Granada, Nicaragua

Swooped up on a fast microbus to Granada, Balen and I found ourselves crammed in with a bunch of locals commuting to work outside Managua. Balen ended up in a seat next to some friendly abuelas and I crammed my backpack and myself into the back of the bus, with a couple of very friendly gentlemen. One thing that I noticed quickly about Nicaragua was how different the accent was from anything I had heard before. While I found it very easy to understand people in Guatemala, I found it almost impossible to understand anything that these guys said. Nicaraguans do not complete words. I was able to understand a fair amount after asking my new friends to speak as slowly as possible, but even still, I resorted to smile and laugh politely when, after several attempts, I still had no clue what they were talking about. I did have a nice chat with Frankie, the guy next to me, who told me about his job and his family members living in Leon, Nica and in Oregon. He loves the Sandinistas.

Arriving in Granada, it was HOT (see horse waiting to pick up tourists), and settled down in the nice Parque Central to rest a bit and get our bearings. We checked into a bed and breakfast owned and run by a local family, though after a night in the stifling heat, we booked it out of there and moved into Oasis Hostel, which was much cooler and had air conditioning and a pool.

In spite of the heat, we really liked Granada. A less touristy colonial city than Antigua, though more expensive, Granada was a nice place from which to explore the area and relax. Some of the things we enjoyed:

We walked down to the Lago de Nicaragua. We walked around many lovely old churches, my favorite being La Merced, where we were able to climb up the church tower while they held Mass to check out the views of the city, nearby Volcan Mombacho, and the sunset. It also had a nice and much missed BREEZE!

We visited a Spanish fort from the Colonial era in the shape of a pentagon, which a beautifully maintained courtyard. 

We hiked Volcan Mombacho, which was certainly less thrilling than Pacaya in Guatemala, though beautiful. It is only about 1200 meters high, and we rode an “ecotruck” to the top, passing a coffee farm on the way. We took a walk around one of the craters where we could see the Isletas of Lago de Nicaragua (a huge lake, by the way) which were formed by an eruption of Mombacho.We also hiked the Puma Trail, winding around around the craters at the top. There was a big sign at the start of the trail saying that entering the trail without a guide was prohibited. As it was a mere 4 km and we had heard from other travelers it could easily be done without a guide, we snuck on by ourselves and rehearsed the "oh, we must have gotten lost" speech for if we encountered anyone. We came across a family of very loud howler monkeys and listened to birds up in the canopy. But sure enough, after about an hour we ran into a guide and two Korean hikers who seemed a bit incredulous that we could have gotten lost. The trails were incredibly well marked, and there were maps everywhere. Perhaps I am a better liar than I thought, because as we turned to follow them back the way we came, they seemed to think we were nice enough, if not particularly adept at reading simple maps. The good news is that we were able to reach all the best lookouts before being caught - we could see all they way to the Pacific and into Costa Rica! And the landscape was beautiful. We considered going ziplining on the way back, but decided to save up for Costa Rica, which we thought would be considerably better, if more expensive.

We spent a day at a "beach club" where, for $5 we sat and relaxed by the pool and engaged in some great people watching. It felt a bit like a rap video shoot, with white towels and exotic birds and a bar next to the infinity pool. It was indulgent.

We went to Mi Museo, a free museum containing pre/Columbian pottery and had a tour of the different types and uses. After our tour, of which I understood about 20 % due to my issues with the Nica accent, we met a very friendly ex/pat, Glenn, from Austin, TX, who is buying up properties in Granada. On his suggestion, we went for dinner one night at Jimmy Threefinger's, a fantastic BBQ place with a patio blaring Beatles songs. Yum.

We spent a lot of time on chicken buses in Nica (old American schoolbuses, with awesome paint jobs and people crammed in). We took a chicken bus to Masaya, a great market where we bargained for hammocks. We chickenbussed it to Mombacho, and also took a chicken bus to San Juan del Sur, which I will write a bit about in another post. Chicken busses are quite an experience, not to be missed. They are cheap, and they also make for fantastic people watching. On one trip, high school evangelistas sang about Jesus for several hours as we sat squished against a window by a large man on the inside of the seat...it was an adventure. On another, a man stood up, trying to sell medicine for intestinal parasites. A young kid sang and played music for money. At every stop, women with big buckets of food and drunk climb aboard, offering anything from soda to fried bananas for a small fee. Despite hot sweaty quarters, I have liked the chicken buses.

