Photos
Finally, after many false promises the photos of my trip are posted. Here are a few. You can view the rest
here. I did not take my digital camera down to Guatemala which I really regret, but after some digital modifications here in Colorado, the photos that I did take didn't come out half bad. Enjoy.
End of the Road
Breathe deep….take in the cold, crisp, pollution-free air….look at the beautiful mountain that towers over the city…damn it’s good to be home.
That’s right, after three and a half months, meeting tons of amazing people and having some wild experiences, learning a ton of Spanish (with tons more to learn) and how to SCUBA dive, I am back in at home and don’t it feel good. The saying goes that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone (or you leave it behind in my case) and that is doubly true for me. I feel rejuvenated here. The air tastes and smells familiar and fresh, the cold is bracing, the snow crunches driely under my shoes, and home looks and smells exactly like I left. I know where I belong. I am a mountain boy to the bone. I like beaches and the sea, but mountains are so much better. I love Colorado
I finished my time in the Bay Islands of Honduras a little prematurely. I was originally planning on staying there a week and going all the way through my advanced certification, but I changed my mind after doing a few more dives. It was really cool to learn how to do it, but it just didn’t have the factors that I need in an activity. I don’t know if I can really explain it very well, but diving just isn’t as cool to me as rock climbing or mountain biking. Like I said I am a mountain boy, water sports just aren’t my thing unless the water is frozen. I’m very glad that I learned how to do it and I’m sure I’ll use it again sometime in my life, but I decided not to do my advanced because my money was really starting to run out fast and I don’t have another $200 to spend there. So I departed early on the last ever ferry off the island (the ferry was going out of business due to the recent hurricane and the downturn in tourism). I went back to Copan and saw the ruins there. They are not as spectacular as the ruins at Tikal, but they are much more elaborate. There are giant stone obelisks that have intricate Mayan carvings on them and it was interesting to try to puzzle out what the hidden meaning of the glyphs could mean.I met a friend there and he loaned me his book that talked about the site, so I sat there for a while and read and tried to puzzle out what happened in this city in antiquity.
After Copan, it was back to Antigua with my friend for a night and morning of safe sleep. My last night was a little anticlimactic because I was pretty tired from two long days of traveling, but we had a really good dinner and the desert there is top-notch. We retired early and I woke up the next day, did some last minute shopping and hopped on my last chicken bus to get to the airport. The airport had a ton of security checks and fees that we had to submit to and the gate felt like a chicken gate because they crammed us all in there shoulder to shoulder for about 20 minutes until we could get on the plane. That’s when my whole world changed. They stuck me in first class again (thank you Uncle Bob) and started me off with a little champagne. It was just a little overwhelming. The flight was great and the soft lights of Atlanta stirred feeling of immense pleasure and a little relief that I was back in the States. I also noticed a marked difference to the layout of American cities as opposed to Guatemalan. From the air, American cities look much more ordered, with the lights making precise patterns that urban planners have laid out. The street lights are all at precisely equal intervals and the giant sky-scrapers all emerge out of a single point. Guatemala from the air is the exact opposite. Things are scattered about randomly. There are sections of order in the chaos, but they are quickly swallowed by random sections of housing or a large building in the middle. I have a special place in my heart for Guatemala, but man it’s good to be home.
There was also a little culture shock when I went into the airport. The first thing I noticed was that everyone was on a cell-phone. Every fifth person was lost in their cell phone to the exclusion of everything else. There are cell phones in Guate, but they are few and far-between. The other thing was just the sheer, staggering size of things in the United States. Just one terminal of Atlanta International would’ve swallowed about 20 times over the largest building I ever entered in Guatemala. I was thinking about what a Guatemalan would think when he entered that terminal for the first time. I was quickly starting to readjust to my new surroundings and it felt very good to be home.
The next flight was rather uneventful except for the descent and landing. The pilots made a great ILS descent through a cloud layer over the Springs that was actually pretty low. That low cloud layer was causing a light snow to drift across my window. Man, it looked cold. I got off the plane and had another moment of culture readjustment. There was another kid who had flown standby on the flight and he sounded like he was going to have some problems getting picked up from the airport. I offered him a ride to the restaurants near our house so his friends didn’t have to go all the way across the city. My first though was that it might not be safe to sit in a restaurant with all your bags, but then I remembered we were in Colorado. You can sit in a restaurant (or anywhere else) without much fear of being robbed. He thanked me and refused, but my cultural readjustment continued. My dad was waiting out in the blowing snow and it was nice to get in the heated car. When I got home, I ate as many refrigerated products that I haven’t had for a while as I could, cheese and milk being the first and foremost. It’s good to be home.
