Mike and I have been keeping a wary eye on Dean for the past several days...not that it's done us much good. He goes where he pleases, scuba plans be damned!
We left Tela and headed to La Ceiba, a town a bit farther east along the northern coast of Honduras. At this point, all weather forecasts were placing Dean farther and farther north of us, making it unlikely we'd even see much rain or wind from it. It looked like the eye of the storm was making a bee-line for Playa del Carmen -- one of our first stops on this epic journey, and on the very tippy-top of Mexico's Yucatan penninsula. Armed with this good news, we took a ferry to Utila, which is one of Honduras' Bay Islands.
Of course, by the time we settled ourselves into a hotel and planned a few dives for the following day, the forecasts had changed. We sat down to a delicious lunch to discover that Dean was skirting the southern coast of Jamaica. Plus, those forecasters were beginning to say that Dean would probably hit farther south, maybe around the middle of the Yucatan penninsula. Still plenty far from us, but edging closer.
We woke up this morning to head to our scuba class (we decided to get our "Nitrox" specialty, which will allow us to breathe enriched air and have longer dive times), only to find that they'd closed the shop for the next 2 days. You see, Dean is still edging his way south, and now we're more likely to feel a bit more of his wrath.
So we've been bumming around for the entire day, listening to the fear-mongering of the local loudmouths. There has been some rain and a few periods of gusty wind, but mostly it's been pretty boring. The most potentially exciting thing that could happen is that we might get flooded out of our hotel room. We're pretty close to the shore and the water level has definitely been rising. Our hotel host has given us a key to one of the upstairs rooms in case this becomes a problem.
So now we just sit and wait. Maybe by Wednesday we'll get our scuba diving in. I don't really know what our plans are for now, but as always I'll keep you posted.
The answer to the last poll is "Juan and his double-barrel shotgun". The house in Antigua was pretty well protected with the high walls, embedded glass bottles, steel door, caged peephole, barbed wire, electrified razor wire, and the dog. We never saw a shotgun, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tucked away somewhere, just in case. I'll try to think of a new poll ASAP -- gotta keep you on your toes.
Well, I guess I'll sign off now. Good luck to all the friends we've made along the way who are farther north and in the path of the storm!
Monday, August 20, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Some Soap and a Serenade
We have been on the move the last couple of days, working our way toward the Gulf coast. We may be regretting that with Hurricane Dean on its way, but as of now it´s heading north of us. We´ll be keeping an eye on it.
Here´s an image from the National Hurricane Center with the projected path of the storm.
Tuesday we biked from Copan Ruinas to a town called La Entrada. Our guidebook claims that "something must have gone wrong for you to end up here," but we didn´t think it was that awful. The book is just biased against non-tourist towns.
Our journey to La Entrada was kind of interesting, so I´ll detail that before launching into the highlights of the town. I got my first flat tire of the trip, but it conveniently happened just feet from a good lunch spot. We ordered, patched the tube, and then ate our perfectly-timed meal. Shortly after lunch we had to wade our way through the aftermath of a small landslide which meant we got a little dirty. We managed to find a small waterfall on the other side though, so we cleaned up fairly well. The only other obstacle we encountered was a hoard of small children chasing us and asking for money. "Money," "bye-bye," and "thank you" appear to be the only English words that locals know in these parts. We get thanked a lot just for biking down the road. A couple of the kids even had a short speech rehearsed, as they stood at the edge of their fence in a row and recited in unison "Give us some money so we can buy clothes" in Spanish. It´s a bit awkward responding to such requests. When I told them I didn´t have money they started asking for clothes -- as if either of my two smelly shirts would even fit them... Obviously things are a little rough in Honduras compared to the States, but thankfully we haven´t encountered much extreme poverty. At least not as much as I expected. I´d like to do a little volunteer work once we settle up in Peru, I think.
The river of mud we had to wade through.
Me on the other side, looking pretty clean....
....except for my feet.
Anywho, we made it to La Entrada that evening and holed-up on the third floor of a hotel facing the main drag. The traffic was a bit noisy, so I went to sleep with my ear plugs in. Alas, those "construction worker orange" foam sound barriers did little to block out the 4 a.m. serenade that woke us. Mike ventured to the window and reported that a man had pulled up in a pick-up truck complete with two 4 ft. speakers and a microphone. He must have had a karaoke machine or something as well, because he had the accompanying tracks playing at top volume as he sang along. This man did not stop at singing one song, oh no. He sang a whole set of at least 5 songs. Meanwhile, Mike stood on our balcony screaming "¿Por qué, amigo? ¡¿¡Por qué!?!" (Por qué = why). I don´t know what woman would appreciate a serenade at that hour, but there was little we could do. Thank your lucky stars you live in a country where we have laws against things like that.
Check out the system this crazy man had set up. These speakers had approximately the output of those at our infamous Desert Party.
