Antigua, Guatemala

A lot of people have zero sympathy for us, and others like us, who are traveling the world, sharing photos of beaches and margaritas, so when we write home and complain about mosquito bites, montezuma's revenge, or anything really... They say, "I have zero sympathy for you."

I guess that was obvious.

But traveling is hard no matter where you are. Okay, maybe I wouldn't have much sympathy for someone staying in Johnny Depp's guest house on his private island.....but no I'm distracted. Point is... Traveling can really take it out of you, even if you aren't in a third world country.
Every day is kind of like a little test as to just how much you trust that bus driver to make it past this car before the oncoming traffic collides with us... Or how calm you can remain when a machete-clad man emerges from the jungle before the truck you're in... Is he security or isn't he? Daily suspense and tests to your deep breathing exercises you learned from Oprah one time.

(From -top- Left to Right: -Sleeping on the bus. - Siiiiiick!. -Ryan waiting for the broken down bus in the heat being eaten by bugs. -My leg and some strange horrifying reaction to bites..or something. -Ryan's hand and its lime burns. -The bus leaking water an rocking to Ometepe. -Sleeping on the bus AGAIN. -Giant tarantula. -Washing launry in the sink. -Long chicken bus rides. I cannot derscribe these.)

Having said all that, maybe it will make sense when I say what a relief it was to see Antigua, Guatemala. Which was ironic, considering the fact that we almost skipped Guatemala due to it being the "most dangerous" of the countries down here.
It was like finding an oasis in the desert. Like your first time at Disneyland. It was like a bundle of kittens (Canada kittens, not the feral ones on the streets here) sitting on a cloud made of cotton candy.

(One of the Cathedrals we went to in Antigua.)

I hate to say this because I feel like a broken record, and no one is ever going to read these again because you already know exactly what I'm about to say, but.... It is so so beautiful.
The cobblestone streets, dozens of detailed and imposing cathedrals, trendy shops and cafe's lining the streets... The best market I've seen in years....

(Inside the artisan market. Just one of the thousand aisles.)

(One of the many vendors of fresh fruit cups/bags.)

Our shuttle rolled in at about noon, about the same time I started squealing and bouncing in my seat like a child after 7 or 9 sodas. Our hostel turned out to be right across the street from both the huge maze of an artisan market, and the main mercado. The "posada" itself was more like a boutiquey little hotel.

(Our hotel courtyard and room. There is more to the room on the right of the door, but no way to photograph it.)

A small courtyard with two levels and only about 10 rooms, each one a little different. Local textiles were the bedspreads and curtains, and the windows where stained glass with cast iron details. I was hardly conscious from all the hyper-ventilating I had been doing. We set our stuff down and I was out the door. I could have spent all day every day in the market, but that wouldn't do, because I needed to be everywhere at once.

(On our way to a coffee shop we'd heard about, we got distracted by this taco shop and array of sauces and array of salsas and toppings.)

As hard as I tried, we only managed to be in one place at once, but I'm still working on that...

(Another distraction on our way to that same coffee shop. A Guatemalan sweets shop. This was a whipped honey/cinnamon sweet thing. No idea what it actually was, but it was delicious. And adorable.)

The market was chock full of beautiful hammocks, bags, scarves, wooden toys, leather bags and belts, dolls, traditional clothing, and everything made with color. Like.. COLOR. It was like a rainbow exploded in there. Not in a lame internet meme kind of way, but in a totally classy cool Guatemalan way.



We came away with a whole extra bag to carry our bought stuff, some of which we will be able to drop off in Melaque, but most of which is just worth the extra weight and will follow us all the way home.

(Walking towards the light.... Just kidding, there was some kind of acoustic room down there. It used to be a convent of some sort, now its ruins, but the acoustics are still GREAT!)

I pranced around the city, Ryan trailing slightly behind taking photos and remaining calm. We dashed in and out of cathedrals and their ruins. To my surprise (well...not THAT surprising, since Ryan is awesome) Ryan was almost as excited as I was. Obviously he skipped the prancing and squealing part, but we both walked around the entire city with giant touristy grins on our faces and a repeating line of, "This is such a beautiful city" or "This is so amazing". We found a few fantastic spots to eat, including a cafe with real cheeses, espressos, and foods that we haven't seen since Canada.

(Unidentifiable street food, and beverages. If you look close you can see Ryan in the background getting what will turn out to be a warm, sticky, slimy, chocolate and rice drink. Complete with chunks of rice. He describe it as 'chocolate oatmeal' to me it was like, warmed up and mushed cocoa puffs. Not bad aside from the slime factor.)

It was surreal, in a way, since we knew we were in Guatemala that morning, and suddenly had been teleported to some trendy little European city.

(Antigua street. Its colder in the mountains.)

We spent our entire 4 days in Antigua strolling the streets and trying different foods.

