Tabacon Hot Springs, a night of relaxation

Last night was pretty damn amazing. I started off on the Volcano Arsenal tour which took us to the base of volcano arsenal. This wasn't something that totally made me go wow considering in guatemala i had hiked volcano pacaya and even got a chance to play with the lava up close and personal. Here fellow hikers were in awe as they got a glimpse from a couple kilometers away of small orange yellow dots dripping from the side of the volcano top. I told my tour group leader that i had seen a volcano erupt when i was in guatemala and had even climbed to the base of a volcano where i stuck a stick in the hot liquid magma. He was totally in awe as this hike was nothing in cmparison to that. I guess costa rica is just too american like. Too many restrictions on everything. u can't even hike to anywhere remotely close to the volcanoe.

The highlight of my night was the tabacon hot springs, a luxurous 5 star resort located in the volcano aresenal area. here fresh mountain water is heated by the sulphur of mother earth and are bountiful in earth minerals. What can i say.. just amazing. waterfalls with piping hot water, bunch of pools streaming down into very fast rapids, water slides, swimming pools, a floating bar.... lots of hot water... just too relaxing.. much better than a swedish massage granted i've never had one. I lounged in the waterfall leading the water running through my body for a good 2 hours. Then i headed to the bar to unwind with an imperial cerveza. Given that this was a 5 star resort the prices were insane and the only thing i really felt like splurging on was draft beer. haha. After this it was a nice gourmet buffet which was delcious. Combine this with a strawberry daquiri and the night wass deemed a success. Today I hopped on a bus and a boat to the town of monteverde. The scenery was just amazing on the trip up here. I arrived in the town of Santa Elena around 12 this afternoon. I decided to head down to a butterfly farm something i've never been to. I got plenty of cool pictures. i'll try to post them later. the plan for tomm is to head down to the monteverde cloud forest tomm morning to do some hiking and wildlife observing. From here I might take a direct bus to the coast of costa rica to playa tamarindo where i will try to do some surfing and catch some sun rays.

La fortuna, the getaway for outdoor adventure sports

Leaving the Tranquilo Backpackers behind, I departed San Jose yesterday and caught the 11:30 bus to La Fortuna. La fortuna is a pleasant town located north of San Jose and is often the get away city to surrounding towns to explore interests in outdoors adventure excursions. Looming in the background of la fortuna is the majestic volacano arenal, an active volcano constantly spewing up fresh molten lava.

I like La Fortuna. The people are very friendly, and it still has a costa rican flavor despite the heavey influx of tourism. This afternoon I will set off with fellow adventures to hike to the base of volacano arenal where i will catch a glimpse of the molten lava dripping from the sides. I will also try to catch the sunset. From there I am off to the hot springs of Tabacon located on the base of volcan arenal. This is a 5 star resort renowned for it´s natural hot springs.
Hot springs are considered a natural expression of Earth’s inherent energy. Geologically, Tabacón Resort’s hot springs are 97% rain-based and 3% magma-based. Rainwater enters the earth through fissures on the surface and is then heated by magma found in the earth’s core. Once heated, the waters rise to surface, taking with them minerals found in the earth’s rocky stratus. Thus, the resort’s waters are loaded with minerals. Hot springs provide many benefits stemming from various chemical, physical and biological effects.

It should be an awesome night of relaxation. Tommorrow i´m hoping to venture out and do something slightly more adventurous. Costa rica has some great white water rafting class III and IV rapids are pretty common at the rivers. Maybe i´ll try to set something up.. we´ll see. I have to be in Ecuador November 7th. That leaves me a week and a half and I have yet to see panama. I don´t have too much time left, so i have to make the best use of the time that I have.

The tale of the prostitute... or shall i say, prostitutes!

