Blogs from San Pedro La Laguna, Western Highlands, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 4

So after the first week of Spanish lessons we were whacked and in need of a beer or two. We really appreciated the weekend coming along and spent most of it chilling out, reading, having a beer (did I already say that?) and swimming in the one pool in San Pedro. We’ve met a couple of people and one of them kept us up most of the night being very very ill last night. Poor guy, I’m not looking forward to the inevitable food poisoning. We’ve met a lovely lady from India who is travelling here too and she is going to give us some pointers on where to go/where to avoid in India. So lucky and very odd that we met in Guatemala. Today, after class, we were collected by Tula, the mother of our ... read more

We started our spanish lessons yesterday. Our classes are set on the side of the lake. Volcanos in the distance, mist rising over the water, bird song calming your thoughts... can we enjoy it. Not on your nelly. Thelma, my beautiful, 20 year old teacher is working me so hard my head feels like it might fall off. Four hours of intense learning and then she sets me at least another four hours homework. I'm bunking off to write this (shhh). Steve has a head start and can already hold basic conversation which means that he has moved on to verbs and all sorts of language principles that I can only just remember from my English GCSE. My lessons are concentrating on expanding my vocab. The owner of our hotel patiently let me name all his ... read more

We took a particularly bumpy and long chicken bus ride to San Pedro La Laguna, a village on the shore of Lake Atitlan. Aldous Huxley apparantly proclaimed that it is the most beautiful lake in the world, and in my experience to date I would agree with him. Lake Atitlan is the largest lake in Central America and is around 340m deep with a surface area of 50 sq miles. It was formed by volcanic activity and is surrounded by three volcanoes, mountains, and small Mayan villages. The water is a crystal clear turquoise, warm, and edged with rocky volanic slopes, a few beaches, and reed beds that support various species of bird life. We hired a canoe to explore the end of the lake close to San Pedro village, around the base of Volcan San ... read more

The Death of Lake Atitlan I recently watched the new Star Trek movie; in this movie, a young Dr. Spock watches as his planet is completely destroyed. But this theme of planets being completely destroyed is not new to Star Trek (or Star Wars); no, this is a reoccurring theme in many of the series’ episodes. One species of beings decides that it wants to completely destroy the planet and home of another species. As a kid, I enjoyed watching Star Trek and felt challenged by its themes. In one episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” Capitan Picard discovers the one weakness of an almost all-powerful race of beings whose only objective and mission is to destroy through assimilation all other beings in the universe. Through his knowledge of this one weakness, Picard has to ... read more

Hi everyone (go get yourself a coffee....this is quite a long one!), So where were we....looks like the last you heard we were in Acapulco.....is that right? Yes....? Ok then we´ll start from there. It was such a hardship spending a couple of days at the beach that we decided we should...er....go for another couple of days on a fabulous beach. Huatulco in the state of Oaxaca (pronounced Wa-ha-ka) has a few awesome seasides so we picked one and spent a couple of days looking around and being a bit lazy. The highlight was the world´s best spring roll which we located in a lovely little Chinese restaurant, where we had a little balcony for two overlooking the millpond like sea. I´m drooling just thinking about it. Travelling about this area, we have mainly used what´s ... read more