Sorry I haven't written anything in a while. I'm going to finish everything through returning to Boulder and then probably give it a rest for a little while.

The Sailing Trip Part One

We spent a couple of hours eating in Rio Dulce, and then wasting time by playing cards. We had no idea at that point, that for the next three days we would be doing a lot of that. We met the other people that we going to be on the boat, two young women from the US living in Guatemala for a year and doing volunteer work in Panajachel, and an American family down from Wisconsin for spring break. The dad was a judge, the mom a nurse type person, and they were traveling with their son, Elliot, and his friend Elek, both in high school.

At first nobody was quite sure which sailboat was actually the one we were going to be on, and when we did find out we were all very incredulous that twelve people could fit of it. (Luckily for us the boat wasn't as full as that, which is the maximum, but it was hard to imagine more people.) We were shown our "bedrooms" first, which happened to be supposedly double beds, which I personally can't imagine sharing (I got to sleep by myself since Rissa slept with mom.) There was about three feet of space between the ceiling and the mattress, and the beds were about five feet wide and seven feet long. (Those are COMPLETE estimates so they might not be even close, but I don't think they're that far off.)

It meant that, besides sleeping, nobody spent anytime time in their "rooms". The top of the boat was fairly roomy though, and everybody had a place to read or lay and tan or play cards or whatever they were doing to occupy themselves during the long periods of sailing from one place to another. The first day we only sailed for about an hour before we got to an island that had a resort/farm (there is no direct transaltion into English for these sites) called Finca Paraiso, where we anchored for the night. The sun was just setting and there were some absolutely gorgeous colors in the sky. While Elias finished preparing dinner, Elliot and Elek swam, and everybody else took pictures.

The first night for dinner we were all very surprised at how well Elias could cook, especially given the fact that the kitchen was miniature and he didn't have an abundance of supplies, because they wouldn't fit anywhere. It was a large pile of chicken and rice and veggies and it was delicious, although it was probably more food than most of us normally eat. The weird part was that we ate every bit every meal, even though most of the time our "exercise" consisted of sitting and reading on a sailboat...During the meal we all talked some and got to know each other a little better, and then went to bed early. It's like camping...when it's dark you fell tired and you go to bed...when it's light you get up even if it's about six o'clock in the morning.

The next morning we all woke up early, to a beautiful morning. Elias made a typical breakfast (scrambled eggs, refried beans and plantains) missus my favorite part the tortillas, and again like camping I ate it all...except the beans, even though usually I can't bring myself to eat anything besides the eggs. Then Raul told us that he was going to fary us onto the shore, and then we would walk for a mile and a half or so to a place where there was hot springs. We all put on swimsuits and sunscreen and set out. We walked through farms and passed by many indigenous people, all of whom ignored us.

When we reached the forest, a man came out and when we told him where we were going he said he would be our guide. (We had paid back at the beach, and we think that the fee was just the ability to walk through the farm to the national park on the other side.) Either way, the man led us down a trail, where we finally emerged to see a gorgeous waterfall tumbling into a pool in the middle of a river. Everything was green, somtimes reaching all the way down to the water's edge, and you could see steam rising from the falls themselves, and they were the hot water from hot springs above. The pool itself wasn't too cold, but going above the falls into the river was pretty chilly. Everybody stood under the hot water, relishing in the fact that it was really hot, and you didn't have to worry about how long you took a shower and waisted the natives water.

We spent about an hour there, exploring where the hot water bubbled out of the stream about twenty yards above the falls, and trying to keep moving so that the fish in the pools didn't come and start eating you're dead skin. When it's little fish it's ok, but these were a good four inches long, and the bits were hard, and every couple of seconds if someone wasn't moving you were hear them jump in surprise and then swim as fast as they could to the other side of the pool, trying to escape the fish. Unfortunately, the pool wasn't big enough for everbody to escape. Elliot, Elek, Larissa and I found some rocks to jump into, although they were probably only about five feet above the water or so. The boys tooks pictures of each other doing flips into the water, and we had a lot of fun until another large group came to the pool. At that point we all decided that we were done, and headed out so as to avoid the large group.