I decided to have lunch at the casino Hotel Del Rey today. Seriously, I had good ambitions.. maybe check out the casino down here in San Jose maybe grab a beer or two and eat a nice sandwich. What i didn´t realize when i sat down to eat lunch today at the hotel del ray´s dining hall was that this was the livelist spot in all of central america for prostitutes to come out and swindle clients out of money in exchange for a romantic rendeavous. As i sat down and looked at the drink menu, I was approached by the hottest latina waitress i had ever seen. Alright, she might of not been hot but she definately was in the hot because you´re slutty type. Not thinking too much about that and just thinking that this was standard casino attire, i ordered my imperial beer with much glee. So i´m sitting there with my beer drinking and i realize, man all the girls are looking pretty damn slutty.. but kind of good looking however showing all of their assets.. what´s up with that? And of course, I was kind of curious why this young looking slutty girl kept peering at me as she talked on the cell phone. Finally i got my lunch which included a ham and cheese sandwich. As I proudly devoured the 4 legged meat that i swore i wouldn´t eat because i am a good hindu, suddenly it occured to me... Maybe these girls were just hanging out at the casino so they could find a sugar daddy. I took a glimpse away from my plate and at once the answer became perfectly clear as 4 slutty looking girls at the other side of the restaruant were smiling childlishly at me. Being soooo naive, all i could do was smile back with a soft hola. That was the queue they were waiting for i guess, as all 4 of them came to my table breasts hanging out and all. I realized I was screwed big time as it became apparent that i was at the most happening brothel in San Jose. and that too out of accident and good intentions. so i´m sitting there as one of the girls starts flattering me up by saying that i´m the most good looking guy she´s seen and starts diving into questions about why i´m here. Finally enough was enough and i resorted to my favorite quote one that i use a million times here. no gracias... no gracias. no sexo, no gracias. i don´t think they were getting the point as one of the girls took a seat. Now i really was stuck and i couldn´t just leave havning not finished my lunch and without paying my bill. so picture this.... i´m sitting there with slutty girls but really gorgeous looking girls in all directions and theres no where to look but down at my plate.. i know i´m self conscious but c´mon. So anyway, one of the girls starts talking about her life and i´m like, no me gusta sexto, yo necessito comer mi comida. which translates to, i don´t like sex, i need to eat my food. I don´t think they got the point, in fact they thought i was talking about some food fetish as they became more aggressive. Finally i told them, i was married and one of them was like.. yea so what. u need to relax.. come one i´ll help you out. After that they were fighting one another as one slut started screaming to the other slut that she stole me away. Leaving my ham and cheese sandwich behind i walked to the bar counter and said. la cuenta por favor. payed my bill no tip of course and left the bar. and that´s my story about the whores. any guy other than me would be in paradise... well thats if they´re into good looking, latina whorey and sluttly looking gals.

costa rica and stinky girls

I made crossed Honduras and Nicaragua without a problem and I am proud to say I have finally made it to Costa Rica. The trip was pretty exhausting but it was amazing seeing both honduras and nicaragua these past 2 days. Nicaragua, what can i say. Its one of the poorer countries of central america, and managua was simply scary. Our tour bus pulled into the bus station and just taking one look outside i was so thankful i didn{t have to walk outside as I just have a feeling a mugging would{ve happened and i wouldve been on the victim side. it was that scary. luckily i camped out with fellow backpackers at the bus station (they actually had a hotel inside). Right now im in the capital city of costa rica, san jose. i{m staying with 2 hippie girls that i made friends with on a bus at a hostel style place. they{re pretty cool except they kinda smell weird. i know thats mean to stay but i just got back from our room and theres this funky stale smell. doh! to top it off over dinner one of the girls mentioned that shes been wearing the same clothes for 4 days. no wonder you smell. doh!! doh!! oh well, ill surivive. i finally picked up a lonely planet guide book for costa rica. i didn{t have one so hence my leeching onto their plans when i arrived here. and i even told the cab driver where to take us.. with confidence. heck he probably thought i lived here my entire life or something... not knowing thats the only hotel i know of here in san jose.

What else. tomm i think ill take a rest and jsut hang out here. i think all this traveling is burning me out a little so i just need to chill and relax. im starting to have a bad attitude about stupid things... e.g little kids begging for money or trying to sell things... i was so mean that today i said... no gracias for gods sake.. NO GRACIAS. I even said no gracias to a girl who i think was trying to be flirty with me. she was a girl taht was on the bus pretty damn cute too, but she asked me a question in the midst of all the vendors and kids asking me to buy things, so i ended up saying no gracias to her too. big DOH! on my behalf. oh well, we ll see what happens... for now i have to put up with the stinky gals in my room. the mood im in right now, ill probably say something smart... just watch me...

