Monday, January 09, 2006

Double back to Antigua

Deja vu all over again, we are back in Antigua after a whirlwind weekend in Tikal. It was quite an experience. It was wonderful to fly over most of Guatemala and imagine all the hours on a bus we weren´t riding on.
We arrived early in the morning and took a taxi up to El Remate where we met Don David, the owner of Hotel Don David. He is extremely old and extremely nice and it was a good introduction to northern Guat. We hitchhiked to Tikal and spent the rest of the day in the ruins. They are not much older than Don David. But prettier.
We hiked all over and up and down and there were monkeys and spiders and crocodiles and butterflies the size of small airplanes. On the hitchhike back we rode in the back of a pickup with a Guatemalan who had moved to LA to be a lawyer, crazy. So we all told stories all the way home while bugs went up our noses and the night air cooled off considerably to a chilly 68F.
The next day we caught the chicken bus back to Tikal and stayed at the Jaguar Inn. Each bed has a jaguar skin comforter on it and they have a trained jaguar that takes you to your room. Well, that isn´t quite true but I had high hopes. Their coffee was good though and the showers were hot. We kicked down mucho dinero (that means a lot of money Philip) for a guide this morning and he took us on a super private jungle trek at 5am to see the sunrise. We wore traditional Mayan skirts and I sacrificed several millipedes on the hike in. The sunrise was incredible from atop Temple IV and as soon as the sky light up howler monkeys began screaming back and forth and it sounded like King Kong times a lot of monkeys. It was loud but we weren´t scared.
After sunrise we learned more about the ruins and traditions and global positioning and the solar system and eating plants and harvesting allspice and it was all very amazing touristy fun stuff. Then we caught the bus back to the airport and here we are in an internet cafe in Antigua listening to¨American Band¨on the radio and getting ready for dinner. Tomorrow we are off to Honduras at 3am on the super First Class Hedman Alas bus and I can´t wait to see what the movie is.
Hope all ya´ll are safe and sound as a pound,

Friday, January 06, 2006

Back in Antigua

We survived the hellacious bus ride from Lago de Atitlan to Antigua once again and are now back amongst the cobblestone streets of this majestic colonial town. We picked up a few more gifts and booked all our flights and buses so we are set for the final week of travel.

Tomorrow we leave for Tikal at 4 am, the last city of the Mayans, and should be there by 9am then we return to Antigua the night of the 9th if the flesh eating Toucans dont carry us off. The morning of the 10th we leave at 3.30am for Copan, just inside Hoduras, where we will spend the day chasing monkeys and then we are back to San Pedro Sula where we will spend a maddening hour in the duty free lounge trying to find quality gifts for under $5 to bring back to all the people we care so much about.

Gosh darn it we love you all. Hope the snow is deep and the mountains are steep where ever you are...

Hasta pronto,

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Lago de Atitlan

We are still in Casa del Mundo and loving it. We were begining to worry about putting on too much weight this trip but here at la Casa there are about 4 million stairs so I have cleverly devised a regimen in which all food is placed at the top of the steps and all drink at the bottom. It keeps Ang and I fit and healthy. We are currently working on our cliff diving skills and our tans so there is much going on. Last night we fired up the resorts wood burning hot tub and listened to the crickets around the lake as the stars shone bright overhead and the volcanoe rumbled in the distance. Today we took a boat to the nearby market and shopped for presents. I hope everyone needs keychains...

Gotta run, there's special prices today only!

Monday, January 02, 2006

Feliz Año Nuevo

Hello all, we have survived the New Years festivities here but it wasn´t easy. We went to the city center of San Pedro del Lago on new years eve to check out the entertainment and it was quite a sight. A band from out of town had set up and we were treated to some great ranchero music with a horn section, two marimbas and enough bass to crack my sternum. There were three guys doing vocals and they all had the La Bamba look going is they danced and sang. There was enough hair gel to deep fry a turkey.
Of course the crowd was 99% Mayan so they didn´t exactly do the freak or anything like that. Mostly there was lots of standing and staring and drinking. The locals like to send fireworks in all directions, not just up, so by the end of the night we were pretty gun shy of anything more than a burning cigarette. They also don´t really care about pretty colors in their fireworks, here, it is all about the concussion. The result is that the city sounds like it has been under siege for the last 24 hours. There are massive explosions 6 or 7 times an hour. We hear a hollow "thwoop!" as a projectile leaves its cardboard canon and then about 5 seconds later an explosion identical in strength to the bombs used to check avalanche safety at the Alyeska Resort. Crazy. Another one just went off as I write and it´s the 2nd of January, maybe it never ends.
After the New Year officially arrived we headed back to our hotel and met a missionary up late and looking for people to talk to. He was from southeast Texas and we talked with him for about 2 hours about everything from the Devil to the breeding lineage of his pet Chihuahua Gonzalez who ran around our feet in intense fear the whole time. It was very strange.
Today we boat across Lake Atitlan to Jaibalito, a small cliffside village where an Alaskan has established a hotel (lacasadelmundo.com)with kayaks for rent and a wood fired hot tub. It should be good. Daytime temperatures are well into the 80´s now and at night lightening storms light the hillsides of the surrounding volcanoes. It is quite amazing.