(We ate lunch at this place, which I'd read about. The prices had gone up since the reviews, but the food was great, and what a selection!)

Oh yeah. There was a bakery directly across from our hotel door also. Best.

After a couple days, while still in love with the city, we knew we couldn't do much else than we already had considering the time and money we had there. Maybe with some more time we would have taken some of those volcano tours or something, but there was a big part of us that was just enjoying being in the city. We just basked for a little while....

(Typical street)

When we finally said goodbye, it felt like the right timing, but there was still a little voice in my head reminding me to gear down for another border crossing, and who knows what else after that. Lucky for us, we're pretty good at picking places to go, but Antigua was something special that's for sure.

Our Route So Far

Imagine little dotted lines leading to and from Ometepe Island (in the middle of Lake Nicaragua) and Utila (Off the coast of Honduras) and you have our route more or less.


View Larger Map

Copan Ruinas

Our final stop in Honduras was Copan Ruinas. So named for the ruins of Copan just a minute outside the town.
We arrived here at night as well because the bus schedules here are really more like guidelines...
However, our tuk tuk taxi driver was friendly, and we found a place to stay which turned out to be pretty nice.

(The street from our hotel door. And a guy in a stetson. Obviously.)

We knew that night, that we would at least kind of like the town when we passed a row of street food stands roasting meats and making tortillas.
By day, we changed our minds, and decided we really really did like this town a lot.
The streets are all cobblestone, all the men wear stetsons, and everything is pretty. The shops, the central park, the jewelry tables set up down one of the streets.

(Central Park in Copan Ruinas)

We took a walk down a cobblestone pathway next to the highway that took us all of 5 minutes to reach the entrance to the ruins. A little more expensive than we've been used to at $22 a person for ruins+museum minus the tunnels but so worth it. At the entrance, scarlet macaws fly from tree to tree just above your head, and sometimes directly AT your head, as we found out on our way out...
The museum houses most of the original stelae (four sided carvings on tall column like stones) in order to preserve them. This is unique to Copan so far, and as disappointing it can seem to know that you're looking at replicas in the actual ruins, its nice to know they're being taken care of.
They are breath taking.

Its amazing to me, just how much work went into them, and that we can look at them today. There's something chilling about standing in front of something that was carved my someones hands so long ago.

(One of the macaw heads used in the ball games. The idea was to hit one of them with the ball using only your hips.)

These people had already been long gone by the time the Spanish conquistadors even arrived. The Mayan history has been so fascinating to read about, that even after we saw the ruins, I found myself reading everything I could find on them.

(Stelae)

When I was younger a movie came out called, "The Road To El Dorado" Not a Hope and Crosby film... Actually I think its Dreamworks. Two Spanish brothers stow away on Cortes' ship and accidentally find El Dorado, the city of gold. Music by Elton John. Yeah. All the animation is done in the style of the carvings that people have found at the ruins. The people they meet in the movie are actually Aztec, I think, but stick a pin in that for now.


This movie was the first thing I really knew about the Mayans and the Aztecs, and while it may be a kids movie, it taught me a lot about that culture. For a kid, I mean.
When we went to the ruins, I kept saying, "We have to watch The Road To El Dorado!" and Ryan would roll his eyes and ignore me, but I was serious! I wanted to compare things because it was amazing to me how similar the architecture and carved faces looked to the movie (That poster is not an example of that), and I found myself already knowing some of the things on the info plaques from watching that movie. This made it all even more exciting.


Similar to the first time I saw the real Notre Dame cathedral after seeing Disney's The Hunckback of Notre Dame as a kid. SO. Awesome.

Hey, Disney movies introduce kids to things, ok? Not like I would base all my knowledge on them, but if it weren't for The Road To El Dorado, I would NOT have known how to pronounce Xibalba and know that it was the spirit of the underworld.

Anyways, back to present day Mayan ruins, if that can even be a sentence...

(These steps are the all covered in hieroglyphics. Its something like the longest display of written language in any ruins. My facts might be slightly off, but you get the idea. Lots of writing. Its a big deal.)

We didn't take a tour guide, and somehow left the books at the room, so we didn't have anything to really tell us what we were looking at besides whatever I could remember from my books. Not that I could match the info to the object, since there were no pictures in my book...

(Detail of a brick in a carved wall.)

ANYWAYS MY POINT IS that even without being able to analyze everything we were looking at, I still got chills walking across what used to be the streets of Copan, or sitting where the ruler used to sit and watch the ball game, or running my fingers across a carving in a wall. It also helped that we ran around making things up and re-writing Mayan history off the tops of our heads. Ryan is particularly good at it.


"You probably can't understand these hieroglyphics but..." and he would show me the block of "Mayan apartments" and answering my questions without hesitation. I bet you didn't know that the Mayans had a Starbucks located conveniently outside their apartment complex....