We spent several days in Granada and on Monday left for San Juan del Sur. We had been planning to go to La Isla de Ometepe, a large island in Lago de Nicaragua with 2 volcanoes, good hiking, and local culture to explore. However, we heard from several people that it was even hotter than Granada, so we decided to skip it. We were disappointed though excited to get to San Juan del Sur and then Costa Rica since we only had a little over a week left in Central America!

Lake Atitlan, the lazy man's paradise

After a couple days exploring Antigua, we headed north to Lake Atitlan, a volcanic crater lake in the highlands of Guatemala. Lake Atitlan bears a somewhat similar resemblance to Lake Tahoe, if Lake Tahoe was surrounded by 3 huge active volcanoes and a bunch of small mayan villages. We were very excited about Lake Atitlan because it had received glowing reviews from people before we even left, and all the people we met on the way who had been there raved about it as well. Luckily for the lake, it did not disappoint.

Lake Atitlan, in addition to being dotted by small maya pueblos, has a few more developed, more touristy little villages with hostels and some fancier hotels. There's San Pedro, the party town, San Marcos, the hippie yoga retreat town, and Santa Cruz, which has a traditional village up in the hills, and a cool, outdoorsy little hostel right on the edge of the lake. Knowing the authors of this blog, can you guess which one we chose to start at?

La Iguana Perdida is the name of the hostel, and it was a wonderful place to spend a few days. There is not much of a town there, per se, just the hostel, a few other fancier hotels and restaurants, and a beautiful lake to look at. We stayed there for 3 days and nights, lounging around in the hammocks, going for some short hikes, exploring the other little towns on the lake, playing cards, watching movies, and basically just relaxing and recharging. Dinner each night was family style, so we got to know a bunch of the other guests, including an awesome german couple and a bunch of friendly brits. The hammocks were very comfy, I finished reading one large book and started another, and I think annie finished 2 before we left.

I also took my first yoga class ever, and it was very interesting since it was apparently not a beginners class and it was very, shall we say, high impact. I think the yoga term for it was "dynamic," but at any rate it was quite a workout. After 90 minutes of bouncing from downward dog to mountain position and back (back in the days of club soccer training we called those "burpees", apparently they are popular in yoga as well), both Annie and I were ready for some serious food. One of us ordered the "Gordo breakfast," I won't say who it was.

La Iguana Perdida also had kayaks to rent, a pool table, darts, and board games, but somehow we never got around to using those. Reading and swaying in the hammocks was heavenly. But after 3 days, we had had enough relaxing and were ready for more adventure. We decided to go back to Panajachel, the main city on the lake, and catch a bus back to Antigua, where we would stay for the night before catching a 4am bus for Managua, Nicaragua (more on that bus ride in the next entry). On our ferry back to Panajachel, a man got onto our boat, looking very excited. He looked like a gringo, and after a minute, he couldn't hold in his excitement anymore, turned to us, and blurted out "I just bought a motorhome!"  We were both speechless, and then he explained that he had come to the lake for vacation, his first vacation in 40 years, and decided he wanted to stay, so he bought a motorhome parked on the volcano ridge overlooking the lake. Talk about decisive. He was very excited about it, and started to tell us about how he wanted to retire here and start a motorized paragliding business on the lake. He then told us how he had crashed 3 times in the past month paragliding around the lake, including crashing through powerlines, getting stuck in a tree, and having to be cut down with a machete by the gardener. Not a great sales pitch, but he was a hilarious guy. And a Canadian, no less.

I highly recommend Lake Atitlan as an amazing vacation destination. But if you are looking to do any paragliding, watch out for the crazy canadian guy in the motorhome.

