sábado, 10 de julio de 2010

Travelling in Guatemala... aka 3rd to last post ever!!!

So after my last blog we sat exams… not very intense exams but exams none the les.. then came the hard part saying goodbye to friends, my family and teachers… a few wee tears were shed…One of the hardest people to say goodbye to was Erik’s host momma who we used to go and sit and rock with one or two nights a week. Her family was simply amazing and she was the sweetest lady ever… She was so hppy and content with her life that after an evening wth her you felt at peace and happy too. The other AMAZING person who really helped make my time in Costa Rica even better was one of the teachers, Marielos. She was the most colour coordinated and lovely ladies I have ever met. Her passion for Spanish (she would always talk about how beautiful it was) was catching and she just made you want to learn!! So we said goodbye and then Leona and I set off on our big adventure to Guatemala.

We said goodbye o our friends at the Puntarenas bus stop after loading huge suitcases on to the bus. Thankfully one of our proffesors Arturo had agreed to let us store our gear at is house in the capital while we travelled. As I knew I would be seeing all my good Reno friends in 2 months the goodbye was not so sad… just sad they would not be travelling with me…
And we were off… after stowing our stuff in San Jose we stayed the night close to the airport. And an early morning flight later and we were in Guatemala!!

Getting out of the airport and being surrounded my men yelling directions and questions at us was quite verwhelming so just this once we decided to splash out a little and take a shuttle rather than the local bus to Antigua a cute ancient city an hour away from the bustling scariness of Guatemala city. So we got there and found a hostel super quick cos… we knew we didn’t have too much time in Guatemala and we wante to make the most of it… we raced out straight away and booked a tour for that afternoon (leaving in 10 minutes) up an active volcanp that had lava flowing down the side of it!! We climbed for say and hr and half to two hours to the highest you were allowed to go and stood beside a river (yes an actual river sized flow) of lava… people were attempting to raost marshmellows without being burnt by the instense heat coming off the lava… we didn’t have any with us due to the rushed nature of our booking… anyway it was super amazing… and slightly freaky… even more freaky was that three weeks later it actually blew up killing a journalist… (once again I will upload photos onto facebook… but it takes too long to do so here)

So we slept well after such a busy day and got up and explored Antigua a little… it was a really cute city that you could really just live in so easily BUT time was of the essence so in the afternoon we got onto a bus (a local bus this time) and went off to Lago Atitlan (lake atitlan). We took a boat over to a wee town called San Pedro where we spent two nights. It really was a cute place. Our hostel room overlooked the lake and had a fine view of the mountain we decided to climb the next day. The Indian Nose.
So we were up bright and early to get our hike on… Up Up Up in the scorcing heat… it was so hot and a lot higher than the 0m above sealevel I had been used to for the past 9months… It was hhard going… I quickly ran out of energy… you know the feeling when you are so tired from exercise you are going to vomit…well… I dint vomit but I thought I was going to… quite funny now looking back… I must have been quite a sight… at half way though I ate something and felt better straight away… got to the top… AMAZING view of the lake… The lake was somewhere I had really wanted to go cos we had studied a short story/legend about it and its surrounding Volcanos in a Spanish lit class I had had. The deal is that the indigenous people used to look to one of the volcanoes for predictions over war and peace. When there were clouds over the vlocano it was a time of peace but when they cleared war or an attack was coming. So when the Spanish were on their way as conquistadores the volcano warned the people so they left. The Spanish arrived and saw all this gold just abandoned (to the indigenous people living was more important than riches) and rubbed their little hands together. But before they could get any of the gold the volcano erupted and covered the treasure… obviously not the outcome the Spanish were hoping for…

So it was cool to see this place in real life…

The next day we continued on our whirlwind tour of Guatemala and moved on to a town commonly known as Xela (said shell-a) (its real name is Quetzaltenango so you can see why it is shortened). This was a lovely wee place… We headed off to explore a surrounding town where I had heard there was a womans weaving cooperative. Mum had expressed a desire for a local weaving so I htought why not buy it from a place where I know the weaver will receive a significant amount of money for their hard work. So we went over and I found mum a weaving… we were going to walk around but there was aprocession on and it looked very serious and travel books warned about prying into local religious festivals and what not so we shot back into Xela…

The following morning we explored Xela a wee bit… I loved it... Guatemala sure has some very lovely cities… and in the avo headed out to some natural hotsprings… very warm and we got all pruny sitting in the lovely surrounds… but there is a certain amount of time you can sit in a hot springs for before you need to return so we came back to town driving through local farmland in the lat afternoon… in time to get a yummy dinner cooked…