I had an amazing trip and it has changed me in a lot of ways. I now have a much stronger appreciation for the people and circumstances of my life. I am so lucky in so many ways that I take for granted. I have a cohesive and supportive family, I have a great group of friends, I have a education and the ability to obtain more, and I have political and economic freedom to pursue happiness wherever it might take me, There are so many people in this world that don’t have any of these things, let alone all of them. I am so very lucky and I am also ready to work to maintain these things.
Which brings me to the next question…what now? I am still struggling to find my place in the workforce and life in general, but this trip has helped me a lot to realize what I want to do with my life. For the last few years, I have been in a battle with myself between pursuing my love of flying and my love of biology and learning. I have always loved flying. From when I was a little kid I would stare at the airplanes that would fly over my house for the air force football games. But this trip has made me realize that a career as a pilot would not be very satisfying to me. I would love the flying aspect, but I think I would hate everything else. I would hate the fact that I was away from home more often than not, not eating well, sitting for hours on end, and not experiencing the joy that flows from helping people with very personal and important problems. So I am convinced that I don’t want to be an airline pilot, and medical school is looking more and more attractive all the time. I am still a little scared of residency, but the more I think about what it actually entails it’s not too bad. Attitude is everything. So I am going to begin the laborious process of applying to medical school and then find a job that I can save some money with. I will know by next January whether or not I got into medical school and where I will be going. After that, I am hoping to go to use the money I saved to travel back to Guatemala and perfect my Spanish and work somewhere for a period of time before I head to medical school. The best laid plans…
Thank you all for being such great friends and family and for reading my blog. I have gotten a lot better about responding to e-mail this trip, so shoot me an e-mail and I’ll get back to you soon. Hope everyone is doing well. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.
Breathing Underwater
I used to have dreams like this when I was a little kid. It would be after a day of swimming in the pool and I would go home that night and fall asleep and dream that I was swimming around underwater but that I could breathe. I would wake up and think how cool that would be if I could actually do it. Well, now I can.
I am currently in the Bay Islands in Honduras. I traveled down to Honduras after my parents left and stayed in a cool little place called Copan that has a lot of Mayan ruins. I didn't get to see the Mayan ruins because I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before so I came to the city and just slept, but the hostel I was in was really nice, the nicest I've been to in Central America actually. That was good because when I got here the place I am staying is an absolute dump. I am on the island of Utila which is famous for being the cheapest place to learn how to SCUBA dive. I started my lessons yesterday with a morning of book work (this stuff is not rocket-science) and then got to go out and practice skills in the afternoon. We went to a rather nice beach with a sandy bottom and I go to try breathing underwater for the first time. I had some confidence that my SCUBA apparatus would function because I had checked it all out before I went, but it was new to put my head underwater and actually be able to breath. My instructor and I kneeled on the sandy bottom and she started to teach me. She had told me what we were going to be doing, but it took me at least a minute to come to grips with the fact that I was breathing underwater before I was actually able to pay attention to her. We went through some basic skills like taking your breathing apparatus out of your mouth and taking you mask off. It was all pretty simple stuff, but there was a lot of it and it took us an hour to get through. After that, we swam around and looked at the absolutely gorgeous reef that is here. The reef was teeming with life and all sorts of colorful fish. There are some very unusual forms of life around here.
After our dive, we came back to the boat and there were other people there who were going on another dive, so I had about an hour to kill and I decided to go snorkeling. I had an interesting experience where I did a snorkel dive and my first instinct was to keep breathing normally. I had to tell myself that I can't actually breath underwater with only a snorkel. I was also kind of dissapointed with myself because I couldn't hold my breath for very long. I remember when I was a little kid and playing the trombone and swimming, I could hold my breath for a very long time. I could stay down and admire the reefs and fishes and just kinda hang out without too much difficulty. Now that is all gone. Good thing I'm learning how to SCUBA dive.
