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Published: September 16th 2008
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The produce isle
at the market in Antigua almost two months since the last blog...so we have definitely slacked off, but then again living in antigua has caused us to settle a little more than planned, which is why i am happy to say that lindsie and i are leaving by the end of september....woohoo. until then we have to buckle down and work as much as the bar can have us...but enough of that...
the time here goes quickly some days, and others we feel like we have been here for an interminable amount of time. the town is still beautiful, we have started to run out of places to go, though not totally (i still need to get to a coffee plantation). the highlights of the past couple months have been going to lake atitlan and camping recently...lake atitlan is in the highlands and we went there for five days mas or menos in order to escape from antigua and to celebrate lindsie´s bday. we drove up to the town of panajachel and hung out there for a couple of days, ran to guatemala´s largest market (read: tourist trap, but still cheapest stuff around) in chichicastenango...there we haggled our way into two very awesome blankets (mine
Aguacates
The avacado lady, comes into our work every once in a while a practical and heavy wool blanket, lindsie a beautiful patchwork quilt thing). after having plundered the markets we parked our bikes and took a boat over to san pedro de la laguna. kayaking amongst local fisherman and floating pumice, hiking volcanos, soaking in the tubs at los thermales and celebration of lindsie´s birthday were all items on our list. after so many physical activies, we could definitely tell that we were driving motorcycles and working at a bar....i´m pretty sure my knees still hurt from coming down the volcano...i couldn´t believe that local farmers have fields 1000+ vertical feet above the nearest road...and they make 3 or 4 trips a day hauling maize down during harvest time...intense.
upon returning to antigua we promptly started back into work mode...a week later we unexpectedly saw our buddy dave (shameless plug...he has a good website and www.allthewaysouth.com) again...looking a little rattled he relayed to me that while driving around lago de atitlan he was held up and robbed at gunpoint by three guys...he was lucky and only lost a little cash, his camera and passport...but it was definitely a reminder of how all of us gringos are targets down here...on the bright
cerro de la cruz
and a view of antigua side of that, the wait for his passport meant that we got to go camping with him in the coban area for a couple of days. we went swimming, tubing, had some great rides through beautiful roads
-nate
so the stint in antigua continues. we have come to realize that it´s much harder to get ahead here than originally thought...so this is what it´s like to work in a third world country. The worst part is that we actually have one of the best tipping jobs in all of Antigua (and guatemala for that matter) so it´s hard to imagine tyring to get ahead with any other job. Anyway, we have managaed to get away from the town on a couple differnt occasions over the past month. We headed over to Lake Atitlan for my birthday where we met up with two girls I had met in Antigua (Teale and Carissa) for dinner the first night. The day of my birthday Nathan and I took a launcha across the lake, went kayaking, and had dinner in San Pedro. The next day we hiked Volcan San Pedro which I have to admit was one of the hardest hikes I have
ever done in my life. I´m sure driving a motorcycle for 4 months and then sittting around Antigua has something to do with the shiver in my legs as I climbed...but still it was nice to get back out on a trail.
A couple weeks ago we adventured off on a camping trip with our new friend Dave. As we were driving through Guatemala city I noticed the ground seemed really slippery, after putting my foot down about three times and thinking the pavement should not be slippery right now since it was sunny and dry, I looked down and realized my left foot was completely covered in oil. So, we pulled over and realized one of my seals had broke and my bike had been spuing oil for the past 20 miles. Determined to go camping...Nathan and Dave did a ´mexi-fix´on my bike and sealed it up with a gasket seal. After sitting at the gas station for about 45 minutes waiting for the seal to dry, we were back in action and continued on with the adventure (I love mexi-fixes). We went north near Coban and camped out for three nights. Camping around here is a bit
like luxury camping. For instance the place we stayed at the second night seemed like it was out in the the middle of nowhere as we drove down this 11 kilometer dirt road, with the local people waving at us and cheering us on (as if they had never seen a motorcycle before, yet alone three). Butwhen we arrived to our destination, the place was like a hidden resort. It had a swiming pool, a restaurant, and nice cabanas. We opted to¨camp¨near the hammocks and palapa (in other words we were really ruffin it). It was a pretty fun trip (as you can see from the pictures) and we ended up ziplining into a river, went tubing and Nathan and Dave (being the boys they are) proceeded to have a fruit fight as we floated down the chill river, the guys at the resort let Nathan drive their 1932 WWII army truck which was pretty much a monster machine, we paddeled around the fish hatchery pond (I don´t think we were supposed to but we didn´t bother asking), we made friends with a monkey and goldern retriver, and ended up having facemask party together in a cave (like a cucumber
pedro working on my bike...
retapping my cam chain tensioner... facemask, yup the boy let me put facemasks on them). So it was a nice adventure and it was in good company (thanks Dave).
This past week we headed back up to the Mexican boarder to renew our visas. Nathan and I woke up early and were able to make it to the mexican boarder by about 1:00 pm. After a little bit of annoying boarder beaurocracy we managed to renew our visas and head back towards antigua. We ended up getting caught (once again) in hurricane type rains and camped near the pool at a hotel off the side off the road. We made it back to Antigua the next day and for our first time, we came bck nice and dry (it was a nice change from getting rained on everytime we drive into the city).
Last but not least, this past Friday we went on our first chicken bus ride with a co-woker and his wife and went to a macadamia nut farm, where he treated us to a nice pancake breakfast and were entertained by a guy named Lorenzo who could not stop dishing out the dirty jokes. It was a very nice morning.
girls
Lindsie, Teale and Carissa at Reilly´s So thats what we´ve been up to the last month, still here in Antigua, trying to make money but trying to enjoy ourselves at the same time (it´s hard to do both). Hopefully we´ll be back on the road by the beginning of October so we can share more adventures on the road with everyone. Until then, take care, love you and miss you all! - Lindsie
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daveg
non-member comment
My acrobatics
Dammit, I figured you would be too lazy to get that video online. ARGH!!!! dg - http://allthewaysouth.com