Hola All,
Sorry to keep you all patiently waiting, I have a little bit of trouble getting my thoughts in order, and after reading a few other blogs I must say that my descriptions are lacking, so I will try harder this time.
We are currently in the Beautiful city of Antigua, once the capital of Guatemala, but no longer. The city is filled with color, indigenous people line the markets with their crafts, fruits and jewellry and such. The town is clean unlike most other cities we have traveled to, no trash in the streets or in the parks. I guess it is a tourist town but it also has a strong cultural aspect to it, the narrow cobbled streets are alive with colored buildings pressed against the sidewalks. There are people from every corner of the world here and many of them are coming for the beauty of this city. Some are more wealthy and consider this a vacation, others are more simple travelers, carrying all they need on there backs, willing to put a few bucks into the local community in order to get more out of their travel experience by learning spanish from local teachers. We have decided to learn some spanish too, and are in a home stay with a family that is hosting 5 others besides ourselves. We sit down for three meals a day, cooked by our mother, and try to speak spanish, although some of the others are not willing to fully immerge themselves and therefore more easily learn the language. There are some characters here too...thats all Ill say at the moment about that.
Lets see since the last post I should get you informed and learned about my-our travels. We did infact travel down to Rio Dulce. Took two buses to get there from Flores and we passed through some interesting hamlets, dirty and raw and Guatemalan. We changed buses in Poptun, which is a really cool name to say. And headed south to Rio Dulce through mountains and around fields of corn, coffe, bananas, and pines. We stayed at a place called Backpackers Hotel in Rio Dulce, a cool open aired establishement with an adjoining restaurant that served up some pretty mean quesadillas! We bunked up in their dorm and got a bit organized. The next morning we took a day trip out to Livingston, on the Guatemalan Carribean coast via lancha, smallish power boats that are the water taxis of this lake river system. The ride was amazing, I felt almost in a completely different world, travelling quickly over water, past bird filled islands, tiny towns on the water, tucked away in some backwater inbetween mangroves and reeds. We got to experience a sulfuric vent on one side of the river that pumped out HOT water into the river, such a strange thing to experience. We continued downstream to less occupied shores, more and more birds, pelicans soaring above or gliding three inches above the water, they remind me of what pteradactyls would have looked like. Accompanying the pelicans were White Herons, black cormorants, smaller white egrets, and more unidentified birds. Livingston is a Garifuna stronghold, people of Carribean and black descent are the majority here, such a change from Rio Dulce and further inland. We decided to checkout the siete altares (seven altars) that was 5km up the beach, basically a bunch of pools to dive into, cool and refreshing. They were an amazing construction of pools and falls, all over limestone rock, they looked like terracing in SE asia, like rice paddies but this was all natural. Back to Rio Dulce and we were headed out to Semuc Champey the next day. It was a direct truck that took us on the overland route again, over mountains, thru small villages, real Guatemala and all over dirt roads, it made for a bumpy and a bit cramped ride but it was beautiful scenery along the way. We got dropped off in Lanquín and had another truck waiting for us to take us 9 more km up to Semuc Champey. Look this up on google or something but basically it is the Rio Cahabon, flowing under a natural limestone bridge, while above the bridge is covered with consecutive cascading pools of turquoise and clear water. Such a beautiful site to look down apon from El Mirador and walking-swimming in all the pools was as refreshing as it was exhilarating. We got to see the Cahabon disapear into the cave at one end of the bridge and actually got to swim near where it punches through the other side, below the cascade of the pool water. Semuc Champey is also my favorite place name so far, soo cool to say! We stayed at El Portal while we were here and got to check out some caves by candle light too! It was awesome to be swimming one handed as you hold you candle up out of the water and try and not get it wet as the caves were filled with water and waterfalls! We got to climb up a waterfall in the cave via a rope, while holding the candle, hahaha, ok they put our candles out for this and relit them but it was still fun. Also some of the cave formations were spectacular, such a cool day!
And that leads us to right now. The collectivo ride from Lanquín to Antigua was halted by a stop in at Guatemala city, something that I will never need to do again. The guide book describes GuatCity as a city covering a flattened mountain range that is cut by deep valleys and canyons, this all together with dirty, noisy streets clogged with traffic congestion, smoke, fumes and more noise. 3.1 million call this home, I wouldn´t ever think of calling that home, but thats just me. We dropped a few riders off in Guatemala city and all got out to stretch our legs, the driver then told us to get back in the collectivo because it was not safe for us to be outside, so here we are in Antigua!
Hope all is well. more updates to come!!
Hasta Luego!
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