Antigua to Managua, the longest bus ride ever

When we left Antigua, we were faced with a tough choice. We had a little more than 2 weeks left before we had to be on a plane in Costa Rica, and about 5 months worth of things we wanted to do. After some serious soul searching, we narrowed those things down to an itinerary that could be done comfortably in about 3 weeks. Unfortunately, that was still too long, so we made the tough choice to skip over Honduras and El Salvador and spend our remaining 2+ weeks in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We discovered that the fastest way to get from Antigua to Nicaragua is to fly. But the flight costs $400 each, and is notoriously unreliable. The next best option, in our eyes and on the travel agent's board, was a first class direct bus from Guatemala City to Managua. Less than a quarter of the price of flying, it sounded pretty good. It was advertised as a 12 hour trip, leaving Guatemala at 4am and getting into Managua at 4pm, which would be enough time to catch a bus from Managua to Granada, our desired destination. Why didn't we want to stay in Managua you ask? Managua, as described in our travel book, is the most traveler-unfriendly place in central america. The streets have no names, the buildings have no addresses, and crime can be an issue. To put it another way, when we told one of the employees at the hostel we were planning to take a bus to Managua to try to get to Granada in one day, he hugged both of us and said he would pray for us. While we knew he was joking, it was still a little scary. But there wasn't really a better way to get to Nicaragua for a reasonable price in a reasonable amount of time. We asked our travel agent, a cool dude named Alexander, and he said that it wasn't really that bad and that we would be fine. We decided to trust him and booked the bus trip for the next morning. Since the bus left Guatemala City at 4am, and we were in Antigua, Alexander said he would pick us up at 215am at our hotel and go with us to the bus terminal. We thought that was pretty nice of him, so we agreed to do it.

It turns out, that the reason why Alexander came with us to the bus terminal, besides just making sure his little gringo friends made it onto the bus safely, was that he hadn't actually bought our tickets yet, and he needed to buy them from the agent at the bus terminal, in the morning before the bus left. I don´t know if this is just the way things are done when booking "first class" international central american buses, but we found out later when looking at our receipts that Alexander had made a pretty sweet commission on our bus tickets, charging us $95 for a bus ticket that cost $60 when sold by the bus company. However Alexander did throw in an hour long taxi to Guatemala city at 215am, so that makes it a little better, but still, we definitely made Alexander's day.

Ok anyway, on to the bus ride itself. This was a "first class" bus, which means it is advertised as having air conditioning, free coffee and tea, bathroom on board, tv, reclining seats, the works. What does that mean in practice? Well, first, they cranked the air conditioning on full blast, and there was a temperature gauge on the bus, so I can report that it got down to 15 degrees Celsius before they turned it off. It apparently was a binary air conditioner, either off or on full arctic blast. Annie put on all the clothes she had with her (2 pants, a shirt and a fleece), and was still cold. When it was 5am, 15 degrees in the bus, and we had a full day ahead of us, we knew it was going to be a long one.

Once the sun started to come up around 6am, they played the first movie. I wish I had written down all the movies that were played on board because there were some seriously awesome selections. They played the Tooth Fairy movie starring The Rock (dubbed in spanish, no english subtitles), Ice Princess, a disney ice skating movie (english with spanish subtitles, but so terrible I stopped watching), From Dusk til Dawn (in english with spanish subtitles, an interesting choice when taking a bus through rural central america), Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 (the live action version, in spanish with no subtitles, except the songs were in english), a bad Heather Locklear movie that we can't remember the name of, and a few other real winners.

Although this was advertised as a direct, express bus, there were many surprise stops. First of all, we had to cross 3 borders (Guat-El Salvador, El Salvador-Honduras, Honduras-Nicaragua), and each time, there were surprise fees and 30 minutes or so of delays for no apparent reason. Then, there was a stop in San Salvador where the bus disappeared, our stewardess said it would be back in 30 minutes, and then it showed up over an hour later with no explanation. We also stopped a few times for gas and food/bathroom breaks, which were nice, but all in all the trip took 16 hours and we didn't arrive in Managua until 8pm, too late to catch a bus to Granada (or anywhere for that matter). It was dark, and our travel book advised not walking around Managua after dark (especially not around the international bus station, gulp), so we found a hostel in a nicer part of town that was right next to where we needed to catch a bus to Granada the next morning, and took a cab straight there. Our cab driver was nice, again warning us not to walk around Managua at night, and although we had to tie our backpacks down in the trunk of his cab, because the trunk door was a hatchback made of more duct tape and plastic than actual car, we made it to the hostel without incident, and finally relaxed, having made it to "a" destination, even if it wasn't the one we planned on. The hostel we stayed in, Managua Backpackers Inn, had a weirdly unfriendly american owner, and we were glad we would be leaving in the morning.

