pescados malos

yesterday we took a smooth boat ride down the rio dulce and stayed at a neat hostel called finca tatin, it was run by an argentinian family who also live in nebraska during the school year. pretty awesome place to spend your summer vacations. we went kayaking and found a little creek into the jungle. i felt like and explorer. then we went to a hot spring and as i stepped in, a small fish, about 1.5 inches, nipped at this sore on my heal and i screamed bloody murder cause it kind of hurt, but mostly scared me. then i tried to step in again and anothe rbit me in the same exact spot! so i then refused to get into the hot spring.

today we went to a waterfall where the water below is cold but the waterfall is hot. kind of like a nice hot spa treatment. however it took me 15 minutes of contimplation to get in because i stuck my foot in, and all these feet came rushing over. i realize that they love the dry dead skin to eat. so gross. just two more days and i'll be home in lake washington, with no biting fish...

cacao tree, waterfalls.

jungle tour!

its great being back in guatemala. for one, its twice as cheap, and i was missing my eggs and frijoles.i had forgot about the guatemalan sounds of 6am roosters, wild dogs barking, and the catholic celebratory firecrackers... yesterday we took a jungle tour outside of livingston. livingston is an interesting city, probably the most diverse in guatemala because it is a port city with a mix of cultures. there are garifuna people, who are decended from slaves brought over by the english i believe. their language is a mixture of an african language, spanish, french, mayan, and english. there is a lot of reggae parafinalia and carribean culture in this area.

our tour took us on a little hike through the outskirts of the city, not really real jungle but in the forest area, and i guess that´s junglish. enough that i was sweating from every surface of my body, and bitten by enough bugs. we saw a hummingbird in its nest, a couple impressive ant hills, and strangely, some crabs in the forest. then we took a little canoe trip to a nice ocean beach and road some waves. after this we walked into the forest again and swam in los siete altares 'the 7 alters´. i jumped from a small waterfall, it was a lot of fun. tomorrow we venture out on yet another boat ride, this time i´m wearing my bathing suit...

tabacco caye

we didn´t make it on the sail boat trip,but we took a bus and a small boat out to an island that is about 4.5 acres big. it was tiny and cute with only a small snack shop and 3 restaurants. we stayed at a cute little place owned by an older couple and roomed near a family from the US i htink who now live in guatemala. tabacco caye was very laid back, all we did was read, swim, snorkel and sit on this dock in the sunshine. we did start a daily routine of icy fruity drinks at happy hour and watching the sunset.

traveling...in belize all the buses are chicken buses, or the old school buses. we did find one that was all supped up though and had air conditioning and a movie even. unfortunately with just 20 minutes left on a bus ride to a beach town called placencia, a small child, less that 2 years old decided to pee on the bus, and the pee decided to fall all over my foot. we changed seats and i washed my foot in the ocean the second i got off.

placencia...placencia is a beach town with about 12 miles of white sandy beach in belize. hey are constructing a lot of resorts and condos for rich foreigners but it isn´t quite built up yet. the beaches, unfortunately here and in guatemala are covered in garbage. plastic bottles, caps, soles of shoes and styrofoam. its quite sad and quite disgusting. we opted for sneaking into a pretty resort and using the swimming pool...

traveling...from belize we decided to take the carribean to return to guatemala. this made for interesting travels. as i sat on this small boat which was erroneosly labeled a ferry...the guy next to me smiles and says in english, ...ï guarantee, you aren´t going to like this...he was too right, although it was more humorous than miserable. once the boat starts, out come these large black tarps, and i realize that we hold the tarps up over our heads for an hour as this small boat rips through the ocean and salt water sprays at us with ever huge rocking wave. at least i didn´t get sea sick beacuse it would have been way to difficult to throw up. later we had to take our 3rd boat of the day to get to our destination, livingston. we opted for the larger boat. however this experience was no more fun and i ended up closing my eyes, clutching my bag and saying the lords prayer over and over in my head..followed by some dixie chicks. i did this to ward off a panic attack and puking from the crazy rolling waves which i was sure was going to capsize us.

we were relieved to arrive in livingston in one piece and on land, to say the least.

caye caulker

we arrived in belize in short time. it is strange to hear everyone speaking english and there are a more diversity of people here. the caribbean folk look african american and that makes it feel more like america too, obviously. its a little more modern and there are more american brands and itsmore pricey here too. we made some mac and cheese in the hostel last night. today we sat at the dock and on the beach and had huge yummy fruit smoothies until a huge 'hurricane' swept through for a brief storm. there is really amazing snorkeling and diving here. we almost signed up to get diving certified today, but the classes wouldnt start for anotherfew days and the prices are the same if not more than in the us. so we are going to snorkel with manitees, sting rey and the big fish and sea turtles! we may take a 3 day and 2 night sail boat trip from our island down to placencia in southern belize. if you don't hear from me...hopefully that's what i'm doing.

more from semuc champey...

i thought that all of guatemala was mountains, but luckily...as we approached tikal, we discovered some flat land. just in time cause i´ve been getting car sick on all the windy roads in all the tiny shuttle buses. plus this annoying large european man was sitting behind me with his knees in my back and then pouted that i nearly chopped his toe off because he wasn´t paying attention. guatemalan´s are pretty tiny people, and cars don´t really fit anyone bigger than me. all the travelers so far have been in their 20s. i´ve only seen 2 families. i think its because its summer break... tomorrow we´re going to belize for some beach time!