Other than SCUBA diving, this island is interesting in itself. The locals speak a dialect of incomprehensible English. I listen to a conversation and I can only pick up one or two English words. They also speak Spanish and they moderate their English to make it understandable to foreigners, but when they speak with each other, it is impossible to understand. I haven't liked Honduras as much I liked Guatemala. The people here just don't seem to be as friendly and the Mayan culture is not as prominent here. I actually heard that it is illegal for Mayans to wear their particular style of clothing here. For some reason I seem to instictively trusted Mayans. They just seemed to be happy, unassuming people. They never really had malice in their eyes like I would see with people in the cities and with most of the people here. It bothers me a little. But, I am enjoying my time here. The plan right now is to stay here and get all the way through my advanced certification. That means I get to do some really cool dives. It also will probably give me the confidence to go diving again after I leave it for a while, becaus there is not much diving in Colorado. I am planning on heading back to the States on next Tuesday or Wednesday. I haven't really decided yet, but I will post it on here when I decide. Hope everyone is doing well in the States or whereever you are and I'll see you when I get back.
On the Road Again
After a wonderful week of not having to pay for anything by traveling with my parents, I am on the road again in Central America. This weeks destination are some small islands off the Atlantic coast of Honduras called the Bay Islands which are world renoun for great diving and being the cheapest place to learn. There has been an exodus of people from Xela heading down to the Bay Islands for Christmas. It should be quite a party. I am currently in a little city on the border of Guatemala and Honduras called Copan Ruinas. There are some amazing Mayan ruins here that I am not going to see because I just don´t have the time. I will hopefully see them on my way back for my flight out of Guatemala City.
The week with my parents was pretty cool. They arrived last Thursday and we hung out in Antigua for a day. Then we hopped on a chicken bus to get to Chichicastenango for the market. I have to say that I´m pretty proud of my parents for riding on the chicken bus. It was actually one of the worst chicken bus rides I have been on. Chicken busses aren´t really so bad if you can catch them from where they start and get a good seat. It get a little crowded but it´s not really that uncomfortable. The discomfort comes when you have to catch a chicken bus in the middle of the ride and have the aisle of a seat shared with three other people which was designed for two little school children. You have one butt cheek on the seat and are desperately hanging on as the bus swings around the tight mountain curves at breakneck speed. My parents endured all this without any complaining.
The market was pretty interesting and I bought a few Christmas gifts for everyone. We stayed the night there and left for Xela the next day. I have only been away from Xela for a week and I already miss it a little.The time in Xela was spent walking around and getting gifts for all the people who helped me in Xela and saying goodbye to all the great people that I met there. We only stayed in Xela for a day and then went to Lago de Atitlan. I have described that lake before here and I still think it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been...and I live in Colorado. We stayed at this really incredible hotel that came highly recommended. Our room had double doors that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the lake with perfect views of the volcanoes and the sunsets and sunrises. We actually also met some other people from Colorado Springs there. There are a lot of people from Colorado traveling in Central America right now. I have met at least 9 as of now. I think the lake was one of the highlights for my parents. My dad probably would have stayed there for two or three weeks if mom hadn´t insisted that they go home. After a day of touring around the lake, it was back to Antigua and then they were gone. I spent the next two days in Antigua hanging out with friends from Xela who are now on their way to El Salvador.
I also had a cool little interesting adventure yesterday in Antigua. So I have been craving excercise for the last month or two and I decided to splurge a little and rent a nice to bike around Antigua. I rented the bike for 4 hours and took off from Antigua toward the volcanoe that dominates the skyline there. The rental place had given me a map of where to go and I used this to promptly get lost. I started climbing this huge hill just to push myself a little. It was feeling really good to excercise. The grade was very steep though and I spent a lot of time in the highest gear. Guatemalan vans would drive by and the drivers would lean out the window and give me a thumbs up for encouragement. I eventually made it to the top of the hill where there was a little farming town with a really breathtaking church. I had been riding on roads up to this point and now I wanted to go back down off-road. That was why I rented the expensive bike. So I just turned off on a random dirt road and went into the town a little ways. Right as I was about to be really lost I found two locals looking over the scene of a mudslide. I saddled up to them and asked them what the best way to get back to San Pedro. One of them bent down and started drawing me a map in the sand and describing where I should go. The map was dead on and I managed to find the trail pretty easily and avoid most of the pitfalls. I did get lost one time where I rode into a coffee field and had to ask the farmer how to get back, and I spent a lot of time on the narrow singletrack behind horses because I couldn´t pass them but when I got out in the open, I was having a blast riding down the volcanoe. I eventually made it back without any problems and with the determination that the next time I come back here, I am going to bring my bike.