Visas.. a pain in the ass

Crazy past 2 days. Copan Ruinas was pretty awesome. It´s such a charming city located by the hillsides surrounded by ranches and mayan ruins. The nightlife in Copan is pretty nice too and they have great restaurants. I stayed at a hotel called hotel san jose the first night, however didn´t enjoy the fact that when i returned to the hotel around 12 at midnight the doors of the hotel were locked and i spent 30 min banging on the door to get in. Hence, i switched hotels to the Cafe ViaVia which was amazing. Apparently viavia was teh place to be in town and it was owned by a pair of vibrant belgium couples. The first night, i had a nice dinner at a pizza place and woo hoo the pizza i had finally had mozarella cheese on it.. a first on my adventures in central america. From here I went to a bar called the Red Frog to mingle aroudn with the locals and fellow backpackers. Here I befriended the owner who happened to be from california and set up a business down here in honduras. I also became friends with a girl from aussie adn we had a blast that night getting drunk. The next day i went to the mayan ruins which were just amazing. The carvings were pretty neat and it was a nice visit having just been to tikal. That night i went to the red frog once again, and we partied the night away.

The next morning, I hopped on a luxury bus to San Pedro Sula honduras and from there a chicken bus to Puerto Cortes hoping to catch a ferry to belize the next day. Turns out my visa in central america expires on friday, so i have to leave the territory of guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua for a period of 3 days so my visa can be renewed for a fresh 90 days.. stupid rule but hey i gotta do it.

Well, despite constant sources of info telling me there was a boat from puerto cortes to belize on Tuesdays, i showed up at the immigration office that evening to find out there was no boat and that there was only one boat a week that left on mondays. Faced with the info that i was fucked and basically stuck in puerto cortes, i was adviced that i could go to puerto barrios in guatemala and then take a boat to belize. to do this i would have to go to corinto, cross the border back once again into guatemala and then take a boat to belize. I ended up thinking hmm maybe this didn´t sound bad, so i hopped on a bus that i thought was going to corinto until 30 min into the trip I found the truth that the bus was not going to Corinto. I love how ppl just lie to u down here. Somewhere in the town of omoa, i realized i needed to get teh fuck off the bus as it was getting darker outside and i had no idea where i was staying. I quickly stepped off the next stop and lucikly i saw a bus headed in the opp direction.

Well i stayed in Puerto cortes by teh beach that night totally exhausted from traveling. The beach was nice i guess. Kind of dirty and I exactly did not enjoy the sunset.. i was too busy brushing off the mosquitos. I did however see some macaw birds.. amazing and colorful. I finally decided that enough was enough and this visa situation is a pain in the ass. I am now in san pedro sula and decided to catch a direct bus to costa rica bypassing my plans to dive in the bay islands. doh! at least i´ll still be legal.

san pedro sula sucks by the way. not much to do.

Crossed the border to Honduras. For better or worse

Phew! What a day it has been. I left the dynamic beach city of Livingston located on the eastern coast of Guatemala and after one boat, one taxi, one chicken bus, two shuttles, a short walk over the honduras border and finally one last collective shuttle ride, I made it the city of Copan, Honduras. My journey in Guatemala has come to an end an new adventure begins here in guatemala. Livingston was an interesting town. Although there really werent beaches to swim on, it was interesting to see how different the ppl in livingston are in comparison to the rest of guatemalan. They{re more like carribean islanders and jamaican more than anything else. Thursday night was a blast but a joke at the same time. After grabbing some kick ass coffee at the hotel rosada which by the way was named the best coffee in town by the lonely planet bible, I headed back to my hostel the hostel iguana to grab dinner and city and drink beer with the fellow hostelers. What turned out to be simply a cerveza and getting to know other travelers turned out to be a drunk fest and I drank wayyyy too much. At some point during the night, the drinking games took such an extreme turn and it became way to sexual than I really felt like handling. The game played was Never have I ever, however it was the sex version of it. Some of the things being said were just way too extreme for the imagination. Finally after lots of beers and shots of rum and more beers, i made it to my cabin to catch some zzzs knowing a hangover was waiting for me the next morning. I was right the next morning, as i got off to a late start. Lunch was great yesterday. Supringly theres a restaurant in town owned by a lady from indian decent that is known for her indian chicken and fish currys. The fish was pretty good for central american standards considering it was the local fish with local ingrediants and very tasty. I even had the iced chai which was great.

