The End of an Adventure

I had to say that my two weeks in Guatemala were some of the most rewarding two weeks in my life. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner (or packed warmer clothes)!

Some of the things I was grateful I packed:
1. Mini notepad to journal and make notes in.
2. Mini calculator for price conversions.
3. I was grateful all I brought was my carry-on backpack. I was able to do laundry (or rather drop of my laundry) for only $5 US.
4. The cord that transferred pictures from my camera to my iPod. I have a 2MB card in my camera but took over 1000 full size pictures so I was able to back them up quite easily onto my iPod.
5. My iPhone and iPod for music and movies for long layovers.
6. I didn't pack it but rather bought it there. I bought I little international phone there for $16 US and was able to call home. You could buy minutes and re-charge your phone whenever. I recommend waiting for triple or quad triple day to buy your minutes. :)

What I didn't need:
1. The skirt and dress I brought.
2. My electronic Spanish calculator.

What I wish I packed:
1. Warmer clothes.
2. Rain jacket.
3. It was hard given the space limitations but I would have liked to have my laptop. Since I had a home base for 2 weeks it would have been nicer then using the school computers.
4. Guidebook (not necessary but would have liked).



Stay tuned for my next adventure in Chile this October!

Volcán Pacaya

On my last day in Guatemala I planned on doing the volcano and actually getting up on time. The tour was booked through the school and cost $40 US. The benefit of booking through the school and going with Rolando was not only was Rolando an awesome tour guide but there were only 6 of us on the whole tour and all of us were from the school and knew each other.

I had heard mixed reviews about whether or not to ride the horse up the volcano as opposed to the 1 1/2 hour hike. But my asthma was already taking a hit from being cold for almost 2 weeks straight and I was pretty sure I suffer from altitude sickness which my sister can account for on drives in Hawaii. So, for 80 quetzales ($10 US) I was getting me a horse!

I met a great girl, Lin, also from New York that was smart like me and opted for the horse!


This was a view about halfway up of a lake area:



Everyone who had a horse also had a handler or whatever you would call them. This little boy was one of them taking a little break on the way up.



The horses took you to this top platform areaish in which you were dropped off to walk across the lava yourself (darnit). Here are a view pics from that top part:



Baby horse in training:




There were a handful of stray dogs at the top that liked to follow you and eat whatever food scraps you would give them but they also liked lounging on the warm lava rocks:


It's kind of hard to tell from this picture but the lava rock here had like a rainbow of colored flecks in it. Very pretty.


Our guide showed us lava flowing through a crack in the trail. You could walk around certain parts of the volcano and be cold and then once you were anywhere near the lava you definitely knew it! You could often see steam vapors coming up through the rocks.



We made it to some flowing lava which you can see in the next couple of pics. It wasn't two minutes before this pic was taking that there were a TON of people standing there looking at the lava on the OTHER side. The lava moves slow but yet fast. Very strange.

The people in the bottom left look soooo small!



More lava:



I was NOT feeling so well at this point. I officially know I suffer from altitude sickness! Thank goodness I was with such great people on the hike. They really took care of me when I was hunched over dry heaving on the lava rocks! However, I booked it up there, saw some really cool lava flow and booked it down. :)

This is me with my new friends Melody and Lin:



Our guide Rolando was ever so nice to roast us some marshmellows!


My first smore! Notice the little cut on my palm. I slipped on the rock and scrapped my other arm up pretty good. The lava rock hurts!

San Antonio Morning Trip

The last Friday I had class the school took us on a field trip to San Antonio (well, I had to pay 80 quetzales ($11 US) so I choose to go). :) The tour was for this traditional Mayan village where we got to learn about their history and culture in an all Spanish presentation. I understood maybe 50% of it. :)

Here is the lady that gave the presentation. Some of the larger blankets take one person a YEAR to make!




I volunteered to be a part of the presentation and ended up getting "married" that day and grinding some coffee beans by hand. One of the marriage traditions I liked was that the future husband has to pay for the entire wedding (which is a 5 day celebration) and one of the traditions I didn't like was that for the honeymoon the bride has to wash ALL of the dishes!





Here are a couple of pictures from the trip:

Santo Domingo Museo

There is this really beautiful hotel and museum called Santo Domingo where my teacher and I went one afternoon.