Hope everyone in the states is doing great and I´ll see you all very soon.
The roles become reversed
So my parents cared for me my whole life while I was young and now the roles have been reversed because they have come down to Guatemala and I have to take care of them. It´s not like I have to feed them or wake them up in the night or anything like that and I do get to mooch meals off them, but I do feel strangely responsible for them.
I have been spending them last couple days in Antigua. Antigua was the seat of power of all of Central America when the Spanish were in charge here. It still retains a lot of its historical feeling and charm...and this attracts tourists. Antigua is pretty much the tourist capital of the country. If you travel to Guatemala for a short time, chances are that you will spend most of your time in Antigua. I came to Antigua from Guatmala city on Tuesday. I left Xela (sadly) on Monday with a few of the friends that I had made there and the original plan was to go to Antigua, but we didn´t leave until late in the afternoon and we didn´t feel to comfortable changing busses in the night with all our stuff. So we went all the way to Guatemala City and I stayed with a friend of a friend who works for the embassy there. It was a good experience but I felt thoroughly gringoized afterwords. We had burgers and fries, watched Monday night football and drank America beer. I love America, but this felt oddly out of place.
The next day, I wandered around Guatemala city just because I could in relative safety. I had a safe place to keep all my stuff and I just took what I needed for the day out so that if I got robbed, it wouldn´t be a big deal. I didn´t feel very unsafe, people would look at me, but I didn´t really attract any unwanted attention and I could pretty much walk everywhere that I needed to go. It was kind of polluted and nasty though, so I was glad to move on to Antigua. I reached Antigua and found a hostle that was fairly cheap. The reason that it was fairly cheap is that it had just been violently robbed two days ago. I was talking with some people who were still staying there and they said that six men with guns broke in and robbed everyone and raped a girl. It was a really horrifying story and just an example of the reason why this Guatemala in general is so cheap. This is not an entirely safe country.
I decided that the hostel was probably still safe because they probably would not come back and the owner had installed a rudimentary security system and would be very distrustful for a very long time. So I went out that night and made a few Antigua friends and then came back to prepare for my volcanoe trek the next day. This was one of the better expereinces I have had down here. The Antigua skyline is dominated by three volcanoes: Aguas, Picaya, and Fiero. Aguas is the absoultely gigantic one that you will see in all the pictures of Guatemala. It is not currently active and sadly boasts radio towers on top. Fiero is difficult to see, but it is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It is constantly spitting up lava and rocks and is way too dangerous to climb. Picaya is the one that most people do from Antigua. It is a pretty active volcanoe, but not so active that you can´t climb it. The hike takes about 7 hours from Antigua (most of that on a bus) and is well worth the cost and the time. The hike is not very hard, but weather was starting to move in when we got to the summit cone. I have described the clouds here before and how fast they move and this volcanoe was no exception. Fast moving clouds rolled over us as we hiked to the top. We got near the summit and the guide of our little expedition led us to a warm steam pocket to get out of the wind. It was kind cool being warm in a cloud. He then led us up a little farther and low and behold...lava. The volcanoe topped out and inside the cone about 10 feet away was glowing hot lava. The wind was howling at out back and it burned your face to keep it turned towards that lava for any amount of time, but it was incredible. The only reason we could get that close was because of the cold wind blowing the heat away from us. We stared in fascination for a little while and then the volcanoe decided to scare us a little. It shot a small rock out of the crater and made us realize that we were completely at its mercy. If that crater had erupted while we were up there, I would not be here to write about it. I think it actually did have a small eruption the next day...incredible. But being ten feet away from hot lava was definetely a memorable experience.