I knew I could stand another night of partying my ass off. It{s like u get dragged into it. Avoiding the certain, I went to bed early last night amidst the sounds of drunken laughter from my bed. I woke up this morning and headed off to puerto barrios and port located south of livingston. Here I caught a chicken bus to Chikamulas located just southeast of guatema city. Lined with coconut, pineapple trees i really couldn{t complain about the view. Chikamulas was interesting in that once again i stepped out of the bus not knowing where the fuck i was. I gotta give props to the guatemala lonely planet guide book as I was able to pretend i knew what the hell was going on asking for the specific bus and the bus station i had to get to to go to the guatemalan border city. Despite constant promises from the hawkers that there were no buses at 330 headed to border, i called their bluff and walked away from teh crowd. Alas came a shuttle headed to the border. I hopped on the collective shuttle and made it a city where i had to change shuttles again to get to the border town. It was here that I made the 50 meter dance across a huge gate into honduras. That{s after crossing guatemalan immigration and hondruas immigration. fun stuff. i am now in copan ruinas located just south of the guatemalan border. this is a charming city similar to antigua. Copan is known for it{s mayan carvings and the plan is to explore the mayan artwork a bit.

The plan from here is a little crazy, as at the border i was told my tourist visa for guatemala which includes entry into guateamala, hondruas, nicaragua is going to run out october 26th. can u believe i{ve been here for 90 days. Instead of trying to deal with visa issues, i might cross over to costa rica and then cross back and get back to honduras making my tourist visa renew automatically. i love loop holes in the system. well see what happens.. i finally checked into my hotel after lots of haggling with hawkers trying to get me to stay at their hotel. I actually gave into one of them bc it was getting dark and i was clueless. i don{t even know what the currency exchange rate is right now... maybe i should check that right now. well the hotel looks decent and i saw some tourists. so things should be okay. at least for now...

Speeding down the Rio Dulce to Livingston!

I hopped on the Linea Dorada bus line that connects Flores to the Rio Dulce. The journey was about 3 hours much shorter than I expected. I arrived in the Rio Dulce around 1 pm. Here, I was swamped by a bunch of dudes from tour agency companies offering a tour of the Rio Dulce which is a river that dumps out into the Carribean Sea. With plans to head downstream to Livingston a reggae beach town on the banks of the carribean sea i opted for the tour. The speed boat ride down the rio dulce was amazing. It was a nice trip and the view of jungle lined trees scattered with indigenous flora and fauna was simply breathtaking. We even sped through Lilypads hundred of them and I got some fabulous pictures. Hopefully i´ll post them soon. Finally we stoped at the bank of one part of the river to explore some thermal springs fed by sulpur pockets in the earth. The water was piping hot and given the heat and humidity i opted not to plunge in. Alas, we spent at high speeds to the junction where the Rio dulce dumps into the Carribean sea. This is livingston. The people here resemble islanders or jamaicans even have the same accent. apparently they are a set of people that inhabited this area during the slave trade. They totally look african america and not even guatemalan. Guatemala is just an amazing country. people are so different from region to region and that exactly i love about it. I´m always suprised at each place i visit I checked into a hostel called the hostel iguana. We got a cool group of ppl living there, and i think we might just get down and dirty tonight with plenty of cervezas, music and good food. The plan for tomm is to go on a jungle tour whree i will explore the flora and fauna of this area, explore the culture of the indigenous ppl a bit, and then end by relaxing on the beach and catch some rays.

Tikal

Tikal is a pretty amazing site. Scattered in the peten jungle are mayan temples and structures of various shapes and sizes. My journey to tikal began at 5 am today. I reached the park around 7. needless to say i had no idea it was a 2 hour commute. hence i missed the sunrise from atop temple number 4. doh! it was still amazing however. I started off seeing temple IV and made my way around the peten jungle catching a glimpse of other mayan temples towering above the forest canopy. Temple 4 which is the highest in the tikal area and the second highest (second only to el tigre iin the el mirador) in the Mayan world is just amazing however some reconstruction and restoration projects are going on. I did get a chance to climb high atop the temple and oh man.... what a view. Looking off in the distance u get an ariel view of nothing but miles and miles of forest canopy. Against the backdrop of forest canopy you can see other temples poking high into the air scattered randomly in the forest. in the distance there are huge hills where mounds of mayan temples remain unexcavated. In the distance, the sounds of howling monkeys gives u the feeling you really are in the jungle. Thankfully, I was the only one on the top when i climbed as memories of a roomate of mine in antigua filled my headed on his experiences on top of temple IV (someone was on their cell phone calling ppl proudly announcing to the world he was "now on temple IV" and even more crazyly one girl was playing her guitar atop the temple....

