Before spending a week taking spanish in Antigua, we hiked up an active volcano that had erupted within the last 5 months. As you can see by the picture on the left, lava is still flowing. This place is a heck of a lot different then North America, where you wouldn't get this close to that lava. Our crazy guide actually took the tour to within 5 meters of that lava. We didn't have proper footwear so we didn't get up there. Which proved the correct decision when some of the other folks came down from the lava flows bleeding from falling.....
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This weekend's trip had a much shorter transportation time than than 14- hour ride to Mexico. Early Friday morning we went to the capital and caught a five hour bus eastward to the town of Rio Dulce. This time is was a charter bus for less than ten bucks, not a chicken bus. Thank God.
Arriving in the late afternoon was like showing up in another country; similar to our trip north to the Peten (where Tikal is at). There were nearly no mountains, and the temperature was warmer and a little muggy. Livingston, our eventual destination, is about a three hour boat ride up the Rio Dulce (it's a town and the river's name)....
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After leaving Belize and dealing with the border formalities (basically, waiting in line and paying a fee) we decided to go straight to Tikal instead of Flores. We ended up a the Jaguar Inn inside the national park. There are only three hotels here and it meant that we didn't have to go backwards and forward between Flores; a journey of an hour each way.
Yesterday we had a long day. We were up at just after 4.00am so that we could walk out to one of the temple ruins and watch the sunrise....
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My last week in Guatemala before I hit the road to Honduras tomorrow, but this is the first draft of this post and just touching on the key points (to be roundly expanded further) once I am sure I am not cutting into key beer drinking time...
1. Semouc Champy and El Retiro - heading out on a marathon two-and-a-half day journey from Xela up north to Coban, first through Guatemala City and then Coban where I spent the night, I finally plunged into the magical realm of Lanquin and the caves of Semouc...
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There was this big old dead tree behind my house on public land, it had a note on it in Spanish that basically said please don't cut this tree I love to sit here. Well, I woke up one morning to this guy cutting it down. I did not really want to get between some tree huggin hippy and a local with an axe so the tree is now gone...
Read Full Story | jopatenango.blogspot.com