Today my parents arrived. Like a good son, I waited at the airport for them for 3 hours and found them when they came out. We managed to catch a bus to Antigua with a really nice couple from Spain and I got to practice my Castillian accent. We actually ended up staying at the same hotel and now we are here settling in for the night. My dad just came back thinking that he had mistakenly given a little Mayan girl 100Q instead of ten for a bottle of water and tried to argue when she only gave him 2Q for change. I love my parents. Hope everyone is doing well back in the states and hasta la vista.
When it Rains...it Pours
So true.
So for the last two weeks I have had a string of just plain bad luck and stupid decisions that have inconvienced me and cost me quite a lot of money. I have had some bad luck and made some stupid decisions before but they just seem to be coming in droves now. It started with my trip back from Flores and the Tikal trip. Somewhere in the trip I managed to lose the cell phone that I had been renting from the school. I think it just slipped out of my pocket on my last bus ride. I bought a new one about three days ago and used it as an alarm to wake myself up for the trip that I took this weekend to climb the highest point in Central America. We had to meet at for this trip at 4am and I don´t natuarally wake up at that time, so I was relying on my cell phone. Since I had just bought it, I needed to set the time. I didn´t get home on Friday night until about midnight and I set the cell phone to about 12:15. I then set my alarm for 4am and went to bed. I woke up the next morning with sun shining in through my window, cried a loud explicative, and jumped out of bed and grabbed the cell phone. The time read 18:45!! The damn thing was in military time! So I proceeded to run out the door to the company that I was doing the climb with, and they said that I could probably still catch the group if I managed to catch the next bus to San Marcos. I managed to catch the bus by taking a cab and found another group that was going the same way. I actually had a lot of luck with this and managed to barely make the connections and find my group before they started up the mountain. I was just starting to feel like my luck was changing when I got off the bus and discovered that my brand new cell phone was gone!!! I think it slipped out of my pocket again....I hate my life. So I am going to burn these damn pants and go buy another cell phone tommorrow.
I did manage to make the hike though and it was really good. We climbed to a campsite right below the summit and camped for the night. It was a bear to haul all the weight of food and water up there, but the sunset was worth it. That was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. We had made camp and hiked up to a smaller summit to witness the sunset. When we got up, there was a layer of clouds covering the valley below and the volcanoes were poking through. The sun was setting directly over the layer of clouds and there was a little bit of haze above the cloud layer that we were just barely above. I will never forget watching the last small line of sun drop behind that haze layer and into the clouds. It was a very profound moment for me.
That night was a good dinner and lots of standing around the campfire. The sleep wasn´t so good because we had seven people crammed in each tent and it just wasn´t very comfortable. But we got up at 4am (I actually did get up at four this time) and hiked to the actual summit to watch the sunrise. It wasn´t nearly as spectacular as the sunset the night before, but it was still pretty cool to watch the sun come up behind the other tall volcanoes in Guatemala. Overall it was a very good experience and I´m glad I did it. I have now done two of the four volcanoes that I wanted to do when I came to Guatemala. I am going to do the third (and very active) volcanoe when I go to Antigua this week and there is one more around Lago de Atitlan that I wanted to do, but don´t know if I will get to before I leave.
Hope everyone´s luck is better than mine and I´ll talk to you all later.
Back in Xela
So I have made it back. The journey was a grueling one. I went from Dangriga to the capital of Belize and then to the border and back to Flores. From Flores, it was fifteen hours of bus riding to get back to Xela. That sucked a lot, and it gives a new meaning to the word...road rash. Anyway, now I am back in Xela and Spanish school. I have one more week to try to finish up the majority of the grammar and then my parents are going to come visit. I am going to spend a week with them and then it´s all up in the air. I think the first thing I am going to do is go down to the Bay Islands in Honduras and try to get all my scuba certifications. It costs about $400 and you can get all the way through your masters certification in a week. Then I think I am going to come back to the States. I am little tired of traveling and the major reason is because I can´t excercise here. I am used to excercising every day or at least every other day in the States and here it is difficult to find things to do and to find the time to do them. I haven´t had a regular excercise routine for the last three months and I can feel that my body is starting to complain. Also, if I return in December I can see friends that might come home for Christmas and have more time to find a job. So that is the plan as of right now, but as I know so well, plans have a way of changing pretty quickly. Hope everyone is doing well and the next post is going to be pictures.