By 1230 i was done.. haven seen all the temples. It was pretty hot as hell and the mosquitos were unrelenting despit my application of mosquito repelent.

Tonight the menu was pescado or fish. I forgot to specialize my fish order as i normally do "sin cabeza" so the fish came in it{s entirity head an all. This brings me to another addendum to my last post. Another thing I won{t eat is fish that has a head and it{s eyes. I prefer to eat my fish decapitated. Unfortuantely tonight, I didn{t have a partner to eat with so i didn{t get a chance to do my famous anil manuver which is to turn my plate with the head, eyes and mouth facing towards my partner. instead i had to resort to barbary which meant decapitating the fish. the fish was great. it was the local fish of the lake served with rice, vegetables and bread. pretty yummy. i might try to catch a movie tonight as one of the restaruants plays movies at 8 each night. other than that nothing much is happening and I think i am ready to leave flores. Tomm I will take a 6 hour bus trip to Rio dulce, where I will speeded down a jungle lined river via boat to the beach caribbean town of Livingston.

An interesting journey to flores

After 3 different chicken buses and one boat across a river i made it to the northern part of guatemala in the peten region. I am staying at a hotel named the Las mesas de los mayas.. whatever that means. Tikal the site of some spectacular ancient mayan ruins is just a 45 minute shuttle ride away. I am stoked. I booked a sunrise tour that begins at 5am so i can see the sun rise against the backdrop of the mayan temples. In the background I am hoping to hear some howling monkies. Maybe I can play along. I have been practicaling my howling and bowling and I think I got it down. I´m also hopeing to do some ziplining over forest canopy. Let´s see if it can top my zipline adventure at Lake Atitlan.

Flores is an interesting town and reminds me a bit like Antigua in that there are a butt load of tourists. I´m so accustomed to being the only non guatemaln guy in town with ppl givuing me glimpses of curiousity but here I feel kind of normal again. I used to use the brown skin confident I am guatemalan don´t fuck with me demeanor to fool everyone into thinking I was a local in santiago, but also my refusal to parade around in the male huipiles and the embroidered shorts is what gave away my facade. So flores.. what else can i say, it´s a cozy little island surrounded by a nice lake with tons of great restaurants. My trip from Coban to here was a bit interesting. I must start off to say that my goal in these last 2.5 months has been to experience guatemala as it is. No tourist shuttles, no planes.. just be one of the locals. This has it´s exceptions as I like to splurge and find my niche at coffee shoes that serve great desserts and pies which the avg guatemalan usually doesn´t go to b-c they´re too expensive. I´ve also been great at trying guatemalan food, however a couple things I won´t eat. Heres my list of foods that I aboslutely won´t eat.

Number 1 (this tops the list). A nasty yellow ball that is filled with cauliflower. It may look tempting and good but It´s the nastiest thing one can ever imagine. I was served this the first time at the host family i was living and i iddin´t like it then, and 1 month later i gave it another shot at someone´s house and i almost vomited. It´s just nasty and gross....

Number 2.
Chorcheta. however u spell it. It tastes like what i would imagine urine to taste like. i swear.

Number 3.
Certain types of Tamales. esp that have bones in them. I guess it´s dependent on the maker however the manyh tamlaes i have tried had bones in them.

Number 4.
Frijoles in the shape of crap. I like black beans but when they come in your platter in the shape of a terd, it takes away your appetite.

Number 5
Instant coffee. I hate this shit


but i digress.....

