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Published: August 18th 2006
Well, time and countries are whizzing by now, very fast....
We arrived in Antigua by chicken bus/rollercoaster, going at the speed of sound! Only just managing to keep my arms in their sockets after whizzing around corners soooo fast. Gladly arriving in one piece to the beautiful Antigua, with its colonial buildings and very friendly people.
We stayed in the 3rd place we went to and the only place that wasnt full, Im not sure if the HOTEL sign should be replaced with PRISON! Because thats what it felt like.. we even had bars at the window....but didnt spend much time inside.. we were out and about enjoying the sights, and the markets!! Just biding our time till we left to chichitcastenango on a chicken bus ... and the famous Sunday market...
We needed rest before the market so that we were fully alert for shopping and bargining, determined to buy as much as we could fit in our rucksacks, not get tired or ripped off! Láuras carefully planned strategy of an early night was helped by the hotels 9pm cerfew and 10pm lights out!! (another prison!).
We had a traditional breakfast at a restaurant with 12
Antigua
The ruins in the city year old waiters.. it was so cute.. (Bugsy Malones), thinking they were doing a few hours on a Sunday morning in the school holidays.. but we went back 9 hours later and they were still there.. now thats not cute!
Anyway, back to the shopping...we managed to buy loaaaaaadddsss of stuff, lots of wooden masks and things.. which are really heavy!
Got back on a dodgy chicken bus the next day and oh my god, it was soooo full, we got on and there was nowhere to sit, or stand...'but more people got on, and we had to fight our way to the back.. as the driver kept telling us, and managed to get an aisle seat... an actual aisle seat, with a butt cheek on each seat either side.. just following the locals.. but the locals didnt seam to be in pain like Lo and I. It also happened to be the most windy road and the fastest journey in the world.. the person next to Lo was sick too..Lovely.
No more chicken buses for us tho, we are still recovering........
We were on our way to Lake Atitlan, which is beautiful. A really amazing place. We
stayed in San Pedro and walked to San Marcos one of the days a long walk, but very lovely.. we chatted to the locals on the way.. who were all delightful. We had lunch over looking the lake and let time slip by too much... and while we were waiting at the boat dock ( which was about 1000 steps down, thank god it wasnt up) became a bit worried....
All the boats back were motoring passed us, so we were waving loads.. sarongs, T shirts, jumping up and down, doing anything to avoid going back up those steps!!
Lo actually strained her arm from waving so vigourosly and still is taking ibruprofen for the pain!
Luckily, one did stop for us and we got back to San Peds just in time for our session in the thermal pool. There is a volcano here to climb, kept looking at it thinking ... I wanna climb it, but fact was we were just too lazy to actually get up at 5am and walk uphill for 6 hours!
We left Atitlan for Flores on our last night bus (yey!) and it was a good one, with the meal served
at 1am ( why!?! was a bit weird being woken up and having a ham sandiwich handed to you).
We went to see the Mayan ruins of Tikal. They were very impressive. Jungle, plants, animals, birds... The best bit is you can climb to the top and see for miles and miles.
When we left guatters, we realised we had been part of a scam to swiddle 3$ from us.. you see... they never stamped our passports in.. said we didnt need one coming from El Savos, but we had to pay to leave because we didnt get a stamp!! Cheeky!!
Anyway, loved guatamala, wish we had longer.. could spend much much more time here.. maybe take some more spanish lessons... but time to go to Belize.. time to get our butts back in the caribbean!!
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