We woke on Wednesday a little reluctantly due to our interrupted sleep. We also realised that our route for the day was a bit too fuzzy. We didn´t have good info on the road ahead, so we hopped on a bus for a bit. The bus brought us to Nuevo Chamelecon and we took over from there on our bikes. We pedalled the last 30 kilometers to a town called El Progresso. It turned out to be one of the most Americanized towns we´ve been in on our whole vacation. It came complete with Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin´ Donuts, Burger King, KFC, Popeye´s, and our particular dinner choice -- Wendy´s. We both had a caesar salad and a baked potato. Unusual fare for Honduras.
Today we sweltered in the oppressive heat, but we made it to the coast. We are in Tela tonight. It is nice to see the ocean again, although the beaches here aren´t the prettiest. The water is incredibly warm though, and we went for an afternoon swim. Our plan was to move on to La Ceiba tomorrow and then the Bay Islands the following day, but we may have to revise that plan due to that bastard, Hurricane Dean. I guess we´ll just wait and see for now.
Here are some pics in the mean time:
A structure at the Copan Mayan ruins.
This is one of those Stellae I mentioned in my previous blog. It´s quite intricate. Originally the Stellae were painted as well.
This carving didn´t really seem to fit in with the rest of the decorations at Copan, but I thought it was cute.
There were a lot of macaws being kept at Copan and Mike got quite a few pics. Here´s a close-up.
And here they are just chillin´ on the fence.
Here´s a crazy construction project going on in Copan Ruinas. You see, in Honduras you always have more than enough workers bustling about. Unlike in the States where there are 5 supervisors and only one person actually working.
Okay, since I´m so impatient I´ll reveal the answers to both the Jeopardy-style game and the trivia question now. If you haven´t had a chance to guess yet and you wanted to, STOP READING NOW! The poll officially has one more day, so I´ll leave that be for now.
Drumroll, please.
First, the trivia question. According to our observations, the Xylophone is the most popular instrument in Guatemala. These aren´t your ordinary xylophones, however. Most of them are at least 8 feet long and they are played by 3 men simultaneously. At a music festival of sorts in Antigua we saw one being played by 2 men and a boy who was about 6 years old. Then, on our way between Chiquimulilla and Cuilapa we stopped for lunch and were surprised by 3 men practicing their xylophone next door. They´re beautiful instruments too. I´m so sorry we don´t have a picture of one...
And now the Jeopardy question. "How many used bars of soap did Mike and Jackie find in their hotel room in Esquintla, Guatemala?" You already know the answer, of course: "19 bars of soap". Many of you guessed that we needed that much soap to clean up; ironically, the soap actually prevented us from showering that night. A lot of times we can get pretty decent hotels for pretty cheap -- especially by U.S. standards. Every now and then we get exactly what we pay for though. With extremely limited options we chose this hotel, which was only about $6. The bed was okay and we had a fan in the room, but we decided against showering. It´s standard practice everywhere here for hotels to provide guests with a towel and a small bar of soap; it´s not necessarily as common to remove the used bars of soap from the showers though. Or to clean them, period. We peered in this particular bathroom to discover 19 partially used bars of soap covering the shower, the back of the toilet, the window ledge, and the floor. Gross.
I don´t think you can see all 19 bars of soap in this picture, but you get the idea. Now do you understand why we´re not always squeaky clean? Thank your lucky stars you live in a country where bleach not only has been invented, but is put to proper use.
P.S. I´ve been meaning to mention for a while that you are to disregard all ridiculous spelling errors. I´d use the handy spell-check feature, but since it´s for the Spanish language, nearly every word shows up as misspelled. Sorry!
Here´s an image from the National Hurricane Center with the projected path of the storm.
Tuesday we biked from Copan Ruinas to a town called La Entrada. Our guidebook claims that "something must have gone wrong for you to end up here," but we didn´t think it was that awful. The book is just biased against non-tourist towns.
Our journey to La Entrada was kind of interesting, so I´ll detail that before launching into the highlights of the town. I got my first flat tire of the trip, but it conveniently happened just feet from a good lunch spot. We ordered, patched the tube, and then ate our perfectly-timed meal. Shortly after lunch we had to wade our way through the aftermath of a small landslide which meant we got a little dirty. We managed to find a small waterfall on the other side though, so we cleaned up fairly well. The only other obstacle we encountered was a hoard of small children chasing us and asking for money. "Money," "bye-bye," and "thank you" appear to be the only English words that locals know in these parts. We get thanked a lot just for biking down the road. A couple of the kids even had a short speech rehearsed, as they stood at the edge of their fence in a row and recited in unison "Give us some money so we can buy clothes" in Spanish. It´s a bit awkward responding to such requests. When I told them I didn´t have money they started asking for clothes -- as if either of my two smelly shirts would even fit them... Obviously things are a little rough in Honduras compared to the States, but thankfully we haven´t encountered much extreme poverty. At least not as much as I expected. I´d like to do a little volunteer work once we settle up in Peru, I think.