So from coban I set off to travel like the locals and opted to take the chicken bus to get to flores. I must say the hotel I stayed at was pretty damn nice and i was sad to leave such a cleanly and nice environment at only 10 dollars a night. Anyhow, I got off to a rough start and the adventure began by trying to0 find out where all the buses leave from. My lonely planet book was wrong and it had me going around in a goose chase. That brings me to point number1... always ask MULTIPLE ppl for directions. a few ppl will lie, a few ppl don´t know so they give an answer, a few ppl give too detailed instructions which is counterproductive... the truth lies somewhere in the middle. After finding the bus station, I got swept away in the mad rush as i was being grabbed by conductors of various buses to take their shuttle. not knowing what was going on, i got swept away by one dude who grabbed my bag w-o permission and made his way to a bus. this was fine with me, as i was already feeling lazy and it was nice not to look around for buses and act lost. Here i realized i was going to be taking a communal shuttle which was packed with 20 other guatemalan ppl in a van that was meant ounly to sit 6. Interesting ride as i was packed as tight as a sardine in a tin can. The city i wanted to reach was Sayaxche where i would take a connecting bus to flores. sweating like a madman tight between some guy whereing a cowboy hat and a fat guatemalan lady who didn´t wear deodarant i was relived that at the very least i found the right bus.....

2.5 hours later, the conductor stopped the bus and informed me that he was going to drop me off at a gas station where i had to flag another bus down headed to the Sayaxche direction. I immediately realized this wasn´t a direct bus to the city and the conductgor had fooled me all along. he had taken me to the point where one has to change buses. Dropped off literally in the middle of nowhwere with my suitcase in hand, i stood by a shell (yes interestingly shell) gas station, praying that a shuttle would arrive. all of a sudden i felt so vulnerable to the elements in the middle of nowhere with gas station attendents staring at me. My prayers were answered 30 min later when a shuttle headed for sayaxche arrived.....

2.5 hours later, i arrivbed in the town and got off at the center of the city. only to look around and realize there were no buses. After asking around, I was told i had to cross the river via a boat ferry to the other side and then catch a bus. I finally made it to the other side and to my relief there was a bus to flores.

15 min later, a dutch couple hopped on the bus. What a pleasant surprise. Finally some tourists and not only were they tourists. They were the same couple that hung out with me when i was in Coban and my semuc Champey tour. Both were headed to flores. It´s nice to have someone have your back.. theres a bit of a feeling of saftey when u recongize a familiar face. We finally made it to flores.

Tomm the plan is to see tikal. The hotel i am staying at is nice however, it´s pretty freaken hot and humid. my AC doesn´t seem to be working well. Anyhow, I just got back from a nice dinner of a pizza bagel and coffee. i feel great. i might call it an early night today, as i have to be up by 4 am tomm. other than that all is well and I am trying to schedule interviews through email right now. i have gotten 11 invites thus far. Sounds like dec and jan will be really busy and a big pain in the ass.. also means that in 2 months my adventure in central america and south america wil have to come to an end.

Coban, Semuc Champey and some caves

On Saturday I headed out of guatemala city to coban. It´s about a 4 hour bus ride to the north. I arrived in the late afternoon and went roaming around in the city. I like Coban. It´s a bit more modern that what i´ve been used to so far. I even found a great cafe in the center of town that had the most amazing lemon pie and coffee. On sunday, I hooked up with a tour group that I had arranged that was headed off to Semuc Champey and the Grutas of Lanquin (the caves). We started off around 6:30 in the morning and reached Semuc Champey around 10. Semuc Champey.... what can I say.. It´s probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to. A river streaming down rock banks into beautiful turquoise and emerald green pools that are crystal clear eventually making it down in a brilliant waterfall to the ranging river beneath. simply amazing. We got a chance to do some rock climbing into the dip where the pools flow down and become a waterfall at the edge of a cliff. Hanging on a ladder with the waterfall pouring in front of my head, it was unbelievable. We made it down to a cave area about half way down the waterfall and took in a marvelous site.

After our rockclimbing expedition, I decided to go swimming in the turquoise crystal clear pools. The water was cool and was exactly what I needed. A nice workout. From here our group headed to the grutas where we did some spelunkering and climbed the jagged rocks into the dark core of the cave. We saw tons of bats and ancient areas where the Mayans would sacrafice animals to the spirits. It was eery to an extent however, was pretty facinating.

Today the plan is for me to work my way up north to the flores, tikal area where I will see the Mayan temples.