Here is where they found a burial site:


The rest were ruined in an earthquake:


An underground crypt:


Here is a big piece of the wall that is now in the middle of the church:


It's kind of hard to see but there is a massive rosary on the wall:

Cerro de la Cruz

Cerro de la Cruz is located up the hillside and overlooks all of Antigua. Melody, another girl from the school I had the pleasure to hang out with, and I tried to find the tour place to go up there because apparently it's not to safe but we didn't have much luck. However, I heard some other girls earlier in the week talk about taking a taxi up there so that's what we did! We paid 100 quetzales ($13 US) for round trip. I'm sure we couldn't have bargained down the price but we were tired of bargaining and and for what, $2 US. Not worth it. :)

Not only was the view amazing but the cab driver was so sweet. He asked if we were students and not only did he talk to us extremely slow he also corrected our grammer mistakes. :)

Chi-chi

Well, my trip to Chichicastenango (Chi-Chi for short) came about because I thought the Volcano tour I was going to was supposed to pick me up at 7am but I came to learn it was actually at 6am! Opps, I missed that ride! And to make me feel even worse when I went to get a lovely vanilla latte from Cafe Condessa at about 6:45am a different tourist bus drove past me and asked if I wanted to go up to the Volcano with them!! Duhh!

So, since I missed my bus and turned down another bus I figured there had to be other buses going somewhere right?? Plus, it was 7am, what else did I have to do! So, I asked a couple of different tour buses where they were going and one said Chi-Chi. Now, I talked to a travel agent and they talked about two cities. Chi-chi and Panajachel/Lake Atitlan but they said Chi-chi was just this big market and if I wanted to I could skip it and just do Panajachel. So, I asked the bus driver about Panajachel and he said I could just catch a bus in Chi-chi there no problem. Alright, sounds good to me. I hop on the bus ready for whatever lays ahead!

Alright, I had no idea the drive to Chi-chi was 2 and a 1/2 hours, uggg! The day before I had to get up at 3:30 for my ride to Tikal and this morning I was up a 6am so I was EXHAUSTED! I tried my best to sleep on the bus but I was in my perpetual state of coldness which I experienced 80% of my time in Guatemala so I didn't sleep well! My coldness was due mostly to the fact that I didn't pack correctly (I had one pair of pants because I mistakenly thought it was consistently going to be 75 degrees and didn't factor in the rain and didn't factor in the lack of central heat in my room). :) So, luckily, about half way to Chi-chi we stopped at some roadside restaurants/stores and I was able to buy a jacket for about $20 US. One interesting thing I noticed that the sleeves were a little shorter then the clothes I'm used to. My teacher lent me her jacket one day and it was the same thing. That must have something to do with the fact that at 5'4 I'm a giant in Guatemala!

So, I finally make it into Chi-chi and I ask the driver where I get a bus to Panajachel and he points to this area around the corner with a bunch of buses. I walk over there and find a guy and ask him where I can catch a bus to Panajachel. He says that the next buses don't go out to Panajachel until 2pm and it's 10:30am now! Uggg. So, I buy a ticket for about 40 quetzales ($6 US) and start my tour of Chi-chi.

I was in Chi-Chi on a Sunday which apparently is the biggest day for the market and it was absolutely jam packed with people and stuff.





I started walking through the maze of people when I started to notice all the gringos carrying their backpacks on the front. Since I'm new to the world of backpacking that thought didn't even occur to me and although I don't like to be a follower I switched my backpack to the front with lightening fast reflexes! Nobody is going to steal the stale cheese sandwich in my bag!!

After walking around for 30 minutes I think I saw pretty much all their is to see in Chi-chi and was ready to leave! Too bad my bus didn't leave for another 3 hours!! So, I walked in all directions as far as I felt safe. I took a couple of pictures and then booked it back to the center.





I did manage to hang out in a little store and drink a tasty Grapette and eat my stale cheese sandwich. I'm sure there are restaurants in Chi-chi but I had a heck of a time finding one I could really eat in!

Me gusta Grapette.


I also had problems trying to find a bathroom. I did see a sign on the side of this place that said they had bathrooms for 1 quetzal. Notice the pigs tied up in the yard! I was sooooo not about to PAY to go to the bathroom here!


Here's a lady selling baby chickens. I should have asked how much!


This was kind of cool. They were selling the seeds to these flowers:


I was quite happy to find an internet cafe amongst the ciaos and was able to kill a large amount of time (half of which was used to figure out the Spanish keyboard and screen). There was one restriction in the internet cafe recorded in the picture below.



I'm not going to lie, there wasn't much about Chi-chi I liked but my favorite thing was talking to the little kids that hounded you everywhere you went (especially by the tour buses) trying to sell you stuff. The reason they were my favorite was that I got to practice my god-awful Spanish with them. :) I was able to ask how old they were (avg 5-11), if they had brothers or sisters (avg 2-5) and if they went to school (all did), etc.