Winding Down
It's been an amazing trip so far. I've seen beatiful waterfalls, towering Mayan pyramids, rivers, lakes, mountains, and beaches. I've partied with some locals and travelers and had some very interesting conversations about life with my traveling companions. Overall, I am very satisfied.
I am currently in Dangriga, Belize for the Garifuna Celebration Day. The Garifuna are a small percentage of the population in Belize and they are descended from African slaves that were brough over here by England when they settled here. They have not lost a shred of their African heritage. The main celebration is tonight, but last night was pretty fun too. There was lots of dancing. The people stand around a drum circle and sing in Garifuna (which is a mixture of English/French/Creole) and dance a really mezmerizing dance that is mostly really fast hip movements. It is absolutely amazing to watch and really hard to do. They tried to teach me a litle, but my hips just aren't designed to move like that. The similarity between this and African music were incredible. I felt like I had stepped into Ghana for a moment.
There is also a tropical storm that is sitting off our coast right now. I can actually look out my window and see the tail end of it as it moves off out to the East (luckily). It was pretty rainy last night, but nothing severe. It looks like the Yucatan is going to get pounded again. The weather today is much better, which is kind of a shame because I have to leave today.
The last time I wrote on here, I was in a little town called Flores. Flores is an island with a quaint little city built on it. It is the jumping off point for Tikal. The ruins at Tikal are some of the best preserved and most specatacular Mayan ruins in the world. After spending a day in Flores hiking, kayaking and just kind of relaxing, we bussed it out to Tikal to spend the night. We got there and decided to go watch a sunset from one of the pyramids. Entering these ruins is spellbinding. It's amazing to think what this city of 150,000 inhabitants looked like before the Mayan civilization collapsed. Most of the pyramids were buried under jungle dirt and trees and had to be excavated, but you can still see some sides of the pyramids that are still covered. That combined with the lush jungle of the site gives you the impression that you are just discovering this city for the first time. We hiked through the site briefly to the sunset pyrmaid and climbed on up. The steps are huge and the climb is a little intimidating. It was well worth it though. The sunset was incredible with the other pyramids rising out of the jungle being highlighted by the setting sun. We spent that night in hammocks at the budget hotel. I've never actually had to spend the night in a hammock, but it was actually surprisingly comfortable. The main problem was the fact that I had left my sleeping bag in Flores so that I wouldn't have to cart all my stuff around, and it actually gets pretty cold in the jungle at about 2:30 am. So I woke up then and walked around until 5 when our sunrise tour was leaving. This was the reason we spent the night in Tikal, so that we could see the sunrise from the top of one of the pyramids. We had found a tour guide the previous day and he led us to the top of a pyramid. At the top, we sat and listened to the sounds of the jungle and ate cookies and tea. The sun rose, but it was a little cloudy so there wasn't much of a sunrise, but it was cool to see the other pyramids rising out of the mist. The other cool thing about the sunrise tour is the wildlife. Around the same time every morning, howler monkeys wake up and establish their territory. They let out this loud roar that sounds like something out of a horror movie. If I hadn´t known that the sound was just monkeys I would have been running for the nearest toilet. They wake up and roar at each other to tell other monkeys to stay away and to wake up the tourists. After watching the sunrise on the pyramid, we followed our guide around the site and he taught us all kinds of history. The most amazing part for me was imagining what this city must´ve looked like when it was at the peak. It must have been absolutely stunning. We climbed lots of pyramids, saw the field where they used to play a sport where the loser got sacrificed to the gods (the Mayans were big into sacrifices...actually they still are, jut not human ones), and learned how to make all-spice. It was a very interesting trip. I took lots of pictures and I will be posting them soon.
After our day into Tikal, we traveled to this little town that is kinda between big destinations on the "Gringo Trail" called Finca Ixobel. This place was amazing. It´s a working farm that is also kind of a relaxtion resort. They grow all their own food, have a horse stable and lots of land to ride on, an animal terrerium with monkeys and some beautiful tropical birds and a swimming pond with a little waterslide and diving platform. The biggest draw about this place is the food though. Every night they have a buffet style dinner and for $5, you can get more amazing food than you can possibly eat. We decided to stay there for two nights because the girls in our group wanted to go horseback rising and I wanted to eat the food some more. So we hung out at Finca Ixobel and I studied a little Spanish, played some volleyball and soccer with the workers, went swimming in the pond and ate lots of food. I have to quickly mention a very fun activity that we did at the swimming pond. There was a small retaining wall that was submerged about 2 feet and was covered with very slippery moss. The locals had invented a chicken-like game where you have to stand on the wall and try to knock the other guy off who is facing you. We must´ve played this for a good hour and a half and it was extremely fun. I didn´t manage to win very often, but I knocked a few people off.
