Hola
So another week has gone by which means that I have been to about 3 more cities and still don´t know what I´m going to do at the end of the week. I guess that means that I´m doing a little better about not planning my whole trip out—which was one goal I had for the trip.
So I did end up going to Lake Attilan for a couple of days with a quick (3 hour detour) to Guatemala City to get a Brazilian visa. However I had no interest in staying there overnight. It takes a day for them to process the paperwork so I have been travelling the past couple of days with out my passport. It turns out that no one ever asks for it but don´t worry at 8AM tomorrow morning I will be picking it up.
I saw even more evidence of the American or western invasion in Guatemala on my brief stay to the city. Dunkin Donuts, Firestone, and Payless Shoe Stories. Now for the really bad exports…I can´t decide which is worse…Hooters or Chucky Cheese!!!!!
Lake Attilan is a really beautiful lake that is nestled between two different volcanos. Unfortunately it is still raining every afternoon and the volcanos were in the clouds for most of the day; however, in the morning the sun was always out. Sort of strange to get a sunburn in the morning and then be running from the rain in the afternoon. There were two main towns that I stayed in on the lake…one was the first really tourist town that I stayed in complete with t-shirts, tons of hotels, restaurants, and people selling cheesy stuff and the other was a hippy town with only one street and a couple of brick paths that completely shuts down when it gets dark out. Both were cool in their own way. I just spent a couple of days of hiking around, watching a couple of movies, and trying to relax a little bit.
I also took a day trip to the town of Chichicastenango which is famous for its market. I had read that it was the biggest and best market in all of Guatemala and split evenly between tourist and local goods. It turns out that it was almost all goods for tourists but that made the market really colorful and fun to walk around. I did finally buy some traditional Guatemalan weaving (a really cool table cloth) so I guess that is good. The townspeople have found a very creative way to celebrate and honor both their traditional Mayan and Christian beliefs. So walking around the church and observing these practices (lighting a ton of candles, swinging incensents from aluminum cans, crawling on the floor while praying, etc) was really interesting. I also was able to watch part of a Mayan ceremony where a woman was trying to stop being so greedy. Needless to say it was a very interesting day.
After a couple of days at the lake I came back to Antigua for a couple of days. If you remember I was here on my 2nd day in Guatemala. I´m really glad that I came back because I wasn´t in the traveling groove yet and didn´t fully appreciate the city. It is really a neat place with colonial architecture and a ton of church ruins (the churches keep getting destroyed by earthquakes). While there are a lot of tourists here it definitely hides this well. I spent yesterday just walking around the city and visiting some of the churches and ruins, bought some new books, and got my haircut. Believe it or not one of my favorite things to do on the road is to get my haircut. Always an interesting cultural experience. This guy kept making fun of the fact that I have no hair on my head but have plenty on my ears and face. Really nice but it was all in good fun. Then today I went on a tour to climb an active volcano (no not the one that just erupted yesterday in El Salvador) called Pacaya. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and I couldn’t see anything. It was just really rainy, winding and cloudy. We did manage to make it to the crater and I did get to see some rocks being thrown out of the crater and got to smell a ton of sulfur. Needless to say we would have never gotten that close if the volcano was in America. It was also interesting to see a village within a couple of miles of this active volcano…a US equivalent would have put a town at the Coldwater Visitor Center on Mt St Helens.
Now for the weekly medical update: nothing!!!!! I have absolutely nothing wrong.
Tomorrow as I mentioned I´m leaving Antigua and heading to a city called Coban to visit some caves and lakes. After that I continue north to see the ruins of Tikal which is the place that I have been most excited about visiting in all of Guatemala. They are meant to be spectacular. After that (which should be either Wed or Thurs) I will head either to Belize or Honduras to go scuba diving. I can´t decide where to go but will do so in the next couple of days.
Good news. I seem to be having some luck uploading some pictures so they will either be attached to this entry or you will find them in the picture section.
Hope all is well and best wishes
Scott
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