On the move again we headed toward a place recommended to us called Shamuc Champey… if you go to Guatemala you HAVE to go there. We had to go back through Guatemala city and… so we were on the bus and this man asks where we were going… we say Copan… this other little old man leans forward and says… Copan?? I know where the bus stop is… we can go togther in a taxi… well lets just say that that would not be happening… gosh we had no idea where in the city we were and we were not going to risk being the next days news headlines on the dominion post “Two blond kiwi girls missing after taxi ride in guatemala” I can imagine… so we asked if it was close and he said oh we could walk… so it was either seem very rude and go in a taxi by ourselves… or trust this man a little and walk with him and if it got dodgey get in a taxi as soon as possible… we decided not to seem rude and we set off walking with this man… he turned out to be trustworthy and we got to the next bus stop in no time…

We stopped for the night in a city called Copan… we had tea at a restaurant called “las Monjas” or the nuns… the restaurant may need to reconsider their placement of a ‘nun’ manaquin outside their doors as she looked scarily like the grim reaper… That night we met a young english guy who was heading in the same direction as us and so for the next four or five days we had a travelling buddy called Matthew… a very easy going guy so that was good otherwise he would have got the boot haha…

We got up to Shamuc Champey eventually… longest 64km of my life… and Leona and I explored some caves that afternoon… the were pretty epic… we were given a candle by the guide and spent two hrs underground swimming and jumping into water in the dark… pretty cool stuff!!!

Then the next morning Shamuc Champey itself… it is the most beautiful place ever… I think if heaven was like that I would be a very happy camper and Im sure it will be better… This is a place here a natural limestone bridge has formed ove the river (crating a cave for the river to go through) and the bridge has pools in it feed by contributories… the pools are beautiful and clear and have these freaky little fish that nibble your toes… But the water is a perfect temperature and it is just amazingly calm and beautiful…

We continued on our way and with and extremely long day of travelling… we took a pick up truck filled with sacks and people (we were hanging on for dear life) to this town near Shamuc, then a mini bus back to Coban, then a mini bus to this corner where we changed to another mini bus, then we took a bus to this river where we hoped on a boat then onto another bus and then finally onto a taxi… we arrived in Flores… we booked our bus to Tikal the next day at… 5am!! Yes we went to bed early that night…

So getting up at 5am to see something you would hope that something were freakin awesome and it was… It was truly amazing… Tikal is an area of pre colombian Mayan Ruins famous for its very high temples and pyrimads… they pop out over the top of the jungle and if you are a star wars fan they actual made it onto one of the old movies… once again look on fb for photos or google image the place for a much better idea of what we saw…

We came back and had a lovely afternnon relaxing before we began an intense card game a fellow traveller taught us… we had a quick break for tea… some very yummy pasta and a strange panini… and we were back into the game… it was kinda like phase 10 but with normal playing cards…

Leona and I then decided to pop over to Belize… speaking english again was so strange… we headed out to one of the Cayes called Caye Caulker… beautiful but it insisted on raining for the next two days so we couldn’t snorkle or anything… we did find real baked beans though YUM YUM… typically as we were leaving half way to the main land the sun came out…

We headed down to a sleepy wee town called Punta Gorda… we stayed the night and had dinner at a plce where a tour group or something was and got treated to a cultural show of the local Garifuna culture. There were some cute little girls dancing… boy could they move their hips…

In the morning we hung around the town till mid day when our boat back to Guatemala left. We got a tour of a fairtrade chocolate shop and read a little under the bus shelter where we met a very nice local man… he was quite extreme… had dreads like Nandor… anyway he took us to the wisdom tree up the road where he introduced us to his friends… bought us some pineapple pie and just chatted about life… when the boat left we really felt a little sad to be leaving a country where we had only met nice people.

Back in beautiful Guatemala, back speaking Spanish… everything was right with the world… until we met a bunch of US soldiers on their weekend off after being in the Guatemalan jungle for three weeks… you would have thought Leona and I were next top models the way we were yelled at… GROSS… That night we had an amazing dinner, seafood in a coconut soup… soo yum and then we went to a bar where some drummers were playing… a pretty fun night all in all… Cucaracha anyone??

We travelled to Rio Dulce up a river that was very pretty… flat flat water, apparently no crocs… wide wide areas… WHY WHY was no one sking or wakeboarding???

We stayed in a lovely wee hostel you had to get to by boat… that avo we explored some of the canals on a dugout canoe… great team work experiment… and the next day we went to a hot waterfall… the water pouring over the cliff was sooo hot… and it hit a clod river creating a warm pool… the waterfall fell over a limestone overhang so you could slip under the falls into a cave like thing and it was pretty much a natural sauna… AMAZING… a local lad also gave us a tour of the ‘cave’ and took us through a series of tight tunnels till we poped out on the right hand side of the falls…

Off to Guatamala city again for us… this time to meet a girl who had done an exchange to Freyberg while I was there. It was so good to see Claudia again and her family was lovely… If you want ot see the capital of Guatemala I def recommend staying with a local family… a lot nicer… Claudia was on exams so she hung out with us a bit and we went to uni with her but we also spent time with her family especially her lovely mother…

Then before we knew it we were on a plane again… heading back to Costa Rica for Leona to catch her flight home and for me to meet up with the Irish girls I was going to spend the next part of my adventure with…

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