Tyler and Rachel do Tikal.

These past few days have been really fantastic ones. Tyler and I left Coban, December 24th, to visit one of the most beautiful places we've been thus far. After fueling up on with a delicious cracker, black bean and avocado breakfast we caught a bus out to Lanquin, Guatemala! We found a hotel that wasn't accomodating a single other person and stayed upstairs stealing an awesome view of the mountains and plantlife surrounding this smaller sized town.

It was cool to walk around. We enjoy walking around looking for the absolute cheapest beer(comparitive with fluid ounce, of course!) sold in each town...even though we hardly buy one. 17 quetzales for a liter of the Brahva.. We cheaped out and bought a couple 60 cent beers and stared out off the balcony together.

Amidst our second brew the very kind lady that owns the hotel came upstairs and invited us to eat tamales with her family. We thought they had invited us for Christmas...turns out they are all Jehovah's Witnesses and don't celebrate the holiday. These were the absolute best tamales to grace the taxing country of Guat. DEEElicious. The kids in her family shared fireworks with us, after dinner. The country blazes the sky with fireworks the whole month of December in celebration. All hours of the night, even if you can sleep through the roosters plagued with insomnia, you can hear these bombs of firecrackeresque pyrotechnics exploding in the streets. It was fun to join in. We loving eating and playing!!

Christmas morning we woke up and took off hiking for Semuc Champey. This private paradise is known for its 300 meter limestone bridge. Instead off bridging across the river, it bridges directly over the river, spanning its length downstream, diverting the flow underground and creating swimming holes on top of the bridge. Luckily we were picked up by a truck, saving us a 3 hour walk, and made it in before many people showed up. We had an awesome slippery(TRIPPING) hike up to a beautiful view point and swam around on the bridge getting nibbled by little fish. Tyler also raised me in the air like Patrick Swayze in Dirting Dancing...a personal highlight for me. hah. We eventually had to leave and stuffed our gullets with our new favorite street food. Masapan. Cheap fried fruit. It was a warm holiday this year. Bam.

We bussed all day yesterday to El Remate where I am writing from now. The main attraction here..Parque Nacional Tikal. It's one of the largest archaeological sites and centres of pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It was fantastic. We were lucky enough to grab a 6 am colectivo bus to the Park, avoiding alot of the tourist traffic that pooled in the early afternoon. We actually had alot of the sites practically to ourselves. We did a few laps around the site and eventually the sun came out for a final viewing of the Grand Plaza. Glancing back at these historic marvels one last time, as we were walking out of view, you lose that dent between your eyebrows that was created when paying the insane entrance fee. This is 6x the price for foriegners than nationals. But..at the end of the day you are just happy to be a witness. Lucky to be present, and seeing it all, in the company of the person next to you. Tikal. Check. Mexico. You're next. - rachel.

Pimples of the Earth

On Wednesday we set out to hike up the highest point in Guatemala, as well as all of Central America, Volcan Tajumulco. We missed our first bus and got up the mountain a little later than planned. About a half hour from the top the clouds started rolling in, so by the time we reached the summit the only view we had was through an occasional break in the clouds. It was still awesome though! The trail starts out as a rough road going through some farming areas, then turns into an actual hiking trail after a short distance.  Here is Rachel heading up the road, and us on top of Tajumulco.

It was surpisingly warm for 13,845 feet, and not very windy either. There was a huge group of religious nutjobs up there chanting and praying away. 

The next couple of days were spent on long, crowded bus rides. One count was 29 people in a 15 passenger van, not including the people riding on top. We rode on top once, it was nicer than being inside. Sometimes it smells like cattle inside those things. Here is a typical bus terminal in a small-medium sized city.

The old American school buses are called "Chicken buses". They are usually so crowded that the bus assistant, the guy that collects fares and recruits people from the street, actually has to climb on the tops of the seats to collect money. They also transport people and their chickens, hence the name. I guess. With the quality of the roads, curves, climbing over mountains, how slow the buses are and how many times they have to stop, it takes about 3 hours to go 40 miles. At least it´s cheap.

We got into Coban yesterday evening and explored a bit of the city today. There is a coffee farm in town that we took a tour of. It´s been operating since 1888 and is German owned. I guess there was a whole bunch of German Fincas (farms) way back when, until they were ran out of town by the USA sometime during or around WW2. The farm employs 6 people year round and up to 200 during the picking season, which lasts from December-March. This farm does a total of 5 rounds of picking during those months. Each plant yields approximately 5-6 lbs of beans, which ends up being about 1 lb of finished coffee after going through the whole process. The beans on the left look to be ready to be picked, the red ones at least. On the right is the drying process which occurs after the cherry has been removed and the beans washed. After drying the outter shell is removed, then the roasting occurs. The end.

