Well, I got over my moral dilema and went to Semuc Champey with Judith. It was a trip of a lifetime and it was so fun having my Guatemalan mom along (even with having to scam her hubby).
I feel like I shouldn´t even try to describe the trip because it would just be cheesy and could no way come close to doing justice to how beautiful Semuc Champey is, but it was so cool that I have to talk about it!
The trip to Semuc Champey was a lot of time in a bus followed by a long bumpy ride standing in the back of a crowded pickup, but worth every second of travel. We stayed at a hotel called Las Marias that was really more like summer camp with cabins, a canteen, and a big rope swing over the river. They had a pet monkey there named Pancha who they took in after a forest fire left her stranded. They also had Marimba music and dancing in the evenings. It´s official: I am absolutely to worst salsa dancer in the world.
From the camp, we could walk to Semuc Champey. It is a national park consisting of a series of pools and waterfalls on top of a natural limestone bridge over a rushing river. It´s surrounded by lush rainforest. It was so fun swimming in the pools and climbing up and down the small waterfalls! On the walk back to camp, we took turns jumping off the bridge into the freezing river. I just can´t seem to avoid the peer pressure to jump off tall things in this country!
The next day we walked to the Kai-ban caves for a tour. It started out with a dip in the river from a huge swing (I totally belly flopped) and a hike up a large waterfall to the cave entrance. In the entrance we were each given a candle and followed the guide in wading through knee deep water that quickly became so deep we had to swim. We followed the guide up and down rope ladders, through a small opening filled with rushing water, up a rope ladder in the middle of a gushing waterfall, and into a large cavern. We, of course, also stopped to jump off some high rock outcroppings into a deep pool. All of this in the dark cave lit only by candles. After exiting the caves, we took an inner tube trip down the river back to camp.
The whole trip was so much fun. I was talking to Judith about how I felt like I was in ¨The Goonies¨ on the cave trip. She said she knew the movie and totally agreed. However when we were back home and I told Pepe about feeling like I was in The Goonies, Judith jumped in to explain to him that goonies are those cute fluffy animals that turn ugly and crazy mean when you feed them after midnight. I guess she had a very different experience in the caves than I did!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Fear of Public Speaking
Every Thursday at the school there is a small celebration for the students finishing their classes and each exiting student is expected to give a short speech in Spanish. Since I am leaving Thursday to travel with Sean, I gave my speech last week. I wrote out a really good speech using the harder verb tenses and practiced it the night before and morning of class. However, when it came time for the speech, I totally panicked and spit out two really simple sentences chock full of errors. I sounded like I did when I first got here. I still passed my test and got my credits, but it would have been nice to look like I actually learned something in my ten weeks here. Oh well. Public speaking has never been my thing.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Lago Atitlan Part III
Well, I went to the lake again. A group of students from the school and two of the girls from the Tikal trip went. It was relaxing and fun to hang out with friends I´ve made that will be leaving soon. I finally got the guts to jump off the really tall rock in San Marcos. I thought the other one was scary, but this one was terrifying. I went three times to prove to myself I could do it, but it only got scarier each time. Definitely worth it, but never again :-)
Yesterday, I went on another field trip with my teacher. She has family in Huehuetenango (about a two hour bus ride from Xela). She brought her five kids who are really fun (ages 1 - 16), but the baby Marco had an upset tummy on the bus ride and projectile vomited all over his sister, me, and the young guy in our seat. You wouldn´t think a kid that size could hold fifty gallons of milk in him, but he did - for a little while at least. I felt the worst for the guy in our seat. He had baby puke on his leather jacket, hair, and face. I gave him tissues to clean up with, but he still had a patch on his cheek when he got off at his stop. The rest of the day was much more relaxing. We visited ruins and hung out with my teacher´s family. On the bus ride home, the nine year old used my camera to take all kinds of pictures. She was trying to work with reflections in the windows and all kinds of cool stuff. Her pictures turned out pretty well considering how much we were bouncing and flying around the curvy mountain roads.
Today I am dealing with a moral dilema. My host mom really wants to go along on the trip I´m taking to Semuc Champey this weekend, but she and her husband decided they shouldn´t spend the money. No problem, except that today when Pepe was gone she told me she has quite a bit of money that she keeps for emergencies because Pepe is careless with spending. She had talked to her daughter who suggested she tell Pepe that I was paying for her trip as a present and use her secret bank account. I didn´t have the guts to say no. So, during lunch she told Pepe how nice I am that I´m paying for her trip. I hated lying to him - especially since he was out volunteering with the Red Cross while we were home scheming. I was thinking about paying for her trip to make it not a lie, but that won´t erase the fact that we lied to Pepe´s face (not to mention the fact that I´m cheap). I´m going to leave it be and let it be their problem. Oh well - just put it on my bad karma tab.
