Firstly I need to tell you all about the wonderful Lago Atitlan, about our last week of Spanish and why we now hate French people. Hate is a strong word and probably inaccurate, but all will be revealed shortly.
So when we left you last we were hiking volcanoes and resetting dislocated shoulders. Action packed stuff. After climbing our last volcano in Xela, we slept all day and then got on a bus to Lago Atitlan. Actually it was 3 buses, but it only took a few hours. After several hours in the bus, we walked through the bustling and super touristy town of Panajachel to get a lancha (boat) to Santa Cruz. We had agreed to meet our good friend Tom of Xela fame at this hostel called ´La Iguana Perdida´.
I wanted to live in Lago Atitlan and never leave. In fact, I may have tried to convince Ian that we should try get a job in the hostel! A picture of the view you wake up to every morning will demonstrate why:
The Iguana is one of the coolest places we´ve stayed and I´d say my favourite hostel so far. They have a family style dinner, so everyone eats a three course (amazing) dinner together and afterwords you play cards. We met some cracking people there and learned manys the card game. Catchphrase was definately brought out on more than one occasion and the smack talk got offensive! Catchphrase had to be put away at one point because we were getting so roudy! Classic Catchphrase...
If anyone is going to Lago Atitlan, I can´t recommend the Iguana Perdida highly enough. If anyone wants to go diving, they are a very slick operation and the dive guides are very sound.
Anyway, while at the lovely lake we went kayaking, we swam a little and we also went diving. Now, Lago Atitlan is a lake in what was once a volcanic crater. Its at high altitude, so what we really did was dive in a fresh water volcanic lake at altitude. This might not mean a whole lot to some of you, but for the divers among you, it was cool.
There were volcanic rock formations, a petrified tree (which we didn´t get to visit because it was covered in algae) and hot mud along the fault line from the volcano that the lake sits on. The diving was a lot like diving at home, dark, not much vis, but the water was considerably warmer. You also have to add another level to your pre-dive equipment check: scorpian check in your wetsuit. Time for a classicly stolen picture from the internet:
This isn´t either of us, its purely for demonstration purposes. Just imagine its us.
We went to Santa Cruz with the intention of staying at a different town around the island every night. We liked the Iguanga so much, we just stayed in there the whole time and did day trips to the other towns.
Every morning we´d get up really early to make the most of the day as it usually rained at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon for the rest of the day.
The one other place we did stay while we were at the lake was Casa Del Mundo. Get your jealous faces ready folks, becuase this is actually the nicest place I´ve ever stayed in... ever.
The Garden:
The HotTub (again, just imagine our faces in this picture):
The view from the Balcony:
Casa del Mundo, also known as paradise. It was a bank holiday at home, so we splashed out.
When I finally agreed that, yes it was time to leave Lago Atitlan, we headed off to Antigua in search of yet more Spanish classes.
We arrived, found a hostel, found a Spanish school and quickly hurried into town to meet those trouble loving fiends, Matt and Rob. That was our downfall. We spent the night partying till late and myself and Ian had our first fight.
I say fight, he was trying to convince me that I should go into a puddle and I mearly disagreed. (There´s a picture of a similar scene underwater where Ian tried to flood my mask so I stole his fin, I´ll try get it up soon.)
Anyway, we shortly started our new Spanish course, was good fun, we even got to play with a Piñata which is epic! People around us were shocked to hear that neither of us had ever hit a Piñata before. We met up with Matt and Rob one last time before they had to head back to reality, which again caused scenes of shock and awe in Antigua.
Antigua is a really funky little town, its not very Guatemalan though. Think more European chic than third world. There are coffee shops, lovely restaurants, hip bars. We even got to visit a Macademia farm. (Macademia´s are my new favourite nut by the way.) Very hip city, not very true to life in Guatemala. For instance, Enrique Inglesias has a mansion there, its very impressive. Most Guatemalans live in small one room houses with corregated iron roofs. Most Guatemalans can´t afford the coffee or macademia nuts that grow in the area and they definately can´t afford to eat in the fancy steak houses. (We couldn´t afford the steak either, we´re saving up for Argentina.) But its a very very cool spot to visit and learn some Spanish.
On to Rio Dulce we said, so that´s where we went next. We got up at 3am to make sure we were in time for the bus which was due to leave at 4am.
After 4 hours on our shuttle bus, we swapped to a bigger bus with lots of French people. Its now about 8am, we have begun to notice the French are all over the bus. We arrived in Rio Dulce at around 11.30am, tired but happy to be on our way. We went dock to get a boat down the river to go to the Garifuna* town of Livingston. The French people somehow got into a loud fight with one of the locals over the cost of the boat. Now I´m not sure how it happened, something about the guy not believing it should be so expensive.
*Garifuna: very interesting carribean culture originating from slaves who rebelled so the English dumped them on Rotan island off Honduras. The Garifuna spread along the coast to the coastal town of Livignston and further afield.
The boat to Livingston was due to leave at 1.30pm, so we grabbed some lunch while we waited for the boat. We´re now pretty tired. The boat was supposed to take 2 hours, but the driver had to stop for gas and go back to the dock as one of the French had forgot their bag. An hour after we were supposed to leave we got on our way. Somehow there are only French people on the boat. Our nerves are wearing thin, sleep was a very long time ago and the French language has somehow begun to grate on our ears. At 5.30pm we arrived at our destination very hungry, very cranky and very tired. Somewhere on that 13 hour journey, we began to hate the French language. I apologise to all French people everywhere, I really do like you, its just my nerves were shot.
We spent a few days enjoying the view at Finca Tatin which is a hostel literally over the river. There are paths through the swamp to the rooms. It was very cool and that`s where Ian learned to walk on water. (See Facebook photos.)
From there we moved onto Honduras and as my computer is about to die I`ll save that for next time!
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