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Published: October 5th 2011
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The last six weeks that we spent in Antigua flew by. When you’re travelling and constantly moving it can seem as if time slows right down so that you can process all the new things that you’ve seen and done, but there wrapped back into routine, the days turned into weeks, and soon it came time bid adios to the town and people we’ve come to love. We’ll miss the friends we’ve made here, nights shared rolling from bar to bar, engaging conversation and witty banter, coffee, and slouching at Café Pina, weighing strawberries with the local woman at the market, volunteering with the kids whose smiles brightened our days, and the many Spanglish conversations that ensued during the time we spent there.
We’re now in the hills of El Salvador, but have decided that a Guatemalan wrap is in order. During one of our last weekends away we headed east to Lake Aitilan. We met a couple of great Aussie guys on the bus who were interestingly looking at doing the same masters course in Melbourne that I completed a few years ago (talk about small world!). For once it was nice to be on a shuttle and enjoy
indepth conversations about sustainability, ecobusiness and the environment, as opposed to the usual tourist banter about where you’ve been and where you’re going. We were headed to San Marcos, but the rest of the van load were heading to San Pedro, so Dave and I needed to complete the rest of our journey by tuk tuk in the dark, so our conversation all ended rather abruptly as we jumped out and were ushered to a waiting tuk tuk. One of those times when you meet people and you’re sad it’s all over too quickly.
San Marcos is a small town nestled back from the lake with no real frontage or beach to speak of, but it has a cool vibe, and is
muy tranquilo indeed. It’s a spot favoured by spiritual seekers, and a range of enlightenment services, yoga, reiki, meditations, and retreats are on offer, but not in an in-your-face kind of way. You need to access everything by foot, and small paved paths run through the village among jungle foliage and avocado trees. We ended up at Ganesh Bar for dinner which later had live music, and seemed to be the spot favoured by the local expats
living there, whilst still retaining a very mellow and welcoming vibe.
The next day we took the local
lanchas, across the lake to different villages to check them out. First up was
Santa Cruz, one of the smaller towns with pretty good lake frontage, and there exists a very cool hostel La Iguana Perdida, perched right on the lakes edge.
La Iguana Perdida is the sort of place that is welcoming from the onset, homely and comfortable and offering a range of services including home cooked communal meals in the evenings, perfect for socialising with other travellers. As far as cool places, we’ve stayed and would recommend, it’s up there with
Earth Lodge in Antigua. They’re also thinking of ingenious ways to reuse their rubbish. Plastic bottles are filled with other plastic waste (wrappers, bags etc) and then are used to form bricks for house and wall building projects that are then rendered in adobe or concrete. The front wall of the hostel is made from such a construction. Ingenious.
Santa Cruz was so cool that we decided to come back the next day to do a dive there, and stay there for our final night on the lake. The dive
was our first fresh water altitude dive, so it’s interesting from that perspective and also to be wrapped up like the Michelin man in a 8mm wetsuit. Might just be the ugliest wetsuit I have ever seen in my life (worse than the ones that they show on the PADI videos). Visibility was low, and it was cold, but we saw some weeds, a couple of fish and some volcanic rocks. I wouldn’t rush back to do it again, but at least know we know we prefer tropical dives!
From San Marcos we decided to fill some time with a small hike along the cliff to the village of
Jaibalito, and along the way we encountered a lovely local girl who happily chatted to us in Spanish and made sure we didn’t take any wrong turns. We also made the trip to visit
San Pedro and wish we hadn’t bothered. It’s the sort of place that is overrun with tourist tack, and where everything from horse rides and boat tours to cakes, weed and crack cocaine is offered to you within minutes of stepping off the dock. A lot of travellers go there to party, and end up staying
for days – about two hours there was enough for us.
Dave’s last week of school at
Niños de Guatemala was cancelled as all the classes’ carpentry projects had been completed and the kids were just playing hangman. My last week went quickly, more art classes, reading and spelling (it’s doing wonders for my Spanish!). For my last day at school the kids they made me a giant card expressing their gratitude and then sang me a song, that was accompanied by a wee dance. I was of course covered in hugs and kisses, with many pleading with me to stay or come back soon. Bless, it was so moving, and I was almost brought to tears as I said my goodbyes back.
Our last day in Antigua (which had already been delayed by 2 days) we spent wandering the town and visiting all those places that we’d always meant to go in the previous six weeks. We went up to Santa Domingo Cerro, which is a restaurant and sculpture garden set up on a hill overlooking Antigua. It’s attached to the Santa Domingo five star hotel in Antigua, which is also well worth a look around, and from there
you can get a free shuttle up and down the hill. We rounded off the evening with another great night at the Terrace bar and Café No Se, saying goodbye to our NdG friends, Reilly’s staff, and the collection of people we’ve met here. It all ended well with tequila shots all round, and divided opinions over whether to adopt bionic technology purely for performance enhancement in the future. I remain firmly in the Earth Girl camp.
So that wraps us Guatemala – a beautiful country, filled with amazing sites and such welcoming people, and a big thanks to all the travellers and locals that we met there and along the way, our time together was AMAZING! You stole a little piece of our hearts … we’ll be back.
¡Gracias y hasta luego!
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Anne McLean
non-member comment
Happy Birthday
It sounds like you are having a great time. Very jealous. Hope you had a good birthday.