Yesterday, I went on another field trip with my teacher. She has family in Huehuetenango (about a two hour bus ride from Xela). She brought her five kids who are really fun (ages 1 - 16), but the baby Marco had an upset tummy on the bus ride and projectile vomited all over his sister, me, and the young guy in our seat. You wouldn´t think a kid that size could hold fifty gallons of milk in him, but he did - for a little while at least. I felt the worst for the guy in our seat. He had baby puke on his leather jacket, hair, and face. I gave him tissues to clean up with, but he still had a patch on his cheek when he got off at his stop. The rest of the day was much more relaxing. We visited ruins and hung out with my teacher´s family. On the bus ride home, the nine year old used my camera to take all kinds of pictures. She was trying to work with reflections in the windows and all kinds of cool stuff. Her pictures turned out pretty well considering how much we were bouncing and flying around the curvy mountain roads.
Today I am dealing with a moral dilema. My host mom really wants to go along on the trip I´m taking to Semuc Champey this weekend, but she and her husband decided they shouldn´t spend the money. No problem, except that today when Pepe was gone she told me she has quite a bit of money that she keeps for emergencies because Pepe is careless with spending. She had talked to her daughter who suggested she tell Pepe that I was paying for her trip as a present and use her secret bank account. I didn´t have the guts to say no. So, during lunch she told Pepe how nice I am that I´m paying for her trip. I hated lying to him - especially since he was out volunteering with the Red Cross while we were home scheming. I was thinking about paying for her trip to make it not a lie, but that won´t erase the fact that we lied to Pepe´s face (not to mention the fact that I´m cheap). I´m going to leave it be and let it be their problem. Oh well - just put it on my bad karma tab.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Assorted stuff
I posted pics on Flickr of Livingston, Rio Dulce, Champerico, Lago Atitlan with Sean, and some places around Xela (alas, no Tikal pics yet). I have not yet had time to organize them or put in comments. But, you are welcome to check them out if you would like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13525016@N03/
Also, Colom won the presidential election. He was the less scary of the two candidates, so I am relieved for Guatemala.
Also, the teacher I have now is really into field trips. Lucky me! We went to a local shop yesterday where they produce dolls from recycled bottles and newspapers. They are hand painted in the typical dress of all of the twenty some different indiginous groups in Guatemala. The details were beautiful and I was able to hang out with the artists and ask questions. I do not know if it helped me practice subjunctive verbs, but it was certainly cool!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13525016@N03/
Also, Colom won the presidential election. He was the less scary of the two candidates, so I am relieved for Guatemala.
Also, the teacher I have now is really into field trips. Lucky me! We went to a local shop yesterday where they produce dolls from recycled bottles and newspapers. They are hand painted in the typical dress of all of the twenty some different indiginous groups in Guatemala. The details were beautiful and I was able to hang out with the artists and ask questions. I do not know if it helped me practice subjunctive verbs, but it was certainly cool!
Tikal
I finally made it to Tikal. It is an amazing place. Totally worth the 15 hour bus trip (even with my friend sitting next to me puking most of the way and the driver running over a duck!). My host mom came along on the trip, and it was totally fun to hang out with her outside of Xela.
We stayed in Flores which is a small island town in Lake Peten Itza. Our first day in Flores we took a boat to visit a small museum run by a totally adorable and strange little man. He showed us relics from Tikal and other Mayan sites along with his collection of antique record players and a giant radio his dad built in the 40s. My favorite part of the tour was the way he referred to anything dated B.C. as "before the Jesus."
After the museum, we hiked to a nice lookout point for a great view of the lake and of Flores. Our next stop was a secluded point on the lake for swimming. The shore was rocky, but the water was absolutely fantastic for swimming - crystal clear and warm! We were then treated to a view of the sunset from our boat!
We left our hotel at 3:30 on Saturday morning to get to the Tikal ruins in time to watch the sunrise. We hiked in the dark through the jungle to the base of Temple IV, then climbed to the top to take our place for the show. At the request of the guides, everyone was still and silent on top of the temple. We were sitting above the trees watching the tops of the other temples appear in the changing colors of the sunrise. We could hear the deep growl of the holwer monkeys, the screeches of the spider monkeys, and the songs of birds soaring above everything. We were even treated to two toucans resting in the branches of a tree in front of the temple.
