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.