By the time we got back to the boat, we were all really hot, because being at sea level in Guatemala in the middle of March is not a good plan unless you can be in water the entire time. Shade doens't usually cut it usually. Elliot, Elek, Rissa and I all swam back to the boat, thinking we would have some time to swim. El Lago Ixobel felt like heaven every time I touched the water, but all too soon Raul and Elias said we had to go because we had a schedule to follow. We started sailing back towards our original destination, where we were going to visit an old Spanish fort that used to guard the entrance into the lake from pirates.

We took a short tour, where I was my usualy clumsy self and managed to fall down a whole flight of stairs because they were slippery and old and I had flip flops on and wasn't being careful. Everybody said they heard the thunk, and I had a good mark on my leg for about a week and my elbow was stiff. the story is actually more impressive than the side effects, because about an hour later I didn't even remembered that I had fallen. The fort was interesting because it's been rebuilt a number of times, so you can still see really well without a lot of resoration what it must have been like. The doorways and stairways were all really skinny and short and narrow, and the guide said that it was to confuse enemies, should they ever break into the fort. It worked really well, because without knowing it I kept walking in circles. It was even that big a place...

We had lunch while we were sailing, consisting of some kind of soup with fish in it. It was good, although a hot soup in the hot weather wasn't was I would necessarily have asked for. From the fort, we sailed across El Golfete to a place where we spent the night. The whole entire lake was gorgeous, and there were a million possibities for places to anchor for the night, but we ended up in front of a house/restaurant that wasn't in the best condition, with screaming children, barking dogs and bugs all night. Normally that kinda of ting doesn't really bug me, because I think well it's just part of the experience, but I didn't understand why we couldn't move about twenty yards down the river where it would have been peaceful and quite and beautiful..

Getting to Dio Dulce

Because we were wrapping up out time in Guatemala, we left from Hotel Asjemenou, on the Arch Street in Antigua instead of Santa Rosa. We left most of our luggage there, in a place that they assured us was safe. We had to leave Antigua about five a.m, and nobody was particularly happy about it. We were supposed to be picked up at our hotel, and we started waiting outside about ten minutes before five. By 5:15, nobody had come, and the hotel manager who was standing outside with us, said that you need at least an hour to get to the capital. (We were catching a bus at six that would then get us to Rio Dulce just in time to get on out sailboat, so timing was crucial.) AT about 5:20 the guy finally showed up, right before we were finally going to give up and call a taxi. He drove like a maniac (yes, even more than is normal in Guatemala) to try and get us to the bus station in Guatemala City on time.

We were unlucky though, and hit morning rush hour traffic. We told him that it was really important for us to get to the bus station on time, because otherwise our plan for the next two weeks was completely messed up. He got on the cell phone and started talking to the driver and everything, and it sounded like he won us a couple minutes. We showed up at the bus station at about 6:03, thinking that, especially since this was Guatemala there was no way the bus would be gone already. We all got out the the driver went to go find the bus that we were supposed to be taking. However he came back a bout a minute later, through our bags in his car again, saying that the bus had left just a couple minutes earlier.

We think that partially because he knew it was his fault, he started chasing after the bus. We caught up with it a couple minutes from the station, and drove alongside it honking and generally being obnoxious until the bus driver finally got the message and pulled over. So, we got on the bus in Zone One in Guatemala city. The other Americans on the bus later said that they were worried about us, because they hadn't seen the chase, just the fact that there were three Gringa girls getting on the bus at six o'clock in the morning in Zone One of Guatemala City. the six hour bus ride after that, was pretty uneventful, but none of us could really sleep so we were all a little tired and grouchy by the time we got to Rio Dulce. However, we were there and that was all the mattered to us at that moment.