After a pretty sweaty night's sleep, we made our way to the bus stop, a 5 minute walk from our hostel, which happened to be directly in front of a large, beautiful, immaculately clean McDonald's. Feeling slightly guilty, we luxuriated in Mickey D's air conditioning while enjoying some egg McMuffins and hash browns, which, in case you are wondering, taste exactly the same as they do in the states. Unfortunately they did not have McGriddles on the menu, apparently a breakfast sandwich with pancakes for bread has not become popular in central america yet. Their loss, to be sure.

After our shameless support of american fast food imperialism, we hopped onto a microbus for Granada to officially begin the Nicaragua portion of our trip.

Antigua, Guatemala

Antigua is like no other place we have seen so far in Central America. The former capital of Guatemala, Antigua is a beautiful little colonial town surrounded by volcanoes. All streets are cobblestone, there's a big park in the center of town facing a huge cathedral, brightly painted storefronts and restaurants line the streets. The town feels like it was built in Europe and then transported whole to Guatemala.

The reason why Antigua is the former capital, is that it has an unfortunate habit of being destroyed by earthquakes every hundred years or so. So there are ruins here too, but they are mostly from the 1700s. There was a huge earthquake in 1773 that pretty much wiped out everything. We toured a big convent today, which was built for the Capuchin nuns of Santiago. It was the largest and last one built before the aforementioned earthquake. It was beautiful, some of it had been rebuilt so we could see what it used to look like, but most of it remained in charming ruined form. There is a wedding there this evening, so we got to sneak around while they were setting up and check it out. Guatemalan weddings are a lot like American weddings, it turns out, right down to the rented chair covers and wedding cake in the shape of luggage.

The main reason we came to Antigua was to climb Volcan Pacaya, which is about 30km outside of town. Pacaya is an active volcano, in fact it's so active that some days you can't climb it because the sulfur fumes are poisonous and corrosive. Not to mention the lava. This was the first active volcano that either of us have climbed, so we were both very excited at the prospect of seeing some real, flowing lava.

We started out from Antigua with a microbus full of other adventurous young adults just like ourselves (we had a theory that they put all the younger people together and let us go first, because another bus showed up 10 minutes after ours and all the people on it were older). Or maybe they put us together because we are the most annoying, because there were certainly quite a cast of characters on this bus. There were 4 girls who had been studying together at a Spanish language school for the past month. They shared a love for gossiping about American tv shows, inside Spanish jokes, and singing brief snippets of popular bar songs repeatedly (think Don't Stop Believing and Bohemian Rhapsody). There were 2 surfer frat dudes who had just graduated from Appalachian State in North Carolina, and were on a surf tour of Central America with the eventual goal of buying property on Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula...or going to grad school. There was the pair of ill equipped French-American girls who showed up for the hike wearing ballet flats, without water or rain jackets. There was the British geologist who had started his travels in San Diego, where he and his wife had purchased a 1980s Chevy van and driven it all the way from there to Antigua. The van was nicknamed Sanchez. His wife had chosen to get a massage instead of climb the volcano. Clearly the wrong priorities, though I do like her taste in van names. There was the kid from UGA, we will call him the Anti-frat guy. He was a chef, traveling for an unknown period of time, whenever he ran out of money he would get a kitchen job for a few weeks and then continue living the dream. Not a bad idea really, although he admitted to currently being down to less than $120. At the top of the volcano he declared that he wasn't sure if it would be better or worse if he was on mushrooms.

This is the group we drove with from Antigua to the volcano. When we got there, the scene before us was unlike anything I've ever seen. Hundreds of small children crowding around our van trying to get us to buy walking sticks, marshmallows, and plastic rain slickers. Their sales technique was simple but effective: "Stick, stick, stick, 2 for 5." That's 2 for 5 quetzales, which is approximately 62.5 cents. Quite a deal. We had been told ahead of time the sticks come in handy so Annie bought 2 from the smallest child she could find. Best 62.5 cents ever spent, since we spent a fair amount of time clambering over sharp, hardened lava rocks and the sticks were a much better thing to touch the rocks with than our hands. There were also a smaller group of children and adults trying to sell us a horse to ride up instead of walking, which meant that while we walked up the trail we had to watch out for large mounds of horse poop. No one gave in and rented a horse, but by the time we got to the top the girls in ballet flats admitted they would have if anyone else had gotten one. Ah peer pressure.

