am sitting here in Coban, Guatemala, waiting for a couple of hours to pass so I can go on a coffee plantation tour with Tezra. It is cold today. I can see my breath, and am wearing a jacket. Not to complain to all of you reading this in the United States, but this seems strange for summertime in Central America.
It seems like a long time since I have last written, and there is much to say. To tell the truth, I was hoping to get this done a few days ago, but first I got violently ill and then once I got better we were staying in a remote part of the country where we did not have internet for a couple days. So here goes what could turn out to be a very long blog.
Tezra and I took the bus up from Honduras last Sunday (about ten days ago). Since we came up through El Salvador, I guess I can now add that to the list of countries I have been to. The journey took a full day, and we got into Guatemala city just as the sun was setting. Lots of people had told us what a hell hole Guatemala City was, but we did not see it. In fact, it seemed much more modern than many other Central American capitols. Our plan for the night was to get out of the city as quickly as possible, so we got off the bus and into a taxi that took us the 40 minutes into Antigua.
Antigua is what many consider the premier colonial city of Central America. It is easy to see why. The cobblestone streets are clean and the buildings well kept. A peek into some of the churches takes one back a few hundred years. The town square is beautiful, filled with park benches, trash cans that actually get used, and a fountain in the center. As a consequence of this, the streets are swarming with tourists, and stores mostly cater to this demographic of people. It seems there are only three businesses in Antigua: restaurants, hotels, and tour agencies.
We ended up staying four nights in the city at a lovely hostel complete with internet, a delicious breakfast, and clean water included in the reasonable price. The showers were hot, which is a huge plus down here. As I had basically been in transit on buses for the three days before getting to Antigua, we took two days to just relax, walk around, and eat some good food. There was even a bagel shop on the corner of the main square! I am not ashamed to admit that I ate a bagel every day that I was in Antigua. In fact, I ate a lot of food in Antigua period. This contributed to a problem that I had later...
Antigua is surrounded by three volcanoes, one of which is active. Climbing the active one, Pacaya, was high on the list of things to do for both Tezra and I. Our third day in Antigua was spent on a tour doing just this. We left at two in the afternoon, spent about an hour and a half driving out to the trail head, and started the hike. We certainly were not the only people with the notion to do this. There must have been at least 70 other people hiking along with us. To start, we climbed a ways up a lush mountainside, stopping every so often to take photos of the mountains surrounding Pacaya and the view of Guatemala City below. Then, all of a sudden, the green stops, and you are faced with nothing but black, hardened, AA lava flows. As your eyes climb the peek, you are greeted at the top by smoke pouring out of the peek.
We walked over these hardened lava flows for about twenty minutes, and were greeted by what I had wanted to see all along: red, flowing lava! Our guide informed us that it was a good day, and as far as I can tell he was right. The cracks in the rock below our feet were glowing, and as we came upon the flow, the heat became intense. Tezra set her coat down on the rock, and after we took a few pictures she picked it up to find that part of the arm melted off! I climbed to the other side of the flow where I got some more great pictures and ate some marshmallows that a few Germans were roasting over the lava. Well, after an hour it was time to leave. We walked back to the transports in the dark, but could see the red glow in the distance whenever we looked behind us.
The next day we headed about three hours north to Lake Atitlan. As it is in the highlands, we gained a lot of elevation, and then seemed to lose almost all of it going into the mountain-rimmed valley that the lake sits in. This may be my favorite place in Guatemala. Our transport dropped us off in the town of San Marcos, about 3000 people. The hostels were all grouped together in what was a very new age, hippie feeling community. We stayed at a place called The Unicorn, and there were paintings of unicorns all over the place. The owner was a bit creepy, but the price was right.
Again, we did a few days of relaxing, but the big event was taking a kayak out on the lake for a few hours our last day there. The sky was clear, the water calm, and the temperature warm. I have decided that paddling is a sport I would like to get into, and I can think of no better place to do it than Lake Atitlan. Only problem was that I thought I would be OK without sunscreen since it was morning and I had a bit of a tan going for me. This ended up being the wrong choice, as by night it was obvious that I had more than a little pink on my body.
Something else interesting happened that night. I mentioned earlier that I was eating a lot. Turns out that when you eat a lot there is something else that you should be doing a lot, and I certainly was not. Well, it all caught up with me, and I got very sick at about 2AM. In fact, I would say that I have never been as sick to my stomach as I was at this moment. It did not help that we had to get up in the morning and travel the three hours back to Antigua, plus get on an overnight bus in the evening. Morning came, and as we were packing up I felt horribly weak and was having doubts if I could make it. Tezra carried my pack for me as it was larger than her own, but as we walked out of the hostel I felt incredibly sick to my stomach. We made it about 50 yards, and I just stopped in front of this restaurant and threw up about five different times on the wall across from it. I will spare you any more details than that, but will say that I felt so much better afterward! A little 7-Up and some other liquids and I was good to go on the bus.
I hate to end on that pretty pictures, time has caught up with me. There is much more to tell about Guatemala, but it will have to wait until the next time I find myself at the internet. We head back to Guatemala City this evening, and on to El Salvador for a quick two days there tomorrow.
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