Around Antigua

In total Nancy and Allison ended up staying in Guatemala for about three weeks, and the entire time we had soo much fun! Nancy went to the Spanish school we recommended for a week and a half, and as far and I know really enjoyed it. Allison went for a week also. But most of what was fun about it was that there was another American family staying at Santa Rosa with 13-year-old boy, Riley, a 12-year-old boy, Brady, an 8-year-old girl, Grace, and a 2-year-old baby girl they adopted from Guatemala last year. They were also home schooled most of the time, and were down for a month from Tennesse. One we got to know them we spent a lot of time walking around Antigua and getting delicious ice cream and playing in the sprinklers and things. It was so hot during the middle of the day, there was a very limited number of things you could do happily, without feeling like you were melting, but it was a lot of fun.

Ben and Nancy and Allison all left, and shortly after so did the Tennesse folks. Rissa and I had fun playing with Jessica, the care taker's daughter, and another little girl that lived in the apartments, named Sophie. They had a lot of fun playing with our digital cameras, and I enjoyed taking a break from schoolwork to play with them. Then we finally decided that we would be home by April so that mom could be there when Ben started his job in Denver. That meant that we had about two weeks to do everything we wanted to do before leaving the country, not for good, but relatively permanentely. We decided to do a sailing trip down the Rio Dulce, through Lago Ixobel and down to Livingston.

Second Lake Atitlan Visit

We decided a little bit spontaneously that we wanted to go up to Lake Atitlan over the weekend, and so we could only stay Friday night because they were completely booked every other night. Larissa and I insisted that it was still worth it though, so we all piled into a van Friday afternoon to drive up there. We had a nice driver who didn't really drive like a Guatemalan, which was a good thing. It meant that nobody felt sick. We have a theory now that the drivers who have crosses hanging from their mirrors are a lot more careful and experience than other drivers. Our sample size is really small, but so far it has held true.

We got to the hotel in time to rest for about an hour and then have dinner. It was already too cold and windy at this point to swim or anything, but we explored the whole area with Allison, and then sat and watched the sunset, which was absolutely gorgeous! Dinner was good as always, and we were slightly surprised when the dessert was platanos. None of us are very fond of them, and were not exactly enthusiastic to try whatever it was. As it turned out though, it tasted a lot like apple pie, and if you ignored the overwhelming smell of bananas and the looks of the thing, it wasn't too bad. Of course you also had to imagine you were eating apple pie and not something else, so Larissa, and Allison and I didn't end up finishing everything...

We woke up Saturday morning, to find that we were incredibly lucky. All the times mom has been there before it's been really really windy. That's not saying a whole lot since it's not like we go every weekend, but it definitely isn't everyday that the lake is perfectly calm and smooth. We swam and went kayaking for most of the morning, goofing off and jumping of the decks down into the water. I really wish we could have stayed longer, but oh well. It was still a lot of fun.

And the best part about it was that I was completely healthy the whole time. In the afternoon we had to ride the boat back to Pana to have lunch and shop around for a little while before our bus came. We ate at our favorite restaurant there, which as ever had some of the best food I've ever tasted. Everybody's was absolutely delicious, and we were very content while we walked around looking at the shops. There was a period of about an hour where all of our stomachs were a little dicey, we think from lake water, but it ended up being ok.

The biggest adventure of the whole vacation was the ride back. We arrived at the travel agency the exact time they told us to, which was only about ten minutes before we were to leave. Half an hour later, a man came out and told us that it would be about twenty more minutes. As it turned out, the van showed up about ten minutes later. It was a really little one, because it was only for the five of us and one other man. Only the windows in the front seat opened, so Nancy and Rissa freaked a little bit to be up there. Since I don't get motion sickness ever it was no big deal for me. We set out and stopped at a gas station about five minutes out. While the driver and his assistant were out of the car, an indigenous woman who had been sitting with them, the wife or girlfriend of either the driver or the assistant took the keys and left.

