Crazy Bus Trip to Tikal

This past long weekend was a whirlwind of a trip, starting with Geoff picking me up right after school on Thursday (after our day of professional development at school), and then rushing to the bus station. We took a 5-hour bus from San Salvador to Guatemala City, another overnight bus from Guatemala City to Flores, and then finally took a cab ride from Flores to Tikal. Altogether, we were pretty much commuting non-stop between 3:30pm Thursday and 7am the next day. Sooooo, totally hectic!!

I am a sleeping machine, so I slept pretty much the entire way to Tikal. Geoff, on the other hand, slept almost none at all on the way to Tikal. (As it turns out, the overnight bus drivers were insane, and they were going at breakneck speed for pretty much 8 straight hours. Every time I would wake up from my nap, I would feel the entire bus swaying from side to side on a fairly narrow road, because of the crazy high speed we were going at. As a result of feeling nervous, Geoff had trouble falling asleep.)

But, anyway, according to plan, we arrived in Tikal on Friday at around 7am. Which was fabulous! It gave us almost two full days in Tikal itself. We wandered for the most part by ourselves, using the map that we had bought for 20 Quetzales. (The exchange rate is about 8 Quetzales:1 dollar.) WE LOVED TIKAL!!!

Tikal is an impressive show of Mayan culture, obviously, but for me the personal highlight was the fact that it is located in the middle of a jungle and was all kinds of rustic glory. We saw some amazing flora and fauna (including tons of monkeys!!), and heard the howling monkeys roar for quite a while. It made me feel like I was in Jurassic Park. (The park even has jaguars running wild, but thank goodness we didn't run into any.)







Here is Geoff's favorite animal in the jungle (besides the scary howling monkeys). We call this one the "monkey anteater" (not to be confused with their real names).


We also saw an incredible sunrise at the top of one of the temples. For me, it was a really unique experience to drive through the jungle at 4:30am, while everything was pitch dark. (We weren't silly enough to go driving by ourselves, but even sitting in the back of a pick-up truck was pretty scary. I kept looking back at the pitch darkness and thinking about the jaguars that we were waking up...)


We were on top of the tallest temple!! We sat there for a good couple of hours, through all the phases of the sunrise. We also listened in admiration while the alpha howling monkeys did their jurassic roar, which lasted a good 30 minutes. (They aren't morning people, I see.)


Then, another personal highlight of mine was when I un-wussed myself into climbing a 7-story high temple, where the only way up was this really steep set of ladder-stairs!! See left side of the first picture below; the original Mayan steps are deteriorated and cannot be used. (I'm deathly afraid of heights. Actually, Geoff had to talk me into going up, even when I was already half-way up the ladder-stairs.) Real-life application of rise/run?? YIKES.




On our last day in Tikal, we left early and went to hang out in the "nearby" town Flores. It was a beautiful tourist town on a lake. Super chill! There, we caught another amazing sunset -- this time with blue streaks in the sky?? (Maybe that's common, but I had never actually seen that before! We thought it was stunningly beautiful, so we took a picture.)




All in all, what an amazing trip! And half a miracle it was that everything worked out exactly the way we had planned. I'm back and feeling good about being back, but it's going to be hard to be without Geoff for a few weeks.

And then, it's crazy, but as soon as Geoff comes back to El Salvador from his "business trip", we'll have to be tying all of the loose ends for moving and making summer plans.

Winter Holidays

Geoff and I had an amazing trip back to the States for the holidays! Not only did we get to see a lot of friends and family, but we also got to spend some time in the city, revisiting our favorite restaurants and checking out the current Broadway shows -- and we even managed to swing-dance for a hot second! It made us miss being back in the States, for sure, but also helped us appreciate things back in San Salvador (ie. the ridiculously warm weather and things being reasonably priced). In any case, it will likely be a good while before we get to take another vacation to the New York area, so we cherished this opportunity to catch up with everyone.

Since it is costly to fly directly from San Salvador to the States, Geoff and I had decided a few months back to try instead to fly through Guatemala. On paper, that saves us about $200 per person round-trip, which is a kickass deal. But, in reality, the bus + extra nights in a hotel + extra food expenses just about balance out the savings we would have had. And actually, the hassle of traveling by bus through Guatemala isn't worth the savings, regardless of how comfortable and luxurious those busses may be.

Still, Geoff and I thought this particular trip through Guatemala was well worth it, because we got a chance to check out Volcano Pacaya, which had been our only regret from our previous visit to Guatemala. There is a reputable tour group that takes people up the volcano at night, camps overnight, and then hikes up to the flowing lava just before sunrise. But unfortunately, 1. they're not too flexible with their dates, since they need to rally 4 people in order to make it worth their effort to lead such a trip, 2. the boss is kind of an asshole to his employees. In the end, we booked another day trip instead. The day trip only costs $10 per person, plus about $5 for entrance fee to the park and tips for the guides. The afternoon hike, which Geoff and I had gone on, left at 2pm and was supposed to catch the sunset as we were descending the volcano. But, since our group had a few old ladies and children, the group hiked extraordinarily slowly, and it actually worked out to be to our benefit. We didn't get to the flowing lava until sunset, so we saw an amazing sunset right over the lava stream, and we got to enjoy the lava in the dark before descending the hill! (Most other day-hike groups only see the lava in daylight, which just isn't the same.)

