We finally left Guatemala

After two days on an air conditioned bus, we arrived in Nicaragua. We decided to skip through El Salvador as we wanted lots of time in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Also the fact that El Salvador is the most deforested country in CA was not too enticing to us.

We spent our last days in Guatemala on the Rio Dulce. Once again we visited our friend Bob from PT and some friends we made on our last visit. We had a great time, it was relaxing to return to a place we had been and felt familiar with, plus it hardly rained while we were there!

Nicaragua took some getting used to. It felt a bit like going to Canada-- I know it is a different country yet I expect it to be the same. It is obvious that it is poorer than neighboring countries, which is hard to fathom.

The buildings are in need of repair and most of the streets smell like a sewer or cheese that has been left out in the sun. It is also extremely hot, as hot as I imagine the savannah in Africa. We found some refuge in a crater at Lago Apoyo and plan to be at the beach before sundown. Internet is also a challenge here, we got spoiled in Guatemala.

We also cant understand anyones Spanish here. I was feeling kind of proud of myself for being able to chat with people on the street. Here I cant understand when someone asks me if I want a bag at the grocery store. Kevin and I are in constant disagreement over whether the woman we passed in the street said "hello sweetie" or "give me money for shoes". Ah, well...its pretty amusing when you think about it. We persevere and still manage to have a pretty good time.

Hasta Luego, Chrissy and Kevin

We finally left Guatemala

After two days on an air conditioned bus, we arrived in Nicaragua. We decided to skip through El Salvador as we wanted lots of time in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Also the fact that El Salvador is the most deforested country in CA was not too enticing to us.

We spent our last days in Guatemala on the Rio Dulce. Once again we visited our friend Bob from PT and some friends we made on our last visit. We had a great time, it was relaxing to return to a place we had been and felt familiar with, plus it hardly rained while we were there!

Nicaragua took some getting used to. It felt a bit like going to Canada-- I know it is a different country yet I expect it to be the same. It is obvious that it is poorer than neighboring countries, which is hard to fathom.

The buildings are in need of repair and most of the streets smell like a sewer or cheese that has been left out in the sun. It is also extremely hot, as hot as I imagine the savannah in Africa. We found some refuge in a crater at Lago Apoyo and plan to be at the beach before sundown. Internet is also a challenge here, we got spoiled in Guatemala.

We also cant understand anyones Spanish here. I was feeling kind of proud of myself for being able to chat with people on the street. Here I cant understand when someone asks me if I want a bag at the grocery store. Kevin and I are in constant disagreement over whether the woman we passed in the street said "hello sweetie" or "give me money for shoes". Ah, well...its pretty amusing when you think about it. We persevere and still manage to have a pretty good time.

Hasta Luego, Chrissy and Kevin

Kevin visits Tikal

This is the story of Kevins trip to Tikal. Tikal is the largest Mayan settlement discovered in Central America. Isnt it cute?

There are lots of animals to see in Tikal because it was built in the middle of the jungle. We liked seeing the spider monkeys as they swung through the trees with their tails.

There are also lots of Coatamundis there. They are related to raccoons, but have a long nose like an anteater. Like raccoons they love to discover what we have left behind after lunch!

Some of the temples at Tikal are not in very good shape. The soft limestone blocks are wearing down from the effects of the weather and so many people climbing all over them. Many of them are closed to exploration or climbing on. This made Kevin kind of mad.

There are 5 very tall temples at Tikal. Some of them are over 40 meters tall. You can climb up most of them by using very steep wooden staircases. We went up all of them but number 3, which is still covered with jungle at the base. All that climbing sure makes you hungry!

Smoke and Water

Were still out here. Computer time has been hard to get and pricey at about $2.00 per minute. So sorry, no pictures right now. I will add some to this entry later, so check back!

We have had some more amazing experiences in the last week or so.

We spent 2 nights in a small Mayan village of 25 families in the cloud forest of Guatemala. The house had dirt floors and they cooked over an open fire in the corner of the kitchen. We got to help make tortillas by grinding corn with a hand grinder and a stone, then trying to pat them into perfect circles to cook on the plancha over the fire. It was hard to make them look nice and the kids gave us funny looks when they picked up one of our deformed tortillas from the gourd basket.

One of the highlights of our stay was playing with the kids. They were so funny and happy to have us there. We also had a dance party in the back bedroom, but you will just have to wait for pictures.

We also visited the beautiful park of Semuc Champey and got to go on a cave tour where we had to swim with candles. It was rad!

We are starting to come to the stunning realization that we wont get to see EVERYTHING seeing as we are about half finished with our trip and are still in Guatemala. Still, the ride is worth every moment. We think of you all often, especially when we feel homesick. Then we remember that it is cold and windy there and we relish these moments in the sun.

love c and k

Gringos Viene!

Gringos are coming! The shout came from an adorable 5 year old girl named Andrea as she saw us walk down the road with our backpacks on. We had arrived at Ranchito Del Quetzal, a small hotel located at the entrance to Biotopo Del Quetzal, in Altaverpaz, Guatemala. We had only been there for about 10 minutes when Andrea came running up to our room yelling, "un quetzal, un quetzal!" and pointing at the tree above the hotel. Sure enough there was the amazing national bird of Guatemala, complete with 2 foot long tail feathers.