This little girl was carrying her little brother on her back who was happy as a clam eating a cracker.



They also had some pretty swanky tuk-tuks:



So, the bus FINALLY leaves Chi-chi and takes about an hour and a half to get into Panajachel. The view of Lake Atitlan on the drive was breathtaking but due to my high incident rate of car sickness I had to focus 99.999% of the time on the road in front of me! We arrived in Panajachel around 3:50pm so I ask the bus driver when the next bus to Antigua was and he said, "No bus tonight." Ummm, "Que?" Then he says, you can catch a bus at 4pm I can take you there if you want. Just a reminder that all this is going on in Spanish. Alright, I agreed to let him take me to the bus for Antigua which cost me 90 quetzales ($12 US). So, all of that work for 10 minutes!!! That sucked! But truth be told I was just relieved there was a bus at all!!

The ride BACK to Antigua was another hour and a half flying through the mountain side at 60 miles an hour. Not unlike a roller coaster ride! The bus in front of us had to pull over to let a woman out to throw-up. Fun! I didn't DARE take my eyes of the road in front!

I did manage to meet two cool girls from New York as we shared pain and horror while riding in the back of the bus to Antigua. I took them to my favorite restaurant, Las Palmas, that night and all the was bad with the day was now good. :)

Tikal

So, a couple of locals didn't recommend going to Tikal (Mayan Ruins) due to the rainy weather and the safety of flying there but I was thinking planes fly through rain all the time, what's the big deal?! Apparently, it was common for people to take little planes up to Tikal a few years back and there were a lot of plane crashes so I understood their concern now! However, as long as I took a jet, I was good to go. I first went to this place called Spaces, which is a little hard to find but they were recommended by the school. The price she gave me was $330 US plus a 7% charge to pay by credit card. This included a shuttle from Antigua to the Guatemala City airport, shuttle from Flores (town near Tikal) to Tikal, tour guide, lunch and return. Well, I didn't end up booking through Space because I went to another travel agent (LAX Travel) and it was a little cheaper ($10).

My shuttle was to pick me up at 4am which meant I had to be up around 3:30am, yikes! The shuttle (or car) arrives right on time and I make it to the airport around 4:45am. Plenty of time for my 7am flight to Flores which is where you fly into for all Tikal ventures. I must admit the line for Taca Airlines did NOT move fast despite there only being a handful of people in line! However, I make it up to the counter and give the guy my info and he types something into the computer and says, "Okay, that will be $268 dollars." Ummm, I tell him I already paid and he says, you did, I don't have a reservation for you. WHAT?!! Luckily the travel agent gave me his number so we were able to call him and after about 45 minutes everything was sorted out. So, it was a bit of a pain at first and not worth the $10 discount but hey, I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time, right???

I arrive into Flores and there's a guy with a sign and my name on it. Piece of cake. He leads me to the shuttle bus where we wait for some other passengers to arrive. It total there were about 11 on the tour. All Americans and everyone was soooo nice. I made the mistake of turning around all the time trying to talk to people about what they had done on their trip so far that I got really car sick. I managed to not throw-up but barely!! I think it was about an hour ride into Tikal which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't felt so sick.

Here is a model of all of Tikal. Only about 12% of it has actually been excavated! A total of about 12,000 Mayan people that once lived in the Tikal area.




Worlds largest caterpillar:


Here is the back of one of the main temples in the central plaza:


You can see me in the bottom, right. These towers are HUGE!


You were able to climb the tower across from the one above and here are the stairs on the side to get to the top. It was only this building and the very last one that had stairs, all the rest you had to climb the actual building to get to the top. :)


View from the top:


Here is a view to the left:


Some of these are sacrificial stones. Apparently, if you were selected to be sacrificed it was a big honor!


Stone carvings:


Gorilla Pod shot:


To the right of the main plaza was the huge village of buildings. Apparently this is where Mayan royalty lived.


Carving into the side of one of the buildings:




We got to see a lot of spider monkeys or rather hear them since they are fast little buggers! I sort of got a pic of one here. :)


Another temple slightly uncovered:


This is a pic of temple 3. You can see it in the background. It basically just looks like a big hill since only the top of this tower is currently excavated:


This is the view from the big temple that over looks all the other ones. You can see the tops of them sticking out of the jungle. Pretty nice view!




It started to pour down rain when I was on the top of the temple and by the time I actually got my rain poncho on it stopped raining! I look like a big dork but I had to post it. :)