tikal

today we woke up at 430am...this early rising business has been a trend, but its ok because its way cooler in the mornings and we got a start on most of the tourists. we visited tikal, a huge mayan ruins with several temples and plaza areas. tikal means something like echoes, or sounds and between some of the pyramids you can clap and it makes this cool twang noise. one temple was estimated by our guide to take like 50 years to make. our guide showed us how during the summer and winter equinox, the sun shines right through the middle of the temples, and there are 356 steps in one of them, obviously the mayans had some major arcitectural planning skills. we climbed up most of the ruins and one was really steep almost like a ladder. i was kind of scared and went down real real slow. i could hear the locals above me comment, que lenta (how slow...) haha. oh well, i wasn´t about to fall. i can´t imagine carrying bricks up that high to build those.

we also saw. tarantula, ant eater, guatemalan jungle racoon thing, snakes, frog, parrot, toucan, quetzal (national bird), howler monkey, and spider monkies. pretty cool.

bat caves

our last day in lanquin, we took inner tubes down this river that is the color of jade. you can see the green junglish mountains along the way and a few cows grazing and some kids playing in the water. we met a couple from seattle and a guy from canada who went down the river with us. the canadian kept running into trees for some reason.

later we went on a tour of the cave in lanquin, they aren´t sure how many kilometers it goes according to the guide, who was an 18 year old jokester, so i´m not sure i trust him, they don´t know how far it goes. we saw places where the mayans do a lot of spiritual ceremonies and they had some hokie signs up where they would try to say that some rock formation looked like the virgin mary, but really to me it just looked like a rock... we had to do a bit of ¨bouldering¨ in the caves and that was fun. a little scary, but fun. then at the end, at the time when the bats leave, we stood and were swarmed by bats! it was crazy, with the shadows it seemed like twice as many, but i´m sure there were atleast one thousand. pretty cool.

i´m posting a picture of the hostels guatemalan fiest. i had vegetarian cause the sign for meat said huevos del toro, aka bull balls, but it was a joke, cause i didn´t see any. the food was yummy.

semuc from the look out point...more to come when internet is working...

el retiro, a lanquin y semuc champey

yesterday we took an 8 hour bus ride with a bunch of israeli´s and finally ended up in lanquin. i have developed a cold, which for a solid half day was convinced was gengue fever...however my hypochrondriac tendencies have fallen because i´m not spewing blood, and i have a runny nose which is not a symptom. i think its because of the rapid change from 60 degrees and raining to 80 or 90 and humid. also last night after dinner while having a beer at la tienda, you have to stay to give them back the bottle...i felt like i was going to pass out. so i sat on the floor for like 10 minutes, the cute four year old girl who´s family owns the store sat down across from me and waved and smiled the entire time. then a bug stung my right big toe.

it is much more like i imageined guatemala over in these parts. very tropical and beautifully green and mountains galour. we are staying at an awesome hostel that looks like a resort with little thatched roofed bungalow huts, tropical flowers, on the river, with a yummy and reasonably priced restaurant and bar. the owner of the bar is from baltimore, she worked in software engineering after college, then moved to belize, met a lovely carribean man and opened this bar in paradise. pretty cool. although, don´t worry, í´m not really interested in following suit. i was just laying in a hamock and a mini cow cam up and licked my leg. because i´m feeling sick, we decided to stay here an extra day. we went to semuc champey national park and pools this morning and swam and hiked. it was pretty gourgeous to say the least. tomorrow we´re going to go caving with bats!

cemetary, volcano, hot hot lava!

antigua

Yesterday Elizabeth and I arrived in Antigua, a really cute city that feels much more modern, and touristy with walk ways full of botique like stores, ice cream, international food restaurants, markets, and lots of hostels and hotels. we are staying at the ¨jungle party¨hostel.

this morning we went up volcan pacaya, there are 33 volcanoes in guatemala. 3 are active and this is definately one of the active ones. it was a tough hike up filled with pokey sharp lava boulders (one which scraped up my leg) but its not too bad. then we walked on the lava where you can see in crevices right below you, the red heat. and you can feel heat coming up from the ground, and warm gusts of strong wind. then a big wave of hot lava cam and we got to see it. some people pocked it with sticks and it catches on fire real quick. i was about 10ft close i think. not hot enough that my shoes melted, but it seemed pretty warm to me. then on the way down we basically just slid and or elegantly fell down the lava rocks, i´ve never been snow boarding but it fel kind of like it. only when the big rocks roled on you..it hurt kind of. at the bottom we emptied our shoes of lava gravel. quite an adventure. tomorrow we´re leaving for semuc champey and the natural pools which are supposedly one of the most beautiful natural sites in guatemala.

a visit to sakrahal

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we visited sakrahal this week. here is the first church to be built in central america via the spanish. also we saw the process of the textiles that are made for the traditional mayan dress. (the dye, the coloring, the drying and weaving) i thought you crafty ladies would appreciate the handy work, all by hand... and a lot of work. they also took us to this place with this specialty alcohol which was gross)
later in the day we had a lecture in spanish regarding the differences in the criminal justice systems in guatemala. in the constitution it states that the mayan people can maintain and protect their cultural traditions. so they can have a different justice system within their small pueblo towns. it is very different with communal decisions, reparations, and sometimes corporal punishment, but also the worse punishment is banishment from the town. the modern system that counters it is much like ours, but probably more corrupt and slower. my studies end today and we have a celebration dinner.tomorrow i leave on a 7am shuttle to antigua, a city named for its ancient-ness, or antiquity? it used to be the capitol, until it was wiped out by am earthquake.