Week 7 - A week in Interzone

After Bucky left, it seemed like my trip was starting to wind down a bit. I was tired and not that interested in moving around and seeing the major sites, like Tikal, in Guatemala. I decided to go to the middle of nowhere for a few days of complete relaxation amidst the gorgeous mountains of central Guate.


Christmas, brought to you by beer

I headed for a town called Lanquin (for some reason it took me forever to stop calling it Languin), which is about an 1 1/2 hours of the most beautiful drive outside of Coban. In Lanquin, there is an "eco-lodge" called El Retiro. It is a collection of thatched roof huts set on the banks of a cold, fast mountain stream. Its got a bar/restaurant, a really cool wood-fired sauna made out of beer bottles, and a decidedly Bob Marley-centric sound track. It attracts a decidedly international set of folks who are mostly looking for a few days of rest after many days on the road. Some find it such a nice spot that they end up staying for 3 months or longer and working at the lodge for a bit of money and free booze. I can understand why.



I spent the first couple of days doing pretty much nothing. I read, played cards, drank a bit, took a sauna, etc. We'd all sit in the bar all evening listening to reggae, playing cards, talking and getting drunk. Anyone who has hung out on the Irving St. porch knows that this felt just like home.


My big exursion on the first couple of days was to the Lanquin Caves, which is a huge cave system just outside of town. It is notorious for its bat population. In fact, the tour was probably one of the more disgusting things that I have done. The whole place is covered in bat shit. So you are hiking around in the cave, slipping on and pulling yourself up on rocks covered in guano. Any clothes I wore that day should probably be burned. Inside there are rock formations and an altar that is still used by the local mayan people for religious rites. At 6 pm you head for the entrance to the cave, turn out all the lights and sit very still. Then you start hearing chirps and feeling the woosh of wings going by your head as the bats fly out for their nocturnal feeding. Then you just start taking pictures hoping to get a good shot of a bat or two flying. I must have taken about 60 just to get a couple of decent shots.



My last full day in Lanquin, I took a (slightly hungover) tour to Semuc Champey, which is a set of pools formed where the Cohoban River flows underground for a while. Where the river goes underground it is a ragin rapid, but on the surface the pools are calm and crystal clear. We hiked up to a mirador (lookout) and then swam in the pools over lunch. After lunch, it was into another cave, Maria's Caves. These caves are completely different than the ones in Lanquin. We walked through water that ranged anywhere from waist deep to 2 feet over our heads. Swimming with a candle in one hand and flip flops tied to your feet is not the easiest thing! The whole experience was very eerie. Much of the time you could only see a few feet in front of your face and then you come to a water fall that you have to climb up or one that you have to slide down. A definitely strange place. Of course this entire tour is brought to you by the country of Guatemala where the safety rules are limited, to say the least. To illustrate, I ended the day by jumping off a 60 foot tall bridge without a lifejacket. Very fun.



So, I ended the week much rested and ready to head to Mexico for the last bit of the trip. Drinking mezcal and eating wonderful food with Tere in Oaxaca.

Week 6 - Volcanoes and Kayaks and Buckys, oh my!

Bucky gave me a bit of a surprise a couple of weeks ago when he confirmed that he was planning on coming down to Guatemala for a few days. I rushed to Antigua to see him, well boarded a direct shuttle from Copan to Antigua, at least.

After many weeks here in Central America, I definitely have a new opinion on what is considered an inexpensive hotel. Bucky, of course, doesn´t, much to my benefit. He found a hotel in Antigua that I would be semi-embarrassed to tell other backpackers the price. It was gorgeous though, a big room, with what must be in the top 10 of all Guatemalan bathrooms, including in the presidential palace. Seriously, not only did the shower have actual hot water (not from a little heater attached to the shower head that is waiting to shock you) but it also had a bathtub! You ask people down here if there is a bathtub, they will look at you funny, having never heard of such a thing before. Bucky, if you have a picture, please send it to me or post it in the comments.

We spent a couple of days in Antigua touring around the city and doing some shopping at the local markets. Antigua is a lot like Grenada, Nicaragua, an old colonial capital. The diffference seems to be the amount of money and the number of tourists. It is so much more glitzy, a spanish colonial vegas? The Parque Central is gorgeous and was all lit up for the holiday. The cathedral is a huge structure that has been destroyed by earthquakes and volcanoes several times but always rebuilt around the ruins of the old. Off in the distance you can see the volcanoes that surround, threaten and beautify the city.

The Cathedral

Some of the ruins inside the cathedral


La Lavanderia Publica

Bucky on our rooftop terrace (damn, that was a nice hotel)

We also decided to climb Vulcan Pacaya, an active volcano an hour outside of Antigua. After my horrible experience on Madera in Ometepe, I had a bit of trepidation, but this hike made up for the previous one in spades. We did the afternoon hike, about 2 hours of hiking up a trail and then over a scree field followed by staring at and being singed by lava in the fading light.

Real lava. Real hot.

Other volcanoes over the clouds

Bucky and I near the top.

After a few days in Antigua, it was again time to move. We decided to go to Lago de Atitlan, a few hours away from Antigua by bus. The lake is formed by an ancient and HUGE volcanic crater and is one of the most beautiful places imaginable. Hell, Guatemala is one of the most beautiful places imaginable! Nicaragua has beautiful mountains, jungles and volcanoes, but here it all just seems a bit bigger.

