Playa y Volcanes

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July 31st 2008

Published: July 31st 2008

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Frederic on the road

Volcano

Hola!!!!!

Yesterday, we slept at the top of the huge Volcano, just next to the smaller active one, that you can see in the picture!!!!!!!!!!!!

But let's go back a bit in time....

After the roughness of Huehuetenango, we went to still rough conditions to investigate about mining in Guatemala. But after that Nadja was completely exhausted, tired, fed up with bad sleeping, rotten beds, monotonous food, the cold and bad weather.... and it was also slowly getting to me, and I am here only 2 months, but for Nadja, it's for already 6 months that she is living in the most "basic" ways you can imagine.

So we went to relax a few days on the beach in Mexico!!!
It still took us 2 days to get there and even another day to get to a nice beach, but we finally did it!!!
The first day we travelled for more than 12 hours and took 8 different transports + walking in between!!!!

And at last it was warm, sunny and we could swim in the big waves of the Pacific!!!! BIG, rough waves!
Nadja lost one earring and almost her ear, one toering, and nearly

Family

a toe, because she jumped onto some strange sea creature that snapped at her foot... PAINNNNNNN!!!!

We stayed in a cute little hut right on the beach, with a private toilet and shower. Only at night , the toilet and shower turned into some horror show... infested with huge, black cucarachas (cockroaches, Kakerlaken, caffards). And we also were eaten alive by some mini mosquitoes... 😊

So after this luxurious life in the Mexican paradise, we went back to Guatemala.

Xela, or Quetzaltenango, is a much nicer city than all the others we saw. OK, it's full of tourists, but we needed a bit of comfort now and good food. And we were also lucky as the weather was nice and sunny here too.

We did 3 organized tours from here:

1) the market of Chichicastenango, even more tourists, but there we finally saw some Maya rituals.
2) To the laguna Chicabal, from there we could see the volcanoes we were about to climb...
3) and finally climbing a volcano!!!! Santa Maria, just next to the active Santiaguito. We would have gone to the crater of Santiaguito, but the walk was too rough for me, because

Grandfather

of pain in the knee...
Anyway we had great views from the top of Santa Maria. I thought I would never get there I was so tired going up, but finally I managed. Nadja was flying up the mountain...anyway much faster than I!

Now after going down we went to Lake Atitlan, where we are now. The weather is not so good again but we hope it will get better again...

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