 

Indian Nose

So we´re in the highland town of San Pedro, Guatamala right now. We´ve made a nest in an all window room, facing Lake Atitlan, on the second floor of this hotel run by one of the kindest little men we´ve met this trip. It´s very comfortable and mostly private and it´s all ours. The owner is Elisio and everytime he´s aound he just says ¨Oh! My friends, my friends! Hahaha¨

We´ve been on the lake for 5 days, facing our 3rd morning waking up to these mountains. All and all..life has been really tough for us...i kid. This morning we woke up in the dark and  hiked up Volcan San Pedro. I didn´t live out my 3 week dream of riding a Tuk Tuk at sunrise...but i gueeess hiking  my first Volc with the love of my life made up for it. It was really windy up top but the few was amazing. The towns seemed so lifeless below us..much different than what I hear as I´m typing in town.

We weren´t very pleased with the huge Park fee..but not only did we get this view- Look at this huge pile of trash we got to see on the walk back! It  really added to the appetite we built on the hike! Check it! Thats some good trash in there!

Our first few nights on the lake were in Panajachel. Lovely place. We´re off to sleep in our palace tonight so we can wake up bright and early to kayak and catch a bus to the next best thing...I won´t post a town name because Tyler will probably change his mind as we are looking at the bus.
Stayed tuned United States!! -Rachel.

                             

Loose Bowels

We made our way out of Parque Imposible up to an area called Ruta De Las Flore, route of the flowers. I can't recall seeing a whole lot of flowers, but there were some pretty nice towns with beautiful surroundings along the way. We made friends with Frankie in the town of Ataco, he was working for the guy who owned the hotel we were staying out. After getting to know Frankie a little bit, we learned some of his interests were traveling around Central America, drinking large amounts of vodka, and getting into machete fights. His last interest was found out by our friend Morgan when he had a little encounter with the police and they ran Frankies background, homicide. But no worries, he was found innocent. Well, he really did kill the guy, but it was in self defense. He told us all about his time in prison, 50 people to a room, shitting in a bucket, getting a black bag over his had and being hit with nightclubs in an effort to get him to sign a false confession. Ah, Frankie. Heres us havin' a few drinks with the man, and a church in Ataco

Then we checked out Tazumal, Mayan ruins

After looking over the ruins, we spent the night in a city called Santa Ana. The first hotel we looked at, the guy asked us how many hours we needed the room for. We moved on. The place we did decide to stay in had to be doused in raid before we entered, and i'm pretty sure I got bitten by bed bugs. We headed out in the morning to cross into Guatemala and then into Honduras to visit Copan, a huge Mayan Archealogical site. The border crossings were oddly very easy, not much security or people really watching. You could easily cross right through without anyone even saying anything to you. Kind of odd for countries that have armed guards for every store, bank and restaurant. Copan was awesome, here are some pics of it.

The actual city of Copan was really nice so we ended up staying a little longer than expected. We're in Antigua, Guatemala now, a beautifully preserved colonial city. Lots of old building and ruins to look at, and its surrounded by volcanoes to hike up. Plus free camping at the tourist Police Station, amazing.

Todas Cosas Son Posibles

Tyler and I woke up in this country a week ago, today. We got up off of the floor, sleeping by the family Christmas tree. I chugged my glass of fresh sink water that this nice lady brought for me in the late hours to chase my spoon fed cough syrup from ther cabinet. The chickens be slaughtered and prepared all night hardly kept us awake. In this tiny town about 20 minutes away from San Salvador, we dove into the absolute kindness that is the people of El Salvador.



We were takin in the first night by a man i struck up conversation with in the airport during our layover. He offered us his mothers floor. It was great. He gave us a ride from the airport and showed us a view of the city from the the elevated town he lived in at 3 in the morning. The breeze was amazing. We woke up in the morning and were treated to a typical breakfast dish by this man, Eddie, and his son. He took us to this place called the Devils Door for a windy little hike and then dropped us in the city at our hostal.

We have seen over and over in this country people helping us or feeding us and always shaking there finger when we offer to pay. They just smile. Morgan made it in at 3am Thursday. We camped a few days in Parque Nacional Imposible and have been hopping around small mountain towns in the western part of the country for the past few days. We are enjoying the festival days, making our way to Mayan ruins today.

We are eating our weight in Pupusas and Fanta(with real sugar! bam.) and laughing the day light into its set. When you can clear the street muts, traffic, and gaping holes in the road..everything else is perfect and comfortable. Life is lovely. -rachel.