Blogs from Antigua, Capital Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 11

Well after some serious bus journeys we are in Antigua. We will do a full update probably tomorrow but its New Years Eve so right now we are going out to party. Happy New Year to everyone. See you all in 2013 xxx... read more

It,s been just over a week since our last blog so i thought i´d catch up before my seive of a memory starts draining!!! Shelly is on a PC next to me trying to organise some accomodation for the Honduran Bay Islands for Christmas, easier said than done!!! So we left the Florida Keys on a happy note after filling our faces with Key Lime Pie at the famous Mrs Mac´s Kitchen diner in Key largo before driving off the Keys and to Miami. As we got within 15 miles of downtown Miami we hit the traffic that we´,d been warned about and played stop/go for about an hour till we got into town. After the lack of our research on the Keys and our expectation of miles of sand we decided to head straight for ... read more

We have been in Antigua for a few days now. We enrolled in a Spanish Immersion school and started our first class on Sunday. My teacher didn´t speak any English and I was quite frustrated. I got a terrible migraine and went home early. Thankfully I felt better the next day but I still was frustrated; I could see that other teachers spoke some English and so finally yesterday I decided to ask for a new teacher. Martha, my new teacher speaks quite a bit of English and I just think she is a better teacher so I´m much happier now. Dan is learning at a faster pace than me and frankly it´s irritating but he is just smarter than me and I already knew that ;) I´m improving though and that feels good. We took ... read more

After an exciting ride back out of the valley via pickup truck, followed by a less exciting but breathtaking combi (Passenger van) ride through Guatemala's mountain ranges, we said goodbye to our new friends in Guatemala city and headed for Antigua. Antigua is one of the tourist hotspots, with lots of "Local Artesan" shops and Spanish language schools, including the best rated schools in Guatemala. We asked our driver to take us to a hotel, which ended up being about $50 bucks per night for the room (The Colonial) and were too tired to try and find better accomodations. After talking at length, we decided to check out some of the Spanish language schools in town to try and get a little better about comunicating with the locals we met. We decided on the Antiguena Spanish ... read more

The boat ride across Lake Atitlan is quite the exciting boat ride any given day, as the water can become aggressively choppy. However, on this day, the ride from the Bambu Hotel to Panajachel was particularly rough. Prior to setting out for the playa publico (public beach), we went to say goodbye to Don and Barbara (at the little restaurant at the end of the road) and to take a photo of their awesome establishment. See photo. Having said our farewells, we set out by tuk-tuk to find our transportation. We were a little rushed this morning, because we were working under the assumption that the boat left the pier promptly at 9:00am sharp. (How silly of us to think that anything happens at the exact time it is scheduled here.) However, in spite of being ... read more