Once the sun was bright and the other tour groups had left, our guide began sharing his knowledge of Tikal and the jungle surrounding it. We climbed other temples, toured living quarters, a ball court, sacrificial sites, saw two types of monkeys and tons of birds, and learned about the natural medicines from the plants in the area. The man was amazing. Even after listening to him for 8 hours, I wanted to hear more. Anything I think of saying to describe the experience just sounds silly. I will just leave it at amazing. Stay tuned for the pics!
After heading back to Flores for showers and food, a few of us went swimming again. There was a bar on a dock near our hotel, so my host mom went with us to drink coffee while we jumped off the dock to swim. There were several kids who lived near the dock who joined us. They were really cute. I forgot the word for "dive" so I tried asking the kids. I got two responses: "fall on your head" and "jump on your head." My host mom gave me the correct word, but from then on out we referred to diving in the way the kids taught us.
We left two hours earlier than planned the next morning in order to get a head start on any election day traffic or problems. However, when we got to a river crossing barely outside of Flores, the ferry was broken and there was no other way across. The ferry was really a raft with an outboard motor attached to one side, but it worked on the way there and was our only option for getting back without having to go five hours out of the way. It is hard to say, but it seemed a bit suspect on an election day with a lot of people trying to cross the river to vote, but who knows. After sitting and waiting for two hours, our tour guide took a boat accross and threatened to call the tourist police (guys with black socks, sandals, and machine guns?) if they didn{t find someone to fix the motor. I do not know if it was coincidence or not, but soon after someone figured out that they could tie two small boats to the sides of the ferry. The steering was a bit iffy, but it worked and we were on our way.
We arrived in Xela around 11 p.m. Judith and I were both exhausted, but totally giddy after such an amazing trip. One more time: Tikal was amazing.
We stayed in Flores which is a small island town in Lake Peten Itza. Our first day in Flores we took a boat to visit a small museum run by a totally adorable and strange little man. He showed us relics from Tikal and other Mayan sites along with his collection of antique record players and a giant radio his dad built in the 40s. My favorite part of the tour was the way he referred to anything dated B.C. as "before the Jesus."
After the museum, we hiked to a nice lookout point for a great view of the lake and of Flores. Our next stop was a secluded point on the lake for swimming. The shore was rocky, but the water was absolutely fantastic for swimming - crystal clear and warm! We were then treated to a view of the sunset from our boat!
We left our hotel at 3:30 on Saturday morning to get to the Tikal ruins in time to watch the sunrise. We hiked in the dark through the jungle to the base of Temple IV, then climbed to the top to take our place for the show. At the request of the guides, everyone was still and silent on top of the temple. We were sitting above the trees watching the tops of the other temples appear in the changing colors of the sunrise. We could hear the deep growl of the holwer monkeys, the screeches of the spider monkeys, and the songs of birds soaring above everything. We were even treated to two toucans resting in the branches of a tree in front of the temple.
Once the sun was bright and the other tour groups had left, our guide began sharing his knowledge of Tikal and the jungle surrounding it. We climbed other temples, toured living quarters, a ball court, sacrificial sites, saw two types of monkeys and tons of birds, and learned about the natural medicines from the plants in the area. The man was amazing. Even after listening to him for 8 hours, I wanted to hear more. Anything I think of saying to describe the experience just sounds silly. I will just leave it at amazing. Stay tuned for the pics!
After heading back to Flores for showers and food, a few of us went swimming again. There was a bar on a dock near our hotel, so my host mom went with us to drink coffee while we jumped off the dock to swim. There were several kids who lived near the dock who joined us. They were really cute. I forgot the word for "dive" so I tried asking the kids. I got two responses: "fall on your head" and "jump on your head." My host mom gave me the correct word, but from then on out we referred to diving in the way the kids taught us.
We left two hours earlier than planned the next morning in order to get a head start on any election day traffic or problems. However, when we got to a river crossing barely outside of Flores, the ferry was broken and there was no other way across. The ferry was really a raft with an outboard motor attached to one side, but it worked on the way there and was our only option for getting back without having to go five hours out of the way. It is hard to say, but it seemed a bit suspect on an election day with a lot of people trying to cross the river to vote, but who knows. After sitting and waiting for two hours, our tour guide took a boat accross and threatened to call the tourist police (guys with black socks, sandals, and machine guns?) if they didn{t find someone to fix the motor. I do not know if it was coincidence or not, but soon after someone figured out that they could tie two small boats to the sides of the ferry. The steering was a bit iffy, but it worked and we were on our way.
We arrived in Xela around 11 p.m. Judith and I were both exhausted, but totally giddy after such an amazing trip. One more time: Tikal was amazing.
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