We stayed in San Pedro de Laguna which has an interesting mix of hippie internationalist dropouts and Mayan Jehovah´s witnesses, weird, but it seems to function. This is the kind of town where there is a sign on a bookstore advertising Space Cookies right next to a building with a sign reading Jesus is the Only Way to Life.

We didn´t do a whole lot over the next couple of days, except for try our hands at kayaking the lake. This turned out to be one hell of a disaster. The kayaks we rented were little sit-on-top numbers. Now the lake is usually calm in the morning and then the winds pick up in the afternoon, unfortunately, this was not the case for Bucky and I. We started off ok, but then when we got out a bit from the harbor, the wind picked up and white caps started to appear. Normally, this wouldn´t be too much of a problem, but our little boats were not up to the task. These things were uber-bouyant. They just bounced along the top of the water and anyone who has been in a kayak will tell you that bouncing isn´t so good. We started flipping and once we started it seemed hard to stop. I must have flipped 6 or 7 times! I ended up giving up. Bucky was able to make it shore and sent out a ferry boat to get me in to shore. Ugh, as somewhat of a kayaker at home, I am still embarrassed. As bucky said, we had an interesting perspective of the lake.

Bucky and I went back to Guatemala City on Friday so that he could head back to DC and I could continue the trip. Next I head for Lanquin in the central highlands....

Some Pictures from the Ruins of Copan

After a few days of diving and rain on the british-y islands, it was time to get bback to the real Cerntral America and what a better way to do it than with some Mayan ruins. I took the bus over to Copan Ruinas near the border with Guatemala to see the famed ruins over the weekend. The ruins are of a great Mayan city that flourished from about 400-800 AD. They have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site and while not as giant as the ruins at Tikal in Guatemala, they do have (apparently) much more detailed carvings.

The day I went was the first nice day I had seen in a week, and while the ruins were interesting and all, it was really most fun to just climb around on old rocks. So here are some pictures.



The Macaws come around every day to the main entrance.


The main temple, used for sacrificing soem virgins ans other fun stuff






A good turtle sculpture






The local sports arena






The most famous carving in Copan and yours truly









The beheading rock

Week 5 - Diving in the Bay Islands

Hightailed for the Honduran border on an early morning bus on a saturday morning. This was no chicken bus though. I decided to go in style for the long ride to the north coast of Honduras, taking a King Quality, 1st class, fancy-pants bus the whole way. Let me tell you, this is the only way to travel. Tons of leg room, reclining seats, horrible movies on the overhead screens (Nicolas Cage should not be allowed to make any more movies)..

I arrived in La Ceiba to find out that this supposedly big party town was shut down for the weekend. My plans of drunken foolishness were foiled for the second time by a central american election. Can't these people learn from our democracy and keep the booze flowing while people vote

So, anyway, since there was no booze and there weren't enough people to go on the rafting trip I wanted to do, I headed straight for the island of Utilla in the morning.

Utilla is a very small Carribean island that basically has 2 things going on, diving and smoking weed. It is mostly english speaking, it was owned by the british for a long time, and has a definite Pirates of the Carribean feel. When we arrived the weather was hot and sunny. Everyone said that the last month had been unusally rainy so this was quite the break. It didn`t. After the first 24 hours the clouds came over the sun, not to be seen again until I left Utilla. But ah well, when you are under the water, the rain doesn´t matter so much and my hotel/dive shop had one of the greatest inventions known to man, hot showers.

Bye Bye, Sun

I started the dive class the first afternoon with some of the funniest, most informative videos ever made. Anyone of you who have done the PADI course, know what I`m talking about. The next day we started actually going in the water. Its a little scary at first doing a silly thing like breathing underwater, but once we got down to the bottom of the bay for the training dive, it seemed to go ok. It was damned cold though. The Carribean doesn`t seem so warm when you are sitting there on the bottom not moving much! The next day was much better, we actually dove on the reef. Over the next few days I did 6 dives, seeing giant crabs, big snappers, tiny little parrot fish, and what i still think was a baby shark. It was pretty damn cool. One of the best things was how much easier it is to see, when the water is clear that is, because water magnifies so much. I could see like real boy! I can´t wait to try it again. Maybe in Mexico over Christmas. I guess I could use another expensive thing to do on vacation

My class consted of 2 D.C. denixen (including a guy who lives in Mt. P!), a british guy and 2 british brothers who are travelling around the world together. 70+ countries in 12 months! Now I get along great with my brothers, but around the world together for a year, I`m not sure I could handle that. I hope Tim and Chris get along for the next 9 months and I hope that they take the time to appreciate all the wonders around them and get to know a few of the places they are visiting. I feel like I appreciated Nicaragua after a month there, but I know that I only scratched the surface.

Obviously, with all of these people learning how to dive, there are many people who are there to teach you and lead the dives. These people prove once again that guides, whether they be for the river or under the sea, are some of the most relaxed people on earth. People who live to do what they want for the right to earn enough money to keep them in beer and an apartment in a beautiful part of the world. Of course with this lifestyle comes certain punishments like when you become a dive master, your finaal initiation is the snorkel test. Basically, while wearing a mask that covers you nose you have to drink rum, coke, chili sauce and beer through a snorkel. Gross, difficult and fun to watch.




OK. Thats it for now. On to the ruins of Copan and meeting Bucky in Guatemala.