The river of mud we had to wade through.
Me on the other side, looking pretty clean....
....except for my feet.
Anywho, we made it to La Entrada that evening and holed-up on the third floor of a hotel facing the main drag. The traffic was a bit noisy, so I went to sleep with my ear plugs in. Alas, those "construction worker orange" foam sound barriers did little to block out the 4 a.m. serenade that woke us. Mike ventured to the window and reported that a man had pulled up in a pick-up truck complete with two 4 ft. speakers and a microphone. He must have had a karaoke machine or something as well, because he had the accompanying tracks playing at top volume as he sang along. This man did not stop at singing one song, oh no. He sang a whole set of at least 5 songs. Meanwhile, Mike stood on our balcony screaming "¿Por qué, amigo? ¡¿¡Por qué!?!" (Por qué = why). I don´t know what woman would appreciate a serenade at that hour, but there was little we could do. Thank your lucky stars you live in a country where we have laws against things like that.
Check out the system this crazy man had set up. These speakers had approximately the output of those at our infamous Desert Party.
We woke on Wednesday a little reluctantly due to our interrupted sleep. We also realised that our route for the day was a bit too fuzzy. We didn´t have good info on the road ahead, so we hopped on a bus for a bit. The bus brought us to Nuevo Chamelecon and we took over from there on our bikes. We pedalled the last 30 kilometers to a town called El Progresso. It turned out to be one of the most Americanized towns we´ve been in on our whole vacation. It came complete with Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin´ Donuts, Burger King, KFC, Popeye´s, and our particular dinner choice -- Wendy´s. We both had a caesar salad and a baked potato. Unusual fare for Honduras.
Today we sweltered in the oppressive heat, but we made it to the coast. We are in Tela tonight. It is nice to see the ocean again, although the beaches here aren´t the prettiest. The water is incredibly warm though, and we went for an afternoon swim. Our plan was to move on to La Ceiba tomorrow and then the Bay Islands the following day, but we may have to revise that plan due to that bastard, Hurricane Dean. I guess we´ll just wait and see for now.
Here are some pics in the mean time:
A structure at the Copan Mayan ruins.
This is one of those Stellae I mentioned in my previous blog. It´s quite intricate. Originally the Stellae were painted as well.
This carving didn´t really seem to fit in with the rest of the decorations at Copan, but I thought it was cute.
There were a lot of macaws being kept at Copan and Mike got quite a few pics. Here´s a close-up.
And here they are just chillin´ on the fence.
Here´s a crazy construction project going on in Copan Ruinas. You see, in Honduras you always have more than enough workers bustling about. Unlike in the States where there are 5 supervisors and only one person actually working.
Okay, since I´m so impatient I´ll reveal the answers to both the Jeopardy-style game and the trivia question now. If you haven´t had a chance to guess yet and you wanted to, STOP READING NOW! The poll officially has one more day, so I´ll leave that be for now.
Drumroll, please.
First, the trivia question. According to our observations, the Xylophone is the most popular instrument in Guatemala. These aren´t your ordinary xylophones, however. Most of them are at least 8 feet long and they are played by 3 men simultaneously. At a music festival of sorts in Antigua we saw one being played by 2 men and a boy who was about 6 years old. Then, on our way between Chiquimulilla and Cuilapa we stopped for lunch and were surprised by 3 men practicing their xylophone next door. They´re beautiful instruments too. I´m so sorry we don´t have a picture of one...
And now the Jeopardy question. "How many used bars of soap did Mike and Jackie find in their hotel room in Esquintla, Guatemala?" You already know the answer, of course: "19 bars of soap". Many of you guessed that we needed that much soap to clean up; ironically, the soap actually prevented us from showering that night. A lot of times we can get pretty decent hotels for pretty cheap -- especially by U.S. standards. Every now and then we get exactly what we pay for though. With extremely limited options we chose this hotel, which was only about $6. The bed was okay and we had a fan in the room, but we decided against showering. It´s standard practice everywhere here for hotels to provide guests with a towel and a small bar of soap; it´s not necessarily as common to remove the used bars of soap from the showers though. Or to clean them, period. We peered in this particular bathroom to discover 19 partially used bars of soap covering the shower, the back of the toilet, the window ledge, and the floor. Gross.
I don´t think you can see all 19 bars of soap in this picture, but you get the idea. Now do you understand why we´re not always squeaky clean? Thank your lucky stars you live in a country where bleach not only has been invented, but is put to proper use.
P.S. I´ve been meaning to mention for a while that you are to disregard all ridiculous spelling errors. I´d use the handy spell-check feature, but since it´s for the Spanish language, nearly every word shows up as misspelled. Sorry!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Hellooooo Honduras!