The recap of all recaps... the parents in town

Well it´s been a long ass time before I posted on here. Well not really... My parents came down to visit last week--so I was busy playing tour guide. My parents flew down on Saturday, and I went on Saturday to receive them at Guatemala City. From Guate City I hired a taxi and opted to spend the night in Antigua located about 1.5 hours away. In antigua we did a bunch of shopping, took a bunch of pictures, ate a lot, drank lots of coffee and did the exact same thing the next day. I even randomly ran into one of the attendings I work with at the hospital who was on vacation and was spending time in antigua using it as a hub to do some adventure outdoorsy types of stuff. Unfortunately he broke his wrist while dirtbiking so the plan was for him to head back to Santiago.

Monday and Tuesday the parents came down to the Lake Atitlan and spent 2 wonderful nights at the posada in Santiago. I even got to show them where i live, the hospital I worked at and they even got a glimpse of Maximon the revered deity in the town. My dad was a bit curious however about why maximon had a lit cigar in his mouth...

Wednesday I pushed off and wrapped things to a close at the hospital I work at. Needless to say, they had a busy call night the night before with a lot of stuff going on in the morning, so the entire staff basically forgot I was headed out that day. Without really saying bye to everyone, I left Santiago like the wind which is very typical of the way things run in my life (here one minute, gone the next... making a mark in someone´s life and then gone without a trace). We then hopped on a boat to Santa Cruz to stay at a hotel located on a high cliff the Casa del Mundo. The weather was pretty nasty and rainy however the view was superb. It was here that my dad started to feel a bit sick and the complaining began.

Thursday
Sensing the complaining of the food, the weather, the tiredness I decided to end the guatemalan adventure and take a bus back to guatemala city to drop them off. We hopped on a 5 hr chicken bus to guate city

Friday
spent the entire day in guate city. Shopping and also went to zona 1 where I was reunited with a package that my parents sent to me a month ago but I was too lazy to pick it up. it´s pretty crazy that my parents arrived before i even picked up the package. I can now recharge my camera battery! woo hoo. that means i can take pictures once again.

Saturday

Wiped off the tears--not! and said goodbye and dropped them to the airport. From here, I grabbed a taxi to Zone 1 to grab a 4.5 hour bus ride to Co

Saturday
Dro

the week recap

Sorry it´s been a while since I updated this blog. So, I guess i should start off by a recap since my last entry. Last Saturday, Matt and I decided to rent a canoe and paddle out in the lake to go fishing. We caught so much fish that it was overwhelming........catfish, bass, trout, Mahi, dolphin, shark, mermaids, lockness monster. Just kidding... We didn´t have a single bite. It was pretty fun though just canoeing out in the lake dangling a line in the water acting like we were fishermen. I think we got a good bargain in the renting the canoes. Originally the guys at the dock were insisting that it was 150 quetzals (about 15 dollars) for 3 hours for one canoe. The price dramatically dropped as the local crazy guy who´s always trying to sell pot to the local tourists offered a canoe for only 30 quetzals (about 5 dollars). This really pissed off the other dudes who were trying to rip us off and they ended up dropping their price. So that´s the fishing story. A lot of sun, a lot of paddling, but no fish.

This week was a pretty chill week for me. I had to rewrite my personal statement and submit my ERAS application. I turned it in on Wednesday and I already got a bunch of interviews. Tufts, Mayo, USC.. hopefully i´lll get somemore. I´m pretty set on internal medicine.... this is where my heart lies. I´ve had enough OB-gyn for a lifetime.

Today I am off to guatemala city to pick my parents up from the airport. It´s about a 4 hour bus ride via chicken bus so it should be pretty interesting. We will be staying in antigua tonight and tomm night... then monday and tuesday i´will take them to the lake atitlan and santiago atitlan where I work. Wednesday, we will visit this majestic hotel in a neighboring town overlooking the lake and volcanoes--it´s on a cliff. Thursday, we will visit some hot springs.. and friday back to guatemala city. Tuesdday is officially my last day here in Santiago. I will def miss this place a lot. After my parents leave, i will finish up some siteseeing here in guatemala then i´m off to honduras visiting copan and then spending a few days in the bay islands learning how to dive. The plan is to be in Quito, Ecuador by Nov. 1st.. we´ll see what happens.

As for now, I have a long bus ride ahead. I can already hear the bus ppl yelling "cuidad", "cuidad". I think it´s time to leave now......

bye