria was trying to tell us about him, was that a very, very drunk man came in while she was talking, and began shouting and weeping at the effigy, yelling in his ear and then cuddling up with his head on its chest while he cried.  This, as you might imagine, was difficult not to enjoy.  He finally went over to light a candle, barely able to stand, and I was anticipating having to save him when he fell into the sea of flame.  Luckily another group of people came in, and he shuffled over to the side where he could crouch with his back to the wall.  (That is him in the photo, holding the can of beer.)

Saturday though, was on of my favorite excursions we´ve yet taken on the trip.  Seven of us met Maria at the school at 6am, and we walked through town to catch a minibus to an outlying village about an hour away.  Oh, and did I mention the village is on a volcano?  Because it is!  On a volcano!  From where we were let off we had to walk up a very steep road through the hillside village.  On the way up the village was just walking up, so we didn´t see many people, but the homes were all on plots of farmland, with cows and chickens running about.  We walked I think like three kilometers, which for David and I isn´t that far, but it was steep going the entire way.  I was worried about the thin air, but I guess my blood has thickened up finally and we both managed better than most of the others.  We reached a small office to pay our entrance fee, and then had to hike another 2 kilometers just as steep up to the ridge of the dormant volcano.  From the ridge we could see across to two other volcanoes in the area, one of which is still active and belches steam and smoke about every 45 minutes.  (Awesome.  We want to go there next weekend.)

But the reason we came was on the interior of the crater, where a lagoon surrounded by lush foliage sits.  The lagoon is considered a very sacred place by the Maya, so visitors are asked to be respectful and, for example, swimming is strictly prohibited.  We hiked down and had some snacks while we recovered.  Then we walked around the entire lake.  It was ridiculously beautiful, with beautiful flowers and orchids and berries all over.  As we walked the clouds started rolling in through the crater, and these huge clouds of mist would envelop us before being blown away again. Maria told us that people believe the water in the lagoon has beneficial health properties, so people will run their hands in the water and then pat the water into their hair, which is supposed to give you energy.  There were a few groups of locals sitting in groups, talking and singing and chanting.  At one point I was looking over at a group of people singing, and I glanced down at my feet just in time to avoid walking through a pile of black ash, were clearly a fire had been burned recently.  I looked up to see Maria, who was walking a ways in front of us, motioning madly at me to avoid the fire pit. Thank goodness I missed it, who knows what sort of riot I would have started had if I´d disturbed an offering the people were singing about.  (David, walking right next to me, didn´t notice it at all, so it wasn´t like I was being unusually aloof, it was just a flat circle of black ash sitting on top of the sand beside the lagoon.)  The offerings of flowers were easier to avoid at least.

To top it all off, we finally found some awesome bugs.  One was this fly/bee like thing, with a yellow striped abdomen.  We found it crawling on the beach, and when we disturbed it it fell back on its haunches to show us its red legs and underbelly.  It was a big sluggish, so it was hard to tell if it was just awkward, or whether it was a defensive posture trying to scare us away.  In any case, it was by far the best bug sighting we´ve had since we arrived.  (Sorry I can´t figure out how to rotate the pic.  But stop being lazy and just turn your head to the right!) Later as we were climbling back up the crater, we found another huge beetle that freaked out the girls (especially when David picked it up) but made us giddy with delight.  We didn´t see any parrots, although we found a pile of fresh green feathers, but David saw a small red finch-like bird, and I saw a pair of large bright blue birds with big crests on their heads.  Gorgeous when the sun hit them as they flew away.  

On the way back down the village was up and going, and just about every person we walked by had a smile and a "Buenas tardes" for us.  Even better were the kids.  In most places we´ve gone, the kids are either a little shy, or aware of us but generally nonchalant and uninterested.  Here the kids would wave and giggle and say hello as we passed.  So adorable.

We are doing great with our budget here, and continue to try and figure out where we want to go next.  I think we are pretty much settled on going to Lake Atitlán next week, and Antigua for more class after that.  Our South American plans have been changing rapidly as well.  For one heady day we decided to cut our trip short by a month (and cut the scuba) in order to fly down and out to Easter Island, but I think we´ve decided that for now it is just too big of a sacrifice.  So we are back to figuring out which route will take us to the Bay Islands in Honduras for dive lessons before we go to Belize and with the least amount of backtracking.