We had a lovely day biking our way into Honduras. There were a couple of hills, but they weren't nearly as bad as the ones a few days ago. We were a bit disappointed when the border-crossing officials refused to stamp our passports though. They claim that the stamp that got us into Guatemala is good for Honduras too. Bummer. Between the Guatemalan exit fee and the Honduran entrance fee we also spent $8 that a sign shortly after the border crossing informed us we shouldn't have to pay. Corrupt officials and poor sign placement. We have kind of come to expect that though. Ah well, at least it was only $8.
We ended up in Copan Ruinas, a small town right next to the Copan Mayan ruins. We spent today exploring the ruins, which will be our last for multiple reasons. For one, this is the farthest south the Mayans settled -- there are no other Mayan ruins in Honduras (or Nicaragua or Costa Rica for that matter). Also, I think we're a bit ruined out. Copan lacks the publicity of Chichen Itza (it's no 8th wonder of the world) and the wild grandeur of Tikal. It is famous for the copious amounts of Stellae (engraved stone statues complete with images and glyphs), however, which are in decent shape considering the centuries of weather damage.
Tomorrow we start our ride across Honduras. We'll be heading north toward the Gulf coast where we plan to do some diving. I'll probably be posting a little more regularly from now on since school starts next week and I'll have to be online in order to teach, grade, etc. Sorry I don't have any new photos for you this time -- I promise to get some posted soon. Also, I'm anxious to reveal the answers to the latest games and poll questions, so don't forget to submit your guesses ASAP.
We ended up in Copan Ruinas, a small town right next to the Copan Mayan ruins. We spent today exploring the ruins, which will be our last for multiple reasons. For one, this is the farthest south the Mayans settled -- there are no other Mayan ruins in Honduras (or Nicaragua or Costa Rica for that matter). Also, I think we're a bit ruined out. Copan lacks the publicity of Chichen Itza (it's no 8th wonder of the world) and the wild grandeur of Tikal. It is famous for the copious amounts of Stellae (engraved stone statues complete with images and glyphs), however, which are in decent shape considering the centuries of weather damage.
Tomorrow we start our ride across Honduras. We'll be heading north toward the Gulf coast where we plan to do some diving. I'll probably be posting a little more regularly from now on since school starts next week and I'll have to be online in order to teach, grade, etc. Sorry I don't have any new photos for you this time -- I promise to get some posted soon. Also, I'm anxious to reveal the answers to the latest games and poll questions, so don't forget to submit your guesses ASAP.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Don´t Cry For Me Guatemala
So we´re about to leave Guatemala -- this is the eve of our departure. It´s been fantastic, and I highly recommend it to anyone (especially Tikal, which was my favorite spot). Tomorrow we cross into Honduras where we plan to do some scuba diving, river rafting, and (surprise, surprise!) biking. Who knows how things will work out though, so I´ll try not to get ahead of myself.
Today we opted for a bus journey since we didn´t have any info about the road between Jutiapa and Chiquimula. It looked to be a two-day journey by bike without any good sleeping spots, so we cheated. Didn´t work out quite as planned though. As you may have already realized, the town we´re in tonight (Chiquimula) looks and sounds a lot like the town we were in a couple of nights ago (Chiquimulilla). The people running the buses don´t deal in fine distinctions, so despite the fact that we repeated our intended destination several times, we found ourselves trapped on a bus heading back the way that we had biked yesterday. We went about an hour in the wrong direction before we got to a town large enough to have a bus terminal of sorts. We jumped off the wrong-way bus there and boarded a new bus (much more crowded) for Ipala. Ipala, of course, was not our destination, but it was the closest we could get after having gone an hour in the opposite direction. We switched to a minibus in Ipala and eventually made it to Chiquimula. *Sigh*
Chiquimula is pretty close to the Honduras border, so we might just bike ourselves across tomorrow. This morning I was ready for a day or two off my bike seat, but after our bus fiasco I´m perfectly happy to pedal my way.
Here are a few more pics from the past couple of weeks:
A hazy volcano shot at Lago de Atitlan. I like the way the leaves frame the volcano in the background.
I´m a big fan of the dock shots, too.
Here´s a funky tree on the lake.
A cute boat on Lago de Atitlan. Initially we were disappointed by the abundance of motorized boats and giant houseboats, but apparently some of the locals still paddle themselves around.
This is one of those monkey men we saw in Santiago-whatever a while back. I didn´t have a good pic before, but Mike busted out Photoshop and zoomed in to give you this image. I´m not really sure what the story is, but there were other people in similar costumes with people masks on. The people masks looked an awful lot like the Burger King guy in the TV commercials. I think they were supposed to be conquistadors, but don´t quote me on that.