Anyway, the hike itself was not too bad. We started at about 4pm in an attempt to be able to see the sunset from the top, however it was too cloudy when we got up there to actually see it. There were pockets of volcano smoke where in fact you couldn't see much of anything more than about 3 feet in front of you - you could taste the sulfur though. But after we got high enough the haze cleared and we saw some amazing views. We could tell we were getting close to the top when the ground started to feel warm under our feet, and soon we made it to the top, where the actual lava was. (2 notes. 1,It wasn't the actual top of the volcano, since it's too dangerous to go up there. And 2, it was a slight disappointment that the lava wasn't externally flowing on the day that we hiked, but it was right below the surface of the rocks and we could see it though the fissures.) In fact, the lava was so hot and so close that our guide, who had previously climbed a tree and machete-hacked a bunch of branches off and made us carry them up the volcano, showed us how you can put the tree branches in the fissures, and they catch on fire and make a popping noise as they burn. Every time we threw one in, our guide would clap his hands, shriek "SKY FIRE", and get really excited. He turned out to be quite the pyro. And an excellent guide. The 2 surfer dudes had purchased marshmallows and a stick to roast them, and the Spanish school girls had brought graham crackers and chocolate, so we got to roast marshmallows at the top of the volcano from the lava and eat smores. Amazing, surreal, and awesome. We got to hang out at the top for about 30 minutes all by ourselves until the other (older) groups caught up to us. It was a very cool experience up there, you were at once both hot and cold, because the winds were always changing and either warming you up with lava smoke or chilling you with wind and rain. It was like being in a outdoor sauna in San Francisco in June. It was great.

We made our way back down the volcano, and it was excellent timing because we made it over all the sharp lava rocks before the sun went down. When we made it all the way to the bottom, the small children were there to reclaim their sticks, and then show us their breakdancing moves. One of the surfer dudes decided to show the kids how to do the worm, and then he was promptly shown up by another kid doing some great headspins and moonwalking.

Somehow, on the ride back to Antigua, the cd playing in the car was full of 90s dance hits, so the whole bus joined in singing along to the sounds of Billie Jean, Queen - I've got to break free, Toto - Africa, etc. It was somehow the perfect way to end the hike.

*Finally we have some photos on here from the top of the volcano. We have more pictures of the actual lava and views from the top, but they can't be uploaded right now, sorry. Soon!

R&R in Coban

After a short but scary bus ride, we made it successfully to Coban - a small city in the mountains. The temperature was noticeably cooler (yay) and it felt good to be in a place with more than one road again. We were also grateful for some better food. Coban isn't known as a tourist destination, but we enjoyed it more than we planned to. The city would be beautiful if it wasn't for the heavy cloud of pollution that sits on top of it - it actually made it a bit hard to breathe at times.

We spent a couple lazy days exploring the gritty charm of the city (slowly, due to uneasy tummies), and some great cafes - Xkape Koban and Fantasia (I thoroughly enjoyed fresh homemade yogurt with fruit and granola after nothing but eggs, beans, and tortillas). We had our first real (non-instant) Guatemalan coffee and walked by a coffee finca, or farm. We visited El Calvario, a big white church on a hill overlooking the city, which is also filled with Mayan symbols and altars. The mix of Christian and Pagan symbols is common around here. We took a walk through the Parque Nacional Las Victorias, a beautiful park filled with pine trees. We again considered visiting Semuc Champey (our original destination before stopping in Chisec) but then I was feeling off the weather, so we decided to take it easy and try to get to Antigua instead. Semuc Champey will have to wait until next time. For our last meal, we ate at a very fancy (but still pretty cheap) italian restaurant, where all the food was imported, and they insisted that we wear bibs while we ate. It felt very regal.

Trusting strangers - a detour to Chisec

The first friendly people we met at Los Amigos hostel in Flores happened to be on our bus to Lanquin (where we were planning to visit as a jumping off point for Semuc Champey, where we´ve heard there are beautiful limestone pools for exploring). I believe Balen mentioned them earlier - Zak and Frankie, from Sarasota. Apparently the bus was going to leave Flores without us and they insisted that we were waiting at our hostel down the road. Thank goodness. The bus was a cultural experience in itself. In the backseat were 2 hippie kids from Los Amigos, the female version singing Beatles classics for most of the trip, most notably ¨Hey Jude,¨ and saying things like, ¨Oh, you took a tour at Tikal? I never take tours. I´m more of a feelings and energy person than an information person. I just like to go and feel the energy and meditate.¨ We also took a scary though exhillerating floating dock-barge-like thing across a river, and there were many Oregon Trail references about fording the river from our seat and from new amigos Frankie and Zak.