We were able to watch the bird for about an hour. It was especially amazing as it darted off the branch to snatch bugs from the air. It looked like a dancer trailing ribbons through the trees. Our photos didn´t turn out so good but after seeing other peoples attempts at photographing quetzals we dont feel quite so bad.

We went on a hike behind the hotel in the evening and were excited to see a giant weasel! It was about 4 feet long and looked like a black river otter with a white head. We saw it twice as it foraged through the cloud forest.

We also woke at 1:30 in the morning to the chittering of ring-tailed cats climbing in the trees above our room.

The next day we awoke to sunshine and spent the day in the reserve. Cloud forest in Guatemala is rapidly disappearly, mainly due to demand from the floral industry. All of those ferns that you get when you buy a boquet of flowers are grown here on land that used to be cloud forest! Who would have guessed...it is sad to see the barren hillsides with tiny islands of forest left.

The forest cover was so thick that it was challenging to see birds (or other creatures) hiding in the trees. We constantly thought we saw tails of quetzals, but they were usually leaves drifting down or branches waggling in the wind.

One of the coolest things around are tree ferns. These are ferns that stand upto about 40 feet tall. They even have fiddle heads coming out the top! Apparently they are one of the oldest plants around with fossils dating back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Kevin's Birthday is January 6th!

In case you might not know or perphaps have forgotten, Kevin will be 36 in two more days. I hope you can take some time on January 6th to eat a piece of chocolate cake, say WHOA really loud and maybe even go to the beach and fish for a few hours. If all goes as planned, we will be hiking in the Biotopo El Quetzal in Guatemala, trying to find jaguars in the cloud forest.

Well Travelled Bags

Before I forget (again) please visit Christine and Ian's amazing blog at www.christineandian.blogspot.com They are doing an amazing trip around the world and are basically our idols.

Hello from the stunning town of Copan Ruinas, Honduras. We arrived about a week ago after our first first-class bus ride of the journey. Cushy reclining seats all to yourself, what is this? There is enough room in our seats for an entire family of Mayans, is it really all for us? They even served us snacks! But there was a small downside. Our bags did not arrive in Copan with us...oh oh. This proved to be a BIT stressful as you might imagine. They assured us our bags would come, but also that they had no idea where they were. Ha! So we headed off to a suggested hotel. Lucky for us we had no bags, cause the hotel room was so small there wasn´t really room for ´em. So, we spent our first night after a fine meal sitting in the central park trying not to think our bags were gone forever. The next morning we returned to the bus station, no bags, and calls by the attendant yielded no clues. At this point our hopes sunk even lower. We decided to get some food in us and go and try and have a productive day not touched with worry (not a forte for me!). Thoughts crept in of the things gone, the things of comfort, the things you can´t replace here, my spanish notebook that I wanted/needed to study more...all the while telling myself that my bag would find its way to me through the jungles somehow. Before heading off on our days adventure we called the bus station to tell them where we were staying, and they casually informed us that our bags had arrived. We practically skipped to the bus station! Yes, our bags had arrived on the first bus from Guatemala City that morning, seems they got put on the wrong bus the day before. So happily reunited with our bags we reminded ourselves that patience and faith often prevail and that fear and worry are useless though seemingly unavoidable. We will keep practicing these things (not just on this journey, but always), over and over and slowly it will come more naturally(we hope).

Copan has treated us well. A quiet mountain town of redtiled roofs and cobblestone streets. It is very clean, a welcome treat as this has not been the norm. We spent time in a bird park where they rehab parrots from captivity hoping to release them. The setting was wonderful in a small chunk of remaining forest(not a lot here), planted with shade grown coffee along a clean river. The highlight was seeing toucans up close and feeding them coffee beans from the surrounding plantation. As a green toucanet squished up a pulpy bean in his long curved bill the guide explained to us that "They like to drink the juice cause it keeps them crazy!" (It is unexpected lessons like this that help me understand Chrissy better every day!)

The ruins here are fantastic. The stone carving of the Copanecos is unmatched in the Mayan world. It is so mind blowing to walk around these ancient cities while trying to get your head around the fact that 1000 years ago people were thronging through paved painted plazas, shamans and kings letting their blood and others blood to assure good crops, stone carvers working for kings to adorn their palaces as ornately as possible. And beneath the surface of the ruins, more ruins. The kings here built their palaces atop those of their predecessors, often destroying the previous rulers work, but in some cases working to preserve the structure buried under theirs. So like layers of an onion, the pyramids are atop other pyramids that are atop older temples. The sculpture museum at the ruins had reconstructed many of the fallen building facades and had a lifesize model of one of the buried temples "Rosalia". More mind blowing info. The art interwoven with the religion and mythologies of these people was so fantastic and inticrate. Truely fantastic.

At the same time, we are starting to feel "touristed out" and are putting more energy into finding meaningful volunteer work soon. Meanwhile, there are still lots of places in Guatemala we have heard are fantastic and worth some time so we will move north to Coban tomorrow. Our journey has taken a more measured/unhurried pace as we realize we are not going to see it all, nor do we want to see it all. More importantly we want to understand more of what we are seeing. And so, we will continue to polish our tarnished (ie terrible) Spanish and learn as much as we can on our journey.

Adios y amor,
Kevin