My Adventures and Travels

After touring Tikal, our guide offered us (the French-Canadian couple and I) another tour the following day for a lesser known/visited ruin called Yaxha (Yash-ah). So, once again, off we went! There were much fewer people and many, many ruins. And monkeys and a really big grasshopper. There were stairs to the top of some of the larger ruins, to test our fear of heights and stamina in the humidity! After an action packed day, I took the hour-flight back to Guatemala City, to fly home, sweet home, early the next morning.

You haven't lived until you have heard howler monkeys. Hearing howler monkeys in the daytime is eerie enough. Being awoken from a sound sleep at 3:00 a.m. is something different entirely. That being said, here are some pics of the animals I was able to actually SEE in Tikal. Monkeys are not that easy to photograph. I credit this little guy to my mosquito-free room. Spider monkey. According to my dad this is some kind of really special and rare turkey. Who knew?

So after Semuc Champey, I took another 7ish hour van ride south...only to fly north again the next day! Instead of returning to Antigua, I got dropped off in Guatemala City and took a cab to a hostel with free airport shuttle service (yay!). The next morning I was off to the airport at something like 430am, for the hour long flight to Tikal. Perhaps because of its' proximity to Mexico, this is the only place I had to fill out a questionaire about swine flu. Once again, it was a non-stop couple of days! I was picked up at the airport by a guide and taken to the hotel, where we soon set off on a tour of Tikal. We being a French-Canadian couple, myself, and our guide. The amazing thing about the park is how enormous it is. I logged 20,000 steps that day and STILL didn't see everything! One of the great things about Guatemala (and all of Central & South America) is that you can pretty much do what you want, because they aren't worried about getting sued all the time. So, yo...

Antigua is overly touristy, beautiful, has great (if rainy) weather, and is completely unlike the rest of Guatemala. Here are some pictures.

Very suddenly, I realized that my remaining days in Guatemala were limited, and there were still several things I wanted to see! In part, thanks to a fellow traveler from Germany, I found a travel joint in town to arrange a weekend tour of Semuc Champey-known as the most beautiful place in Guatemala! The drive there was quite an adventure...about 7 hours of bumpy roads and TORRENTIAL rain. We finally arrived in a small village and our hostel for the night. The next day was wild! We went up to Semuc Champey on the back of a truck, which was pretty much like a moving party! Then we hiked up to the overlook and down to the pools, swam in the blissfully cool water, saw waterfall after waterfall as each pool cascaded into the next, went swimming in a cave, and tubing down a river! Unfortunately, the ride back into town was not nearly as fun as the ride up: the rain had started again, making the dirt road extremely muddy. Our truck got stuck several times. Never mind the fact that we jumped ...

Originally, I was hoping to spend 3-4 weeks in intensive Spanish classes, but it just didn't work out that way (the sailing trip got in the way! Ha!). But I did spend one week going to classes. The Spanish school: They hosted activities every day-this was "happy hour!" I actually beat my Spanish teacher at Scrabble (Pensable)-only due to the word "juez"-which means judge. Big points there!

Okay, in my continuing effort to get caught up so I can actually update things that happened recently...I am OFF THE BOAT! Upon my return to Antigua (after yet another arduous 6 hour van trip) I hooked up with Miriam, a local who hosts students-but only if they've been referred by Romelia, who you will remember from several posts back. After the last couple of weeks, it was SO nice to be able to unpack my bag and stay in one place for awhile! Here are some pics of my room, and the street it was on.

Up early enough to catch the sunrise. Livingston was our last stop before heading out to open sea!

We spent our whole first afternoon/evening sailing up the Rio Dulce, towards the Caribbean. It was beautiful!

This amazingly bright fruit tastes a bit like kiwi, but it doesn't just look pretty and taste good. It's functional. According to my host, the emptied out peel makes a dandy shot glass for tequila, or whatever it is you fancy. Another new custom I learned about was from an Austrian couple. If you sprinkle cinnamon on an orange slice, and eat it before your shot (why before and not after? Because that's the way they did it.) I suppose it makes the shot more tasty, or at least, in the case of tequila, slightly less nasty? Hard to say if it actually worked, but it was a surprisingly nice combination. Hey, it's all about the cultural exchange...

For months, I had been looking forward to this sailing trip! A 4a.m. pickup and 6-hour bus ride later, and I found myself in the HOT town of Rio Dulce. It is right on the river of Rio Dulce, and a popular starting point for many boat trips. Here's a picture of the boat in the harbor, the little lancha we took out to get to it, and a few pictures from the boat, Las Sirenas (the mermaids) itself. There will be many more pictures to come of this adventure! (There are ALWAYS more, and more recent, photos on Facebook!)

One of the projects the group in Chajul does, is find orphans-and there are many-and teach them a skill. The kids are taught to weave and embroider, thus giving them a chance at a livelihood and a future. The weavings often represent daily Mayan life and traditions, which also preserves the culture and passes it down to younger generations. We were each allowed to buy one scarf or embroidery, but they were r eally looking for distribution outside of Guatemala, and someone with connections where these could continue to be sold. They are currently being sold by a woman in Norway, but her contract ends soon. I thought it was interesting that they were looking to sell them outside of the country, instead of a market such as Chichicastenango, but I'm sure the prices they fetch outside Guatemala are a lot more lucrative! These pictures are turned the right way in my picture album. I have no idea why they are coming up sideways . Turn your head to the right, I guess!

. Another outing we had from Nebaj was to the neighboring village of Chajul, which was another hard-hit area during the civil war (noticing a pattern?). We met with a group promoting education, community organization, and women's rights in Chajul and outlying urban areas. After that we walked down to the church and she told us what it was like to live in Guatemala during the armed conflict. In all my traveling, her account was the most vivid and riveting. For a long time, people remained in the town while the army moved in, and the violence escalated as people were "disappeared." One had to be very cautious and clever during this time. For example, the woman we talked to told us of a time strangers came to her home and urged her to join the guerillas in fighting the army. If she had gone with them, she would have been tortured and killed, because it was army men in disguise, looking for people who wanted to resist them. The church, below, was taken over by the army and us...