My next blog should come to you from somewhere in Honduras; I hope you´re as excited as I am. Don´t forget to put in your guesses for the latest poll, trivia question, and Jeopardy game. Also, don´t forget about our "Travel Map" linked to the left. Google Earth is pretty awesome and you can kind of make out some of the mountains we´ve been torturing ourselves with. Our Guatemala travels look a little haphazard, but you can look to the key and my descriptions to see when we were where (Google apparently changed their symbology though, so don´t get thrown off by the different color bus symbols). Thanks to everyone who is troubling themselves to keep in touch with us and to keep up with our blog. We miss you!
Today we opted for a bus journey since we didn´t have any info about the road between Jutiapa and Chiquimula. It looked to be a two-day journey by bike without any good sleeping spots, so we cheated. Didn´t work out quite as planned though. As you may have already realized, the town we´re in tonight (Chiquimula) looks and sounds a lot like the town we were in a couple of nights ago (Chiquimulilla). The people running the buses don´t deal in fine distinctions, so despite the fact that we repeated our intended destination several times, we found ourselves trapped on a bus heading back the way that we had biked yesterday. We went about an hour in the wrong direction before we got to a town large enough to have a bus terminal of sorts. We jumped off the wrong-way bus there and boarded a new bus (much more crowded) for Ipala. Ipala, of course, was not our destination, but it was the closest we could get after having gone an hour in the opposite direction. We switched to a minibus in Ipala and eventually made it to Chiquimula. *Sigh*
Chiquimula is pretty close to the Honduras border, so we might just bike ourselves across tomorrow. This morning I was ready for a day or two off my bike seat, but after our bus fiasco I´m perfectly happy to pedal my way.
Here are a few more pics from the past couple of weeks:
A hazy volcano shot at Lago de Atitlan. I like the way the leaves frame the volcano in the background.
I´m a big fan of the dock shots, too.
Here´s a funky tree on the lake.
A cute boat on Lago de Atitlan. Initially we were disappointed by the abundance of motorized boats and giant houseboats, but apparently some of the locals still paddle themselves around.
This is one of those monkey men we saw in Santiago-whatever a while back. I didn´t have a good pic before, but Mike busted out Photoshop and zoomed in to give you this image. I´m not really sure what the story is, but there were other people in similar costumes with people masks on. The people masks looked an awful lot like the Burger King guy in the TV commercials. I think they were supposed to be conquistadors, but don´t quote me on that.
My next blog should come to you from somewhere in Honduras; I hope you´re as excited as I am. Don´t forget to put in your guesses for the latest poll, trivia question, and Jeopardy game. Also, don´t forget about our "Travel Map" linked to the left. Google Earth is pretty awesome and you can kind of make out some of the mountains we´ve been torturing ourselves with. Our Guatemala travels look a little haphazard, but you can look to the key and my descriptions to see when we were where (Google apparently changed their symbology though, so don´t get thrown off by the different color bus symbols). Thanks to everyone who is troubling themselves to keep in touch with us and to keep up with our blog. We miss you!
Friday, August 10, 2007
By Boat, Bus, and Bicycle
It's been a long time since I updated my blog, so this will undoubtedly be an extra long post. I want you to know that not only haven't I been blogging, but I haven't been showering either. I've taken only 2 showers since the last time I posted a message. You can't take things like the Internet and clean bathrooms for granted in Guatemala. Anywho, I believe we left off in Antigua...
On Sunday Mike and I took a 2.5 hour bus ride West toward Panajachel, a touristy town on the banks of Lago de Atitlan (LdA). LdA is a rather large lake formed in the crater left by a volcano that blew its top some long ago time. "They" say the ash blew as far away as Florida. LdA is now surrounded by several new volcanos that aren't quite as active. I'm sure the view would have been astounding if it had been clear either of the days we were there; unfortunately, the volcanos were almost continually shrouded in clouds. Nevertheless, the lake still provided an interesting change of scenery.
The following day we left Panajachel by boat to check out one of the villages on the other side of the lake in hopes of a better view and fewer tourists. San Marcos was an interesting little town dedicated to hippie pursuits such as yoga, vegetarianism, reiki, tarot readings, etc. One hotel featured pyramid shaped buildings aligned on the cardinal points where guests could stay while taking a one-month course on something related to the moon and goddesses and such. Turns out the town is still touristy but in a different kind of way.
We left LdA on Tuesday, first taking a boat back to Panajachel, then a bus back to Antigua. We retreived our bikes, and even though it was already almost 2:00 we set off. This turned out to be a good decision since we got quite a few miles in on our way to Honduras. The ride to Esquintla was nearly all downhill (alas, we learned later that what goes down must come up). Our hotel was less than charming, but we survived.
The following day consisted of another pretty easy ride to Chiquimulilla. We thought we could go on from there to Cuilapa, but we quickly revised our plan when we discovered that Cuilapa was about 2000 ft. higher in altitude. We found an interesting little eco-park outside of Chiquimulilla and stayed there instead. Although it was overpriced, it was an interesting spot. It had a mini-zoo, some interesting natural pools, and some very hospitable owners. Concerned with our inability to converse with them at length (Emergency situation!), they pulled their fifteen year-old, English-speaking nephew out of school so that he could sit and talk to us. He had spent a year and a half in Los Angeles and was pretty fluent. We had already retired to our cabin for the evening when we heard a knock and he explained that he had come to talk to us. He was also assigned the task in the morning at breakfast. We learned about how his mother practically disowned him, how he wants to be a tour guide, and how he teaches his English teacher how to pronounce things. Fascinating.
Our next biking day was dreadfully hot. And painfully uphill. Miraculously we made it to Cuilapa before dark. I don't know that I want to elaborate much more than that. I did, however, drink one coffee, one and a half Cokes, one bottle of Tang and 4 bottles of water without using the restroom. That's how hot it was. My elbows were sweating.
Today we biked to Jutiapa. We earned ourselves a police escort for a good chunk of the way (a total of 60 km) because there seems to have been some activity from the banditos recently. We were biking along, occassionally spotting men in camoflage with guns in the forest (not unusual since everyone carries a firearm here), when the local cops decided to tail us for 20 kilometers or so. This made me a little nervous, but in reality the banditos are just as likely to board a bus to steal all of your stuff. And the locals look out for us. We are planning on taking a bus the rest of the way to Honduras though since there aren't any good places to stop for the night.
Well, I think that brings things up to speed, but I have a few pics and some fun games to add as well. Here goes:
Some locals in Panajachel.
She looks ancient, doesn't she?
Boats and oranges at Lago de Atitlan.
A dock with one of the volcanos in the background.
One of those pyramid houses at the hippie hotel.
We've had meals at some interesting establishments (such as the "Doggy Burger"), but we drew the line at eating rabid dogs...
Okay, now here's a new game. I'm going to give you an answer, Jeopardy style, and you get to guess what the question was! Sound fun? I hope so. Okay, so here's the answer:
19 bars of soap
I'll give you a few days to submit your questions, then I'll supply the real question along with an amusing anecdote and a photo.
I was going to include this next question as a poll, but since the poll feature was out of order for so long and I still want to include my last poll, I'll just post my new question here as a trivia game:
What (according to our observations) seems to be the most popular instrument in Guatemala?
A) the tambourine
B) the xylophone
C) the flute
D) bongo drums
E) the fiddle
F) maracas
You can just guess the answer to this bit o' trivia in your response to this post as well. Hopefully I'll get the poll feature working again soon.
In other news, Mike and I have booked our flight back to the States. We will be making an appearance in Chicago on Wednesday, September 26th -- a week and a half before the wedding. Mike may go straight on to Buffalo to visit the fam, but I'll be heading to Iowa City that very night. We'll be finishing this leg of our journey in San Jose, Costa Rica. We're looking forward to more choices in clothing; showing off our ridiculous, matching sandal tans; and, of course, seeing everyone again!
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Antigua
We´re nearing the end of our stay in Antigua, as we will be heading to Lago de Atitlan tomorrow. We plan to leave our bikes here for a few days and make the round-trip by bus. Then we´ll be pedaling our way to Honduras. But I´m getting ahead of myself...back to Antigua.
Antigua from Cerro de la Cruz -- a hill overlooking the city.
Our Spanish lessons this past week went well, although neither of us is fluent yet. Nuts! Guess we´ll have to keep at it. Our home stay was also quite comfortable, and we ate well this past week. Guatemala has a few strange vegetables, though. We encountered a new one that looks like a potato but isn´t. It has a pit of sorts in the middle. It´s a little gross -- especially if you´re expecting a potato.
Antigua is an interesting town. The streets are constructed entirely of cobblestone. The buildings are colorful and mysterious. When you´re walking down the street you merely see tall walls with large wooden doors. We quickly discovered, however, that these doors more often than not lead to immense courtyards surrounded by several cafes, art museums, shops, etc. This type of construction is new to me, and I like the way it makes the city seem secretive and surprising. I don´t have much else to add, so I´ll let Mike´s pics do some talking.
Carriage in the main square (note the cobblestones).
This is a laugh! Did you see those cobblestones?
One of the landmarks of Antigua.
Pretty tapestries.
And now for "There Must Be Giants Living Here," a series of photos featuring the doors of Antigua Guatemala by Michael Zysman:
"Doors 1"
"Doors 2"
"Doors 3"
"Doors 4"
"Doors 5" (yep, that´s a Burger King -- Antigua has very discrete signage)
"Doors 6"
"Doorknocker"
Phew! Lots of photos to upload! I have one more left, though. I know you´ve been anxiously awaiting the answer to the "guess what´s in this photo" game. Well, Ma was the closest with her unofficial guess that the photo looked like sheep testicles. The picture does, in fact, feature howler monkey balls. They´re pretty weird because howler monkeys have very black fur and even their faces are very black. Those white balls really stand out. Mike has helpfully circled them in a zoomed-out version of the photo I originally posted:
Gross, huh?
Well, that´s it for now, but note the new poll question to the left. Antigua has some pretty dramatic security measures and our home stay casa is no different. Take a stab at the correct answer and I´ll fill you in in a week or so.
Antigua from Cerro de la Cruz -- a hill overlooking the city.
Our Spanish lessons this past week went well, although neither of us is fluent yet. Nuts! Guess we´ll have to keep at it. Our home stay was also quite comfortable, and we ate well this past week. Guatemala has a few strange vegetables, though. We encountered a new one that looks like a potato but isn´t. It has a pit of sorts in the middle. It´s a little gross -- especially if you´re expecting a potato.
Antigua is an interesting town. The streets are constructed entirely of cobblestone. The buildings are colorful and mysterious. When you´re walking down the street you merely see tall walls with large wooden doors. We quickly discovered, however, that these doors more often than not lead to immense courtyards surrounded by several cafes, art museums, shops, etc. This type of construction is new to me, and I like the way it makes the city seem secretive and surprising. I don´t have much else to add, so I´ll let Mike´s pics do some talking.
Carriage in the main square (note the cobblestones).
This is a laugh! Did you see those cobblestones?
One of the landmarks of Antigua.
Pretty tapestries.
And now for "There Must Be Giants Living Here," a series of photos featuring the doors of Antigua Guatemala by Michael Zysman:
"Doors 1"
"Doors 2"
"Doors 3"
"Doors 4"
"Doors 5" (yep, that´s a Burger King -- Antigua has very discrete signage)
"Doors 6"
"Doorknocker"
Phew! Lots of photos to upload! I have one more left, though. I know you´ve been anxiously awaiting the answer to the "guess what´s in this photo" game. Well, Ma was the closest with her unofficial guess that the photo looked like sheep testicles. The picture does, in fact, feature howler monkey balls. They´re pretty weird because howler monkeys have very black fur and even their faces are very black. Those white balls really stand out. Mike has helpfully circled them in a zoomed-out version of the photo I originally posted:
Gross, huh?
Well, that´s it for now, but note the new poll question to the left. Antigua has some pretty dramatic security measures and our home stay casa is no different. Take a stab at the correct answer and I´ll fill you in in a week or so.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
GringoLand!
I feel semi-settled for a change since Mike and I have stopped in Antigua for the week.
After our brief stop in El Chol we set off on our last day's journey to Antigua on Sunday. We had about 70 km to bike and we wanted to make it to town by 6 pm in order to get the scoop from our language school. Ha! After a couple hours of biking on steep hilly gravel we'd made it 10 km to a town called Granados. Realizing we'd never make it to Antigua in time at that rate, we hopped into the back of a pick-up truck with our bikes and 7 other men and headed for San Juan. This was as far as the truck was going, but it got us significantly closer to Antigua. We thought we could bike the rest of the way.
Aerial view of the Sunday market in El Chol.
This plan was actually working fine until we made it to the town of Santiago-something. We were waylaid by a huge carnival. Tons of people filled the streets, including some who were 20 feet tall! We saw dancing monkey-people, Mayans in traditional dress, ferris wheels that were powered by tractors and probably banned from the States 40 years ago, and various other hand-cranked tetanus-inducing carnival rides.
20 ft. people walking down the streets of Santiago-whatever.
Some carnival goers. A few of them are wearing the Mayan clothing typical of the area. I think we were almost as interesting to the crowd as the dancing monkey-people, whom we don't really have any good pictures of...
Treacherous ferris wheel.
Would you put your child on these rides??
As we shuffled through the crowds we tried in vain to locate the way out of town. Our search brought us to a dump by the river where a women was inexplicably hanging out with her children and some vicious dogs. I kept my distance, but Mike thought he'd poke around in the garbage for the answers to our dilemma. He was nearly eaten by one of the dogs in the process, but he came away with the brilliant insight that maybe we ought to just catch a bus to Antigua before it got dark rather than camp in the garbage dump.
Alas, no buses to Antigua. Instead we caught one to San Lucas which was halfway. There, a helpful local told us that he thought we could bike the rest of the way to Antigua before dark because it was close and all downhill. So it was. We made it before dark, but not before our Spanish school had closed for the day. We found a hotel for the night and got up early the next day to go to class.
Mike and I are both taking 4 hours of one-on-one Spanish instruction every morning this week. We're also staying with a local family in a large and comfortable house. Margarita is our friendly and helpful house mom. We get three meals a day at the house, and so far they've been fantastic. I can't say that I'm absorbing loads of Spanish and that I'll be fluent by the end of the week, but I'm having fun anyway and it's nice to rest from our mobile lifestyle. We actually did our first load of laundry since we started our trip. So nice to have clean clothes!
Antigua is a tourist town if ever there was one. You can see just as many gringo's walking the streets as locals. Most people speak English. We actually passed a hotel that cost $165 U.S. a night! Outrageous! (Our homestay accomodations plus 3 meals is a whopping $10 a day.) The highlight of this being such a touristy town is that I was finally able to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in English! I'll be finished with the book by tonight.
For my birthday yesterday we went out for dessert after dinner. There are plenty of cute cafes here and we found some tasty cheesecake. Mike bought me the HP book the day before as an early birthday present (not to mention the tickets to the John Mayer concert we went to before we left). And, really, what else could I need or want? I'm already having the time of my life traveling through Central America! Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes and to everyone who's keeping in touch through this blog. I miss you all!
Okay. Now for the answer to the latest poll.
'Dis Da Fi Wi Chicken' is Kriol for 'This is our chicken' according to our hosts at the Parrot Nest. Litterally, 'This the for we chicken'. Mike's pleased that he got so many votes for his contribution 'This is the finest white man's chicken'. Thanks for playing!
I'll be revealling the subject of the mystery picture in my next post, so you have one last chance to guess. TTFN!
After our brief stop in El Chol we set off on our last day's journey to Antigua on Sunday. We had about 70 km to bike and we wanted to make it to town by 6 pm in order to get the scoop from our language school. Ha! After a couple hours of biking on steep hilly gravel we'd made it 10 km to a town called Granados. Realizing we'd never make it to Antigua in time at that rate, we hopped into the back of a pick-up truck with our bikes and 7 other men and headed for San Juan. This was as far as the truck was going, but it got us significantly closer to Antigua. We thought we could bike the rest of the way.
Aerial view of the Sunday market in El Chol.
This plan was actually working fine until we made it to the town of Santiago-something. We were waylaid by a huge carnival. Tons of people filled the streets, including some who were 20 feet tall! We saw dancing monkey-people, Mayans in traditional dress, ferris wheels that were powered by tractors and probably banned from the States 40 years ago, and various other hand-cranked tetanus-inducing carnival rides.
20 ft. people walking down the streets of Santiago-whatever.
Some carnival goers. A few of them are wearing the Mayan clothing typical of the area. I think we were almost as interesting to the crowd as the dancing monkey-people, whom we don't really have any good pictures of...
Treacherous ferris wheel.
Would you put your child on these rides??
As we shuffled through the crowds we tried in vain to locate the way out of town. Our search brought us to a dump by the river where a women was inexplicably hanging out with her children and some vicious dogs. I kept my distance, but Mike thought he'd poke around in the garbage for the answers to our dilemma. He was nearly eaten by one of the dogs in the process, but he came away with the brilliant insight that maybe we ought to just catch a bus to Antigua before it got dark rather than camp in the garbage dump.
Alas, no buses to Antigua. Instead we caught one to San Lucas which was halfway. There, a helpful local told us that he thought we could bike the rest of the way to Antigua before dark because it was close and all downhill. So it was. We made it before dark, but not before our Spanish school had closed for the day. We found a hotel for the night and got up early the next day to go to class.
Mike and I are both taking 4 hours of one-on-one Spanish instruction every morning this week. We're also staying with a local family in a large and comfortable house. Margarita is our friendly and helpful house mom. We get three meals a day at the house, and so far they've been fantastic. I can't say that I'm absorbing loads of Spanish and that I'll be fluent by the end of the week, but I'm having fun anyway and it's nice to rest from our mobile lifestyle. We actually did our first load of laundry since we started our trip. So nice to have clean clothes!
Antigua is a tourist town if ever there was one. You can see just as many gringo's walking the streets as locals. Most people speak English. We actually passed a hotel that cost $165 U.S. a night! Outrageous! (Our homestay accomodations plus 3 meals is a whopping $10 a day.) The highlight of this being such a touristy town is that I was finally able to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in English! I'll be finished with the book by tonight.
For my birthday yesterday we went out for dessert after dinner. There are plenty of cute cafes here and we found some tasty cheesecake. Mike bought me the HP book the day before as an early birthday present (not to mention the tickets to the John Mayer concert we went to before we left). And, really, what else could I need or want? I'm already having the time of my life traveling through Central America! Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes and to everyone who's keeping in touch through this blog. I miss you all!
Okay. Now for the answer to the latest poll.
'Dis Da Fi Wi Chicken' is Kriol for 'This is our chicken' according to our hosts at the Parrot Nest. Litterally, 'This the for we chicken'. Mike's pleased that he got so many votes for his contribution 'This is the finest white man's chicken'. Thanks for playing!
I'll be revealling the subject of the mystery picture in my next post, so you have one last chance to guess. TTFN!
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