Cerro el Baúl

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DOUBLE BLOG POST FOR TODAY! We climbed Cerro el Baúl, like I said we were going to do in the previous post, and it was so kick-butt, I had to write up the post for it now before I forgot too much. We took a million pictures-- I'll upload our favorites. Basically, we walked through town for around a half hour, almost all uphill. Roger knew the way, so even though I felt completely lost we were totally on track the whole time. Once we got to the base of the cerro, we started our real hike. By the way, cerro is a word I don't think we really have in English. A cerro is bigger than a hill, but not quite a mountain. Cerro el Baul has an elevation of about 8,700 feet, so we climbed about 1,000 feet. It was a little bit of a difficult hike at times, but it was nothing we couldn't do, obviously. There were so many gorgeous colors in all the green land. There were bright red, yellow, and purple flowers; royal blue bugs; a green and blue lizard! After being in a big city for 2 weeks, it was really refreshing to get into a foresty area.

Explanation of some of the pictures:

Flowers; obviously.
We could see Xela from most of the hike, so little peeks of the city are exactly what they sound like.
There was a huge cross at the top of the hill, right in front of the viewing veranda area.
There was also a big tower/statue of a man? or of mayan heiroglyphs... really not too sure on that one.
Lots of couples making out up here, by the way, so not too many pictures of the actual viewing area so we wouldn't look like total pervs.
We actually interrupted one of the making out couples to take our picture. They were like 13 and wonderful.
There was another overlook area - made of split logs. I titled this picture: Rickety Overlook. Terrifying to step on, but a beautiful view. We tried seeing our apt from there, but was unable to.
The giant moth is one we found in a doorway on our walk home. It was GINORMOUS. The picture does not do it justice.
When we got back we hung out with neighbor Dan on a terrace that he as access to, but we do not. From there we took the last pictures of the hill we climbed (it looks huge in the picture!) and of our apartment from the outside. We also took the picture of the rooster. Because that rooster makes more noise than every stray dog in town, and we finally know where he lives.

Besos mis amigos!!

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