None of us were really paying attention, so we didn't notice what had happened for a minute. The other passenger spoke Spanish, and told us that apparently she had a fight with whoever she was with, and as revenge stole the keys and left. Nobody could find her, and we were assuming at this point that we were going to spend the night in Pana. As it turned out though, they found another bus within about five minutes. We don't know how. This bus was literally a mini-school bus, not the normal van, and so all six people on the shuttle got their own row. We were all fine with the turn of events at first, until we realized that this driver was definitely Guatemalan and didn't have a cross on his van.

Allison and I lasted in the back by watching for bumps and standing up every time they came. If we missed one we were literally shot about two feet off our seats, because the driver slowed down for the front wheels, and immediately sped up again as soon as they were clear. I didn't mind the drive, but everybody else got very car sick. Luckily there was enough fresh air that they just moaned and that was the extent of it. As we neared Antigua, the driver asked us where our hotel was, and we gave him directions. He stopped at a travel agency in Antigua first, and said just a minute. He never came back, but another man came out and told us that the shuttle ended here, and unless we wanted to pay the driver a taxi fee to take us to our hotel we had to walk. None of us can efficiently argue in Spanish yet, so we walked home. A very long day.

Monterrico

After we got back from Coban, we spent Friday relaxing in Antigua, and Nancy and Allison decided to stay an extra week and take Spanish lessons. Before the lessons started, we decided to go to the volcanic sand beach, Monterrico. It's only about two hours away from Antigua, so we organized a tour that gave us about four and a half or five hours at the beach. We had no idea what to expect, and so we assumed that this would be not to long and not to short.

When we got there, it was boiling hot, and nobody had expected quite that extreme temperature change. (When we left Santa Rosa in the morning we were cold in our swim suits and shorts.) We walked down to the beach, and the sand was already really really hot. None of us could take off our shoes because it hurt to much, but it didn't feel a whole lot better to have pieces of sand rubbing your skin raw because it got stuck in the shoes. Everybody was wishing that we had signed up for a shorter time at the beach at this point, because there was no shade in sight, and we walked a while on the hot sand of the beach before we came to a little restaurant/hotel that was specialized around tourism. (Of any sort...it had hammocks and massages etc...)

We ordered breakfast, thinking that if we ate slow enough and then ordered smoothies and then lunch, they wouldn't kick us out of the shade and we could spend our four hours out of the sun. However, we decided that since we were at the beach, we might as well swim or at least test the water, so after breakfast we all walked down. The waves on the beach were really high and strong, and since Guatemalan's don't swim and it's essentially a weekend spot for locals, there was maybe three people in the water. At first we all decided we were happy playing around in the waves after they crashed on shore, because even those sometimes knocked us over.

However, eventually I decided that if you timed it right you could get out past the waves where it was calmer and you would be fine swimming. So that's what I did, though mom and Riss and Nance and Allison stayed on shore. The undertow was definitely strong swimming back in, but I was completely fine. I did get hugs from everybody and Allison screamed "You're alive!!", so maybe it looked more dangerous than I thought.

We ended up playing around on the beach for a while after that, and when it was time to go, we didn't want to. Ironic I suppose. We even bought some little figurines made out of seed pods and shells and man was selling. They were really cute!!! The whole day was very fun, but tiring, because so much time in the sun made us all exhausted.

Coban Part Two

I must say at this moment I am not fond of Blogger. I apologize that the fonts are all different, but for some reason I can't change them.

After jumping out of the tree, Jose led us down more of the pools to the last one, where he tied a rope to a water fall going down. It was a small water fall, more of a trickle, so it seemed pretty easy when we told us we should rappel down it. He made it look easy to. I was told after the fact that there were even foot holds, that everybody else was aware of, but I didn't see or need them. The very end was the only slightly challenging part, because there was a drop of about three feet at the end, that you couldn't see from the top, and so weren't expecting at all. I ended up dunking myself under the water fall since I went second, and getting a little disoriented. Overall though, people came down uneventfully.