As it turned out, our new friends were not headed to Lanquin, but to a very small K´echi Mayan village called Chisec. They had, as highschoolers, fundraised for a local NGO here (coordinated through a Peace Corps volunteer from their hometown) and they had been there a couple times on school exchanges and in their own travels. Hearing things like ¨local NGO, off the beaten path, undiscovered,¨etc. Balen and I were curious. And, as these guys seemed both normal and nice, we figured this leap of faith couldn´t end too terribly (and it wouldn´t be the worst thing in the world to miss out on more Beatles classics from the backseat). So Chisec it would be - we hopped off the bus after only about 3 hours and checked into a crazy big yellow hotel, complete with water slides like a theme park in the back (which we sadly didn´t get photos of). The highlights, in somewhat haphazard order:

We were delighted to find upon arrival that Zak and Frankie both spoke excellent spanish,  much better than ours; however, it became quickly apparent that their spanish was probably as good or better than everyone else in town. Chisec is a town of campesinos, indigenous K´echi Mayans who speak K´echi rather than Spanish (I am unsure of spelling, apologies if this is wrong. It is phonetic, at least). This made for interesting experiences with ordering food in restaurants and communication in general. I also quickly noticed that women here wore long skirts and the probable reason why I seemed to be getting stares from locals was both because of my accent, appearance, etc. and the fact that I was wearing shorts. Oops. I quickly changed into my longer skirt and the concerned and-or disapproving looks from old ladies lessened considerably.

While in Chisec we got to spend time with Ernesto, Frankie and Zak´s friend who works for the local NGO, SANK. He was kind and patient with our Spanish and very open about discussing Chisec and his work. He set us up for a tour of Bombil Pek which less than 1,500 people per year visit, compared to 5,000 per day in Tikal during the high season. Bombil Pek was exhilarating. We spent hours climbing slippery rocks to make it into and around the caves, and the ancient Mayan paintings were breathtaking (we had to crawl through 2 tiny holes in the cave walls to get to the cave paintings, see pictures below). Our tour guides, Guillermo and Hugo (the latter claimed to be 15, he looked more like 11) were very nice, knowledgeable, and patient with our language skills. We were disgustingly dirty and very tired at the end of the day, but it was so worth it. I personally was very proud when Frankie commented that his sister ¨would have given up a long time ago¨ with the climbing and squishing one´s body through little holes along the way. Take that, machismo!

There were many noticeable similarities between Chisec and the Marshall Islands and I would guess many rural places worldwide. Some observations:

• a new relationship with the internet and globalization, and growing numbers of international and national visitors - 7 years ago there was 1 internet cafe, now they are everywhere.
  
• NGOs trying to preserve the local culture and improve the community - we spent time with Ernesto, who works for SANC, a local NGO that Zak and Frankie fundraised for in high school. He was a very impressive guy who gave us a complete history lesson on the indigenous K´echi Mayas from the beginning to present.
• very conservative women and a culture of machismo
• strong family ties
• inadequate education, both for preserving cultural principles and in general
  
• environmental degradation (here, largely deforestation caused by a change from farming to cattle ranching, Ernesto says it´s much cooler to be a rancher than a campesino)

Our last night in town, we got to play basketball with some of the local kids, which was so fun and, of course, reminded me of most of my Friday nights in the Marshall Islands :) very wholesome. Sweaty and tired, we said goodbye to our tourguides and new friends, planning to leave the following morning for Antigua, by way of Coban (a long trip).

We also had some interesting experiences with food in restaurants in Chisec, because most adults there don´t speak very good Spanish. The combination of poor Spanish skills on both sides made ordering a bit difficult. Unfortunately, Balen became quite ill on our last night in town, probably from the fried chicken (which everyone agreed was very tasty). He was a trooper and by the afternoon felt ok enough to get on a microbus for the short ride to Coban. Little did we know that our bus driver would be racing the bus in front of us - I spent the hour with my head ducked, praying for my life and gripping the seat in front of me. I tried to gauge the safeness of this seemingly very unsafe situation by the other passengers, all of whom seemed very unfussed. The man in front of us was sleeping, so I thought against my intuition that we would be ok. Balen later had an ¨unfortunate incident¨ out the back window of the bus and I thought it served the bus driver right. After we passed the microbus ahead of us, he slowed down noticeably, and I could breathe again.