The experience was truly phenomenal, and I would highly recommend it. Although, you definitely feel when you are up there, that you are tempting fate. Even as we were climbing the volcano, the local guide pointed out chunks of rocks where lava had flown only months -- or weeks! -- ago. He said that the lava flow changes its direction or location sometimes within a day. Then, when we got to the mini-crater about 200m from the main (top) crater, the hot river of lava was breath-taking. At one point, the rocks near where Geoff had been standing collapsed, and everyone was pretty freaked out from the keen awareness that we were standing on only a thin shell of rocks above a huge reservoir of hot lava. Later, as we got further away from the lava, and we looked back, we could see two different places where the volcano was erupting, and see heavy smoke coming from the top crater. One of the guides told us "no es normal", which only hastened our steps down the mountain.

Geoff and I spent the next couple of days just relaxing in Guatemala, getting over our sickness (which we had acquired in the below-freezing weather of New York) and easing our way back home to the tropics. I posted the complete set of vacation pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/averyseriousmimi/sets/72157623154596774/show/ , which you can watch as a slideshow.

Take care! Hope you (whoever and whereever you are) had a lovely holiday season. :)

Guatemala!

Geoff, Colleen, Eric, and I had a most unforgettable weekend in Guatemala! I won't go into all the details here, but some unpleasant things happened on our way back from Guate and we were delayed a day in getting back to work. We also experienced various car troubles throughout the trip, which were worrisome only because they meant that we had to get out in rural areas to fix the muffler or to crash in a random rural town for the night. At one point, our brakes overheated and started to fail while descending very steep mountainous roads. (None of us even knew that overheating was possible for brakes!) It was scary as shit, as Eric would say...

Alas, we made it back safely! So, let's focus on how beautiful the rest of the weekend was. This weekend lasted 4 days long, in celebration of Central American independence from Spain*, so the crew had decided that we would take the opportunity to go across the border to check out Antigua and Lake Atitlan, both located in Guatemala. As it turns out, Antigua is a beautiful cobble-stoned city that has retained much of its colonial look and feel, but mixed in with an international crowd and awesome restaurants and bars. Geoff and I loved Cafe No Se, which is a bar with an eclectic crowd, great tequila (although they call it something else there), and very interesting internal decor. The town is also filled with colonial ruins, and just generally had a lot of character. It being independence weekend, there were performers and crowds galore, and we had a fun time just walking around this pedestrian-friendly tourist town. At night, Geoff and I closed down Cafe No Se (which wasn't hard to do -- bars closed in the town at 1am).

The next day, we set out for Chichitenango, which has a weekly Sunday market that sells everything from food to traditional goods. Geoff and I had been looking for a cheap and water-proof hammock, which we found there for 150 quetzales. (The exchange rate is about 8 quetzales to 1 dollar, so it was a pretty good deal. Similar hammocks we found in El Salvador for at least twice the cost!) Geoff also began shopping for his parents for Christmas, since we saw something very unique that they would like. I bought a traditional weaved Guatemalan skirt, along with a belt (also weaved/embroidered) to hold it up. Colleen and Eric bought a ton more stuff than us, so it was a good day trip for everyone. :) At night, our brakes failed while on the way to Lago de Atitlan, so we decided to crash in a small town called San Juan to wait for the daylight to come. In San Juan (a tiny town about 15 or 20 minutes from the lake), we found a hotel right across the street from the police station. There, all of us just relaxed and chatted, finishing the bottle of wine that we had brought on the trip...

As it turns out, the brakes often fail for cars going down those windy mountainous roads, because of how many tumulos (speed bumps) there are, the steep grade of the roads, and the many sharp turns that lead to the bottom of the mountains. The mechanic told us not to worry, so we headed on down to Lake Atitlan on Monday to enjoy the beautiful view. Lake Atitlan is amazing! It's huge and gorgeous, surrounded by volcanic mountains, and has really cool little bars and restaurants -- and hippies! I think I had the most amazing sandwich of my life there, at an organic bar called Freedom. (I don't even like sandwiches normally!) During the day, we also took the boats out to another town, hiked a little, and then jumped off a cliff! Everyone else (Geoff, Colleen, and Eric) had done something like it before, except for me, so I was scared as hell. The cliff was about 20 to 30 feet according to Geoff and Colleen, and there were rocks in the water. The lake itself was really, really deep, so we weren't really worried about hitting the bottom of the lake, as long as we could jump far enough to get away from the rocky shore. Anyway, I put my hand over my heart and felt my heart pumping like crazy, and when I jumped, Geoff was scared out of his mind because he saw me almost hitting the side of the cliff and going with my head first into the water. It was so fast, I really didn't know what was going on, but I felt a little dizzy upon entering the water, like someone had hit me over the head. Fortunately, I was OK and didn't pass out or anything. :) Colleen and Eric helped guide me to the shore, because I was feeling a little disoriented at that point. Honestly, I don't know if I will do it again. I really wanted to do it this time, just to know what it feels like. Not sure if I should tempt fate in the future, especially because I was so clumsy about it this time. :)

All in all, we had a brilliant time. (I'll post pictures very soon, I promise!) The only bummer is that I had to miss work today, because I had been looking forward to a really productive day at school with the kids, and returning late from Guate definitely is going to throw things off. But, I'm really glad to be home after a long weekend, and in the grand scheme, things could have certainly been a lot worse. :)

Ciao! Next weekend is Geoff's and my three-year anniversary! I almost can't believe it; time has really flown by!

*Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador all celebrate their independence from Spain on September 15.