Guate Guate Guate

Oh Guatemala...

It has sure been an experience here - absolutely gorgeous, from incredible landscapes to all the lovely very colorful indigenous dress, but also a challenge to get some to talk straight to and lots of 'gringo' prices.

After the beautiful Tikal experience, we took a shuttle bus to get to Semuc Champe. Well, almost anyway, we got to a town called Coban instead because there was an indigenous protest over a dam being put in the river, so we couldn't make it to our final destination. (Really reminded me of Ecuador) By 5 am the next morning the road was cleared, however, so we were woken up at this time and left within 10 minutes to Lanquin (Semuc Champe). We got there around 7:30am and arrived at by far our best lodge yet, El Retiro. We got a loft room (and Jen, scared of heights, was such a trooper about getting on the latter up to it...I just had to carry her bag up ;) ). We were able to get breakfast right at the lodge and then headed out on the tour to Semuc Champe at 9am. Semuc Champe is a beautiful place, but half of the experience is the ride out there. We were all exhausted from holding on so tight in the back of the truck through the unpaved, very rocky and windy road. First we went though these awesome caves. We literally used little candles and had to swim though many part of the caves, climb latters, and go through waterfalls. Our guide, Elvis, was great though and did a good job managing our big group! Then we went swing jumping into the river, tubing in the rapids, got lunch, and went to Semuc Champe. Semuc Champe is hard to explain, but it is limestone bridge of pools that goes over the river. We first hiked up to see it all from above and then we got time to be in these natural pools. It was absolutely gorgeous. That night we had family style dinner at the lodge and hung out for a while with Elvis and some of our new friends, mainly from Israel. It was interesting as our group was 16 Israelis, 4 Americans, and 2 British girls... a fun group though and they were really nice and mainly tried to speak English with us!

After Semuc we went to Antigua. Antigua is a clean, cobble stone colonial town in the highlands of Guatemala. We enjoyed exploring the town and hanging out in the Parque Central for a while. We even made a little friend there, Dulce Maria. She was selling bracelets, which of course we first said no, but then she was just sweet and asking Jen about her bracelets. Then we got to talking about dogs and pets and I told her about my dog, Duke, and showed her a picture on my camera. She proceeded to go though almost all my photos and ask me about them. She was so sweet and of course in the end we bought her bracelets!

From Antigua, we went to Panajachel and onto San Pedro. They are both towns around Lake Atitlan which is large, emerald lake surrounded by mountains and many indigenous villages. It was a beautiful place, but we mainly just walked around a bit and relaxed here.

After San Pedro we packed on a Chicken Bus (old school bus) to Chichicastenango for the Sunday market. We showed up late Saturday afternoon and walked around town a bit to see everything being set up. Then we got dinner and hung out to get ready for the big market the next day. Today was the big, colorful market. There were some tourists of course, but it isn't really season anymore, so it seemed there were just a lot of indigenous people in their beautiful outfits. You definitely stand out more in white than a bright colored shirt! We shopped until we couldn't handle it anymore and got on an even more packed bus out of town. We are now in Quetzaltenango (Xela) where we have walked around town and then tonight got to see some football at the hostel! The highlights of Xela tonight though have definitely been the big sundaes we both got and the delicious nachos that we really didn't even have room for!

Basically Guatemala has been a lot of travel, but also amazing to see so much of this awesome country! It has been exhausting (and maybe taken a bit of a toll on my body), but worth it! Tomorrow we are leaving Central America and heading into Mexico. One week from today I will be back on American soil!

See you (or at least some of you) soon!
Love,
Taylor