After our second night at Finca Ixobel, it was off to Rio Dulce. This town is at the mouth of the river that runs from Guatemala´s biggest lake. There´s not much to do there except stay for really cheap. There is a really cool feature that is about an hour away in the back of a pickup truck. There is a really amazing waterfall that is fed by a natural hot spring. The spring creates a small river where the warm water flows down and finally over a cliff into a river. The waterfall is perfect shower temperature and you can climb around on it because the water is too warm to allow anything to grow on the rocks and they are very grippy. Unfortunatley, we didn´t have much time to explore the waterfall because we traveled there in the afternoon and it was difficult to return while it was still light, and you don´t want to be traveling in Guatemala after dark. So we swam around the waterfall a little and then returned to Rio Dulce. The next day, we took a day trip down the river to a place called Livingston on the Carribean coast. The river trip was interesting. We got to see a castle that had been built by the Spaniards to protect the lake, a island full of waterfoul and some small natural hot springs that flowed into the river that would occasionally emit waves of scalding hot water. Livingston was not very entertaining. There are really only two things to do there and those are eat and hike to some waterfalls. We got there in the afternoon again, so we couldn´t hike to the waterfalls, but we did manage to eat some of the local food. The local specialty is a curry stew with all kinds of seafood. You get a gigantic bowl that has a fish head poking out of it, and you have to dig through and extract the seafood. I´m actually starting to like seafood, it just takes a lot of work to eat it. The stew was delicious though. We returned to Rio Dulce that night and kind of a special dinner, because the next day we were going to break up our group. I wanted to go to Belize and they were going to more Mayan ruins in Honduras. So we had a special dinner consisting of bread and terrible cheeze, but with interesting conversation and good desert.
The next day, I got up early to go to Belize. I immediately caught a bus that carted me (eventually) to Puerto Barrios and from there I caught a ferry to Punta Gorda in Belize. I was very surprised when I arrived in Belize. Belize is originally a British colony and everybody speaks English. I started talking to the customs official in Spanish and she asked me to speak in English. Apparently, she had needed to study Spanish in Antigua for her job and she still had a few problems with her Spanish. The infrastructure in Belize is a step up from Guatemala. The busses are not jam packed with people, all the roads that I saw were paved, you can drink the tap water and actually throw your toilet paper away in the toilet (In Guatemala, you have to put toilet paper in a trash can because it will clog the small pipes there). Unfortunetly, you pay a price for more infrastructure. Prices in Belize were about triple what they are in Guatemala.
I caught a bus from Punta Gorda to this small town on the coast called Placencia. It used to be an island until a hurricane came along and pushed a sandbar up that connected it to the mainland. They built a road to it, and now it is a bustling tourist trap. It´s actually easier to get it it by water taxi and I arrived by boat at about three in the afternoon. I walked around trying to find a hotel for about a half an hour because there are almost no signs there. I finally found a relatively cheap one for $15USD that had it´s own bathroom and shower...what luxury!! I immediately threw my pack down and went to the beach. The beach in Placencia was absolutely beautiful. It was a long strech of white sand with clear, warm water and lots of little cabins. If I ever want a beach vacation again, I am going to come to Belize. I swam for a little while and then walked along the beach. I found a bar with a bunch of people and sat down to have a happy hour pina colada. It was excelent. I got to chatting with a couple at the bar and ended up having dinner with them. I actually ended up hanging out the whole night with them because we went back and sang karaoke at the beach bar until late in the night.
I woke up the next day and wanted to do a little snorkeling, but there was a future tropical storm Gamma building up off the coast of Belize. None of the guiding companies wanted to go out, so I decided to head up the coast to Dangriga, so I hopped back into the water taxi and here I am. I am getting ready to head back to Xela and I´m not loking forward to it because it´s going to be two days of traveling. Not fun. Hope everyone is doing well and I´ll talk to you later.