At that point we got to go into what looked like a cave. Jose told us that this was where the original river was, so we both both below and above water, but completely dry. You couldn't go very far back, because nobody has explored it, and doens't know what to expect, but it was still very cool. Looking out from the mouth of the cave was one of the prettiest views I've ever seen though. In movies, they always show paradise as being green dripping with water, and water all over. Well this was a real life paradise scene. Absolutely gorgeous. And because we were swimming through water to get there, nobody had cameras at this point. It's too bad, but there is no way the view will ever leave my mind at least.

At this point though, everybody was a little cold, because there was cold water dripping down from the cave roof, and we weren't in the sun. After climbing back up the water fall, we went to have the sandwiches the restaurant has prepared for us. We were so hungry that we wolfed down about have of them, and a lot of people couldn't finish it, because they were so disgusting. Soggy white bread, with bologna and something else. I forced mine down because I knew I needed the food, but it was far from pleasant. We sat in the sun in the pools for a while after that.

When we left the Semuc Champey area, we had to cross a bridge above the water to get to our next destination. As we were walking across, Jose asked me if I wanted to jump off the bridge. I laughed, because I thought he was joking. It was the kind of thing someone would say in the US, and mean basically the opposite. But he promptly told me to take off my shoes and showed the spot I should jump from. At this point I balked a little bit, not sure I really wanted to jump off a forty foot bridge. But then I thought, "when am I ever going to get another experience like this one?" So I jumped off. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!! A little bit more painful than the tree, because I didn't go in exactly vertically, but I have absolutely no regrets. This time only one other person jumped with me.

After that, we finished crossing the river, to where there was a little building. Here they tied our shows onto our feet, for the adventure in the caves. We were handed handles about five inches long, and then told to follow a guide. We came to a little cave in the side of the mountain, that didn't look very big. The water was only about two feet deep at the entrance. One of the girls with us was Guatemalan, and couldn't swim. She'd never tried a life jacket before and so didn't trust it at all. She freaked right away and didn't come with us, but everybody else was fine, at least to begin with. They lit our candles, and that was our only source of light in the entire place.

At the beginning, we simply waded through knee-deep water for a while. There were stalactites, stalagmites, and cave bacon all over the walls. And a bunch of other cool formations that I can't really name or describe. Again, we didn't have cameras, because we had only one hand to swim with. Later on in the cave it got fairly deep, and we actually had to swim across lengths of deep water, and we usually couldn't tell where the end was. I really enjoyed the whole experience, but some people were a little freaked out from the caves and the dark and everything. There was a little waterfall inside we got to climb (using a rope) and at the end there was a little pool they let me jump into. Nothing high, just hard to climb up to in the dark.

After that we went outside again to choose tubes because we were going to float down the river for a little while. There was a sort of rope swing going out into the river that everybody wanted to do, so of course we did it to. Unfortunately, it twisted as I was going out, so I had to go over the back of the swing. That sounds fine, but I ended up doing a back flop into the river, which was really painful. Honestly I think it hurt more than jumping off the bridge or the tree. That's not supposed to happen. But almost everybody hurt themselves a little on the swing, so I don't feel so bad I guess.

The float down the river was really nice afterward though, it was really fast flowing, so we all talked and floated for forty-five minutes or so. The only unfortunate part about that was that when we got out, we had to walk back on the dirt road bare-foot because we didn't have any of our things with you. That was the end of the day, and then we got to ride back to our hotel. We had red paint all over our faces that Jose put there for fun, and so everybody who saw us laughed. It was fun though, because a lot of times even the kids are really serious. We didn't really mind that the source of their laughter was us.

After dinner we all collapsed in bed, only to wake up at five-thirty the next morning to get on the road for an eight hour bus ride again. Despite the fact that we broke our rule saying that you have to stay longer than it takes to get there, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had down here, or ever.
***Credit to Joni Paranka for most of the pictures in this entry