We were very happy to arrive in Coban, Guatemala before dusk and found a nice place to stay, at Hotel Central.

* We´ve been delayed with photos and will try to get more up, sorry, sorry!
** I apologize for terrible use of accents - I have not figured out Central American keyboards yet, please forgive me.

Los Amigos Hostel

Los Amigos Hostel in Flores, Guatemala deserves a post all by itself. This place is 1 part hostel, 1 part internet cafe, 1 part vegetarian restaurant (the first in guatemala, according to the menu), and 1 part hippie commune. I tried to take a picture but it didn´t really do it justice. When you walk in, you enter a jungle-like outdoor patio area with hammocks, communal tables, a huge vegetarian menu, a computer/tv station set up for copying documentaries onto your laptop, candles, many stray dogs and cats, and of course, lots of backpackers. Only, these aren´t your typical backpackers. It was the type of crowd where it was ok to have a macbook or an iphone, but only if you also had dreadlocks and were shirtless/shoeless, if that makes any sense. Our google phones and rei clothes were clearly in the wrong place. We walked in and immediately felt like outsiders trying to sit at the cool kids table at lunch. However, the food was incredible. The veggie lasagna was certainly the best I´ve ever had, and the fruit juice smoothies were delicious. We ate 2 or 3 meals there, but vowed to never go back since no one talked to us. However, we broke down and ate breakfast there on our last day in Flores before catching a bus to Lanquin (to visit Semic Champey, a series of limestone pools).

We ended up making friends with two dudes, Frankie and Zak, who were also heading that direction, and in fact were on our same bus. We got on the bus, intending to go to Lanquin to visit Semuc Champey national park, but they told us about a little town called Chisec, where they were going, and they were so convincing that we decided to call a mid-voyage audible and check out Chisec with them. This is the benefit to planning a 5-week trek through Central America without really planning anything.

Tikal, amazing.

Tikal was so much more impressive than I even imagined it would be. An outline of our day (April 9):

• 4:00 am wake up
• 4:30 on the bus, picking up others from various hostels around Flores
• 6:15 arrive at Tikal, have first cup of coffee since leaving San Francisco (instant, no problem), meet Luis, our awesome tour guide who had the craziest accent I´ve ever heard - a mix of Australian, English, American, and sometimes Irish)
• 6:30 to 11:00 tour the park, which happens to be almost completely empty.
• 12:30, exhausted, bus back to Flores.

I´m usually suspicious of tours - a bunch of tourists crammed on a bus, being overcharged, not experiencing the ¨real thing¨ - however the tour of Tikal was wonderful. We lucked out with the weather and the timing, as we were informed that the week before (Easter week) the temp had reached 40 degrees Celcius (hot hot) there had been as many as 5,000 people visiting the park per day. The day we went, it was comfortable and cool compared to the heat to which we´ve become accustomed, and I don´t think we saw more than 30 other people in the park all day. We saw lots of wildlife: howler and spider monkeys, beautiful birds, big spiders, the Mayan tree of life and tree of love (which bore quite a resemblance to the tree of souls in Avatar...) cuys (like guinea pigs, we hear they taste like chicken), wild turkeys, and more (we didn´t get to see the toucan, aka the flying banana, but others in our group did. The only reason they got to see it and we weren´t there was because WE were busy climbing a temple...so really, we didn´t feel too bad). We climbed all the temples that we were allowed to climb, the views from the top were amazing. Luis said Tikal is the city of sights and sounds, and we could see why. Clapping your hands in front of the temples results in an echo that sounds like a quetzal.

It´s hard to imagine how people were able to build these enormous solid stone structures thousands of years ago, and without the aid of complex machines. The temples were built to be very tall in order to be close to the gods. It was very special being able to climb all over them and see the many structures from so many vantage points, unlike most ruins that I´ve ever visited. It was all very accessible, and without the feeling of being in a theme park. My personal favorite of the pyramids was the Temple of the Grand Jaguar - not sure why. I´ll let the photos explain the rest: