Guatemala

First stop....Guatemala City. A HUGE city of concrete houses, dirty air, and streets that all look the same. The place is quite modern, and sadly its being over run by McDonalds, Burger King and the likes. All of Guatemala seems to be on a hill. Its beautiful terrain.....but....we left as soon as we could for Tikal....stopping in Santa Elaina and Flores.



Santa Elaina was filled with local markets and wasn't targeted towards tourists, which is just what we like, but Flores is very touristy and its quite quaint looking. It was strange though, it was like a ghost town when we were there....not many people.

This is the strangest fruit I think i've ever seen. Its actually quite tasty but a little too sour for my taste buds.

The natives are restless! haha. This guy probably wanted to charge tourists to take pictures, but he has no idea I was zooming in on him from a long ways away. Hopefully he doesn't see this website and send me a bill!!!

Great view of the main plaza at Tikal! So cool!

The bigger temples they won't let you climb, but other than those few we were free to climb on everything, pretending to be Laura Croft the whole time.

An ancient face.

I think some tourists died trying to climb this stair case a while back, so now you can't climb these ones. They are way steep and slippery. It poured almost the whole time we were there, and so was doubly slick. The stairs are about 1ft tall each. Good workout!

At the top of this one was super scary. It was pouring rain and there wasn't much standing room between you and the wildest slippery slide i could ever imagine.

On the temples you couldn't climb they had some wooden staircases so you could go to the top. Strangely I didn't feel any safer on these than I would have on the stone steps. They were just as steep, but fortunately had a railing. It felt like climbing a really tall ladder. Here we are on the way down, inching backwards in the rain, Heather trying not to slip on her rain coat and Kory trying to keep his flip flops on! Took us a while to get down.

This is a view from the tallest of the temples. As we climbed the rain lifted and there was a cloudy mist all over the forest that was breathtaking. You could see all the other temples out in the distance poking up from the jungle. Its easy to see how these huge things could have been buried in the forest, unseen for hundreds of years.

So we were walking along and in the side of one of the temples was a little wooden hobbit door with a lock on it. Being locked and all we were naturally curious, and being guatemala, the lock wasn't all that secure. I was able to wedge my camera into the door and take a picture with my flash.......this is what I saw. Not quite a rotting mummy with jewels all over it, but cool nonetheless.

Just another piece of the ruins. We got to climb all over this one. this place reminds me of Apocalypto and we couldn't help but imagine sacrified heads rolling down every single staircase we saw.

This gives a good idea of what they have to do to uncover these things. You can see the staircase on the right is still covered in dirt.....and they have to do a lot of work to make them look like they do. All the white stuff is added to the original structure to re-create the original version.

I'm not really sure what these things at the bottom are.....maybe tombs, but i'd like to imagine they are for sacrificing virgins to the angry gods!

Yet another blocked place that I couldn't resist sneaking into. I chickened out from going further though because it was really creepy and I thought I might possibly get cursed if I did. I hate curses so I ran away :)

This is just another of many views from the bus. So much of Guatemala looks like this and it looks waaaaaay too much like southern China. Very beautiful place.

Just off the bus in Panajachel, on our way to the boat to San Marco. Can you see the volcano

on the other side of Lake Atitlan?
A view from the boat. So I guess this lake used to be a HUGE volcano that exploded millions of years ago, and water eventually filled the crater, but smaller volcanos were formed around the rim and are still there today. The cliffs are very steep, and to get to the other towns on the shore you have to take a boat.....i'm not sure if driving to them is even possible.

Two of the three volcanos that are on the lake. The 3rd is behind one of these.

You American's may find this one humorous......

Antigua with its quaint and accutely unpleasant cobblestone roads. Quaint if your just looking, unpleasant if you are walking on or driving on them.

Isn't this a refreshing break from the peeing male statues in most places? I quite enjoyed it.

This is an indoor market that I think was created for the tourists who hate being harassed to buy stuff. All prices are marked and there is NO bargaining. It was a little refreshing, and the stuff in here was really cool, but bargaining is fun!

The first part of our hike to the volcano. It was nice and green, tropical, humid and steep as HELL!!! After my bout of diahrea the night before (yes, i'm using that as an excuse) this was an incredibly difficult hike!!! Very steep and slippery in places. I was the one bringing up the rear....I admit it!!!! After about 45 min. it leveled out and was quite nice.....then......

We entered the realm of Mordor. Dark and misty with the most difficult terrain i've ever climbed. Everything was black volcanic rock, ranging in size from gravel size to huge boulders. Quite frankly the gravel was the hardest to negociate because we were the only smart ones who decided to wear sandals instead of boots. Our feet got a good exfoliation, a little TOO good at times.

Can you see the pain in our eyes? By this time I was exhausted, and I think I speak for the group when I say the hardest part was yet to come!

Finally, after scrambling, falling, slipping, and cursing we made it to the top. As we were climbing up you could feel the heat pouring out of the cracks between the very rocks you were standing on. At times you could look down and see magma under the rocks. At other times a gust would come and blow the hot air onto your ankles causing you to jump as fast as you could to the next rock. Lava is REALLY hot. At the VERY top we were standing right next to the actual lava flows. Running down the side of the mountain, making their own little paths. We were only feet away and couldn't help but poke it with a stick and throw tissues into it.

This was luckily the worst of my injuries. There were so many circumstances that could have been deadly here and so i'm pretty fortunate that I only had a lava rock avalanche on my ankle. Cut up feet is not so bad. Boiled off skin would have sucked though!

Guatemala rocked. One awesome adventure and lots of bus rides. Its a beautiful place, and not nearly as scary as the skeptics will tell you.





Roasting marshmellows in a hot crevice. mmmmmm.

Okay, so I saved the best for last. Now if you don't know my history with vines, let me fill you in. My first attempt was in Nicaragua, in the Selva Negra rain forest. I had been thinking pretty much since I was old enough to watch Jungle Book how cool it would be to swing from a vine. My first attempt was pretty weak and just resulted in a broken vine. Totally unsuccesful. So with a partially broken vine swinging spirit, we moved on. The second attempt nearly broke me physically and emotionally. (Stop laughing family). We were driving through Costa Rica and I saw the perfect vine. A nice little clearning with a leafy ground......and a NICE looking vine hanging down. So I jumped out and gave the vine a tug......seemed sturdy....another tug....ok. So I was going for it this time, I had to because I had an audience. So I backed up and prepared to launch. As I swung across the clearning, my feet sticking straight out, I thought I had done it, but just then the vine snapped, and down I came, right onto my butt. To add insult to injury the 2 inch thick vine came whipping down and smacked me in the head. I had failed. I now knew that Jungle Book was NOT based on facts. How upsetting.

SOOOOO as you watch this video you must understand how scared I was to try once again to swing on a vine. Kory did it first, so at least I knew it would support short people. His swing put mine to shame and thats why its not posted. So don't make fun of the smallness of my swing now that you know the whole story......and THAT is my disclaimer for the anti-climax of my swinging.