(Yeah that's Ryan popping up from investigating some ruins.)

The only thing I really wanted to know for sure was where they did the sacrificing because that just freaks me out so much, but at the same time I kind of wanted to see it.

I think we did, because I Googled it when we got back.

Also, the Mayans must have had killer calf and quad muscles because they had a LOT of stairs. Really big stairs too, not those pansy ones we have in our houses these days. Judging by the sizes of everything else, the Mayans were probably kind of little but man could they hike up a pyramid. Seriously, each of those steps are like the length of my lower leg, and I'm probably significantly bigger than they were.(Yep. A lotta steps.)

If you find yourself perusing the internet looking at lame things, stop that and do some research on the Mayans.
Here are a few sites that sum it up pretty well:

Wikipedia
About.com
UNESCO

Make sure to read about the rulers themselves.

The next day we took a little trip up to a place called, "Macaw Mountain", a bird sanctuary and rehabilitation center for the ones who have been somehow hurt or unable to survive in the wild on their own. They live here until they are ready to be released at the ruins. The birds are amazing. (Blue Macaws)

(Toucan!)

The colors on them don't seem real at all.

We took a walk along a path that led through the park, looking both at the birds, and plants which are so foreign to us in North America. Coffee, Cacao, strange pink things...

(That coffee in the middle, I don't know what the other things are...)

At one point on the path they have a center where the birds hang out on branches and chill with some employees who, if you stop to look, will eventually end up placing a few macaws on your limbs. This was awesome, and a little unnerving. Nothing like a big strong beak just a few inches from your face...

(Ryan with some buddies.)
(Me, also with some buddies. The red one is taking a break from trying to eat my bracelet.)

Honduras actually is really beautiful, and if we had more time and no valuables with us, I would definitely have wanted to explore more cities. For now, I am happy with what we did see. I've been a big fan of the "leave while you're still having fun" concept lately. I think it keeps us excited and motivated to keep going.

A Night in Gotham City

You know how I said Managua was in dire need of Batman?
I changed my mind.
Actually, no, it does, but we found a place that might need him first.

San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

We spent more than 12 hours on a TicaBus, A/C blasting on high the entire time, freezing its occupants. Maybe this is a preservation technique so we don't rot on the bus...

(If you look close you see that those white specks are the sprawling slums of Tegucigalpa)

We stopped briefly in Tegucigalpa, but only for a few minutes and then we were back on the road. Honduras is weird because it looks like California. Or BC. The trees are the same, the golden hills... If it weren't for the sprawling slums reaching out from the cities, or the tiny shacks with a random goat out front whizzing by like clockwork, you could be anywhere in North America.


This feeling changed the moment we arrived in San Pedro Sula.
Our plan had been to get there, and immediately catch another bus to La Ceiba, sleep, and get the ferry in the morning to Utila. This changed when the bus was like 2 hours late arriving in SPS. So we arrive. In Honduras' largest city. At night. In a giant closed bus terminal. With nowhere to go.

(I didn't have any pictures of San Pedro Sula, so here's a photo from The Dark Knight.)

We only found out later that San Pedro Sula is on a list as the current most violent city in the world. Keeping in mind, that means its the most violent, record keeping city in the world. Africa, for instance, is full of much worse places, but they don't document.

Regardless, this town FELT full of evil.
We grouped up with a couple from Holland who were in the same predicament, and had the bus driver talk to a cabbie for us. He told him to take good care of us because we are his passengers and he is responsible for us. Whether or not that counts as a reason to take good care of us, we were happy to have someone who knows how things work talk to the cab driver.

He took us 20 minutes to a hostel and charged us all way too much.
Inside the hostel, was a poster from one of the most disturbing grotesque "rip people in half" movies of all time, named "Hostel". This movie single-handedly reduced the tourist industry 193%. I made that up, but I'm pretty sure its true.

I know you're all sitting in suspense asking yourselves the obvious question here, "Did they get kidnapped and/or sold into human trafficking?!?"

Yes. Yes we did.

I'm typing this on Windows 98' in a garage.

For those of you who are concerned and following at a slower pace, thats ok, don't feel bad, I'm very convincing.
But I am kidding.

Miraculously, we lived. The cab driver picked us up at...guess what time...5am. He charged us WAY too much, but got us there safely. The bus did NOT get held up by machete wielding bandits, much to the dismay of "andiamotony" who had a very unfortunate experience on a Hedman Alas bus in 2007 and has spent his entire life since then, littering every forum on the internet with angry rants at people who dare to suggest they might actually be a good way to travel. Which they are.
They are deluxe and comfy, and go straight where we need to go. Within Honduras anyway.
Except their choice in movies is peculiar. They played a series of "Dennis The Menace" type movies, including "Dennis The Menace" and a couple others I've never heard of, all involving the unknowingly menacing child and the doofy kidnappers who get seriously injured and end up covered in something gross.
I severely hope that remains the worst thing about our bus rides through Central America.

Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

I like to call Utila, "The land of false advertising."

Yes it has white sand beaches. Beach. White sand beach. Singular. A small one. It's still lovely, but there isn't actually much for beach lounging and daydreaming about how great everything is today whilst listening to waves crash and sipping on some cocktail with an umbrella sticking out of it.

It's common knowledge that hurricane Mitch left Honduras in shambles and that, to this day, they're still the least developed country because of it. Parts of Utila look like it was just hit yesterday.

The other thing that made things difficult was the fact that it seems like the businesses change on the regular, and everything we looked for was gone/renamed/moved across town.

It felt like we'd accidentally come to the wrong island.

To be clear, it IS a beautiful place, and it IS the place to learn how to dive, but if that's not what you had in mind when you came, its a bit of a surprise.(The main drag in town.)

The island is jam packed with ex pats and backpackers and feels a little like you're missing something. Like there's some kind of secret thing that you don't know about that is the key to making it the Caribbean paradise you kept seeing in pictures.

We stayed in The Backpacker's Lodge which was bare bones, but run by nice people, and $5 a night. We rented bikes and explored the island.... or rather the 15 minute ride that is the road that goes through town. Everything else is houses. We ate some good food, we listened against our will to the man who, like clockwork, sits on his porch across from our hostel room and blasts Shaggy music on max volume by himself for about an hour.



But wait, I'm painting this out to be a nightmare.

(Detail at a crazy treehouse bar.)

In reality, these things I've described were more funny than anything else. We had a few good frustrated laughs and in the end, tried something we might never have done if it weren't "THE thing to do on Utila".

Scuba diving.

We didn't end up taking the full 4 day PADI course because, 1. We didn't have 4 days, and 2. We didn't know if we'd freak out and hate it and never dive again.
The people who own the hostel we stayed in also own a dive shop across the street and offered us an "introductory dive". Basically, they run you through the basics, how to breathe, what NOT to do, where all your gadgets are, and then they toss you in the ocean and go for it.
We get 2 tanks for $74 and spend the day in the ocean.

(Our Gear)

I was nervous because it felt a little less "ease you into it" than the 4 day course, but the guy assured me that all we had to do was NOT hold our breaths and he would take care of the rest.

We went out on a boat, he taught us a couple things.... It seemed like a lot of things, and a lot of words that were way over my head.... and then he said, "Ok, ladies first."
I said, "No no, Ryan has to go first." but I was THINKING, "What? Wait, Ryan got shown all his equipment, where's MY equipment, why don't I get to try out the regulator? SHOW ME MY GADGETS!! WAIT!"

And then I got thrown in the ocean.

He had me sit on the edge of the boat, hold one hand over the weight belt and one over my face, I said, "Are you SURE I'm going to float? and then he shoved me backwards.

For the record, I DID float.

Even more important, I went first. Yeah. I did a brave thing before Ryan did. Which was totally out of character. Sure, it wasn't totally a choice, but I could have refused if I really wanted to. Which I kind of did, but nevermind.

Ryan said, "The moment they tossed you off the boat into the ocean was the best moment of my life."
Which I think says a lot about our relationship.

The first few moments, he had us submerge and kneel on the sand, which wasn't very far down, and he ran us through some movements. Basic breathing, clearing our masks, taking the regulator out and getting it back.
My mask was fogging up, despite all the spit in it, I couldn't stay still, I was floating around, the sand was everywhere, and the bubbles from the mask were loud. I panicked. I started hyperventilating and gesturing madly that I wasn't "ok" and pointing at the surface. I knew in the back of my mind how to surface, but at the time, it wasn't happening. I grabbed at the inflator button and the instructor took it from me, shook a finger, and I freaked out MORE. Somehow, I ended up on the surface. For a moment I thought, "thats it, I'm not gonna be able to do this" but for some reason I didn't say that. What I DID say was, "Ok sorry, I'm good. My mask was filling, I couldn't see, I needed to get to the surface. Sorry. Ok I'm good."
He said that was perfectly normal and happens pretty much every time, and we went back down. We figured things out, and then we swam.

We did two dives. The first one was the learning, plus a swim around a reef shelf looking at critters and getting the hang of it.
The second one, was swimming over a huge reef wall, through a crack in it, and back to the other side.
It was so amazing, I can't even explain it. Anyone who has done it before will probably know what I'm trying to say though. It was almost familiar, but I can't imagine why. It goes against every human instinct, and its definitely nothing like anything I've ever done before. Snorkeling is kind of similar, but you're on the surface. There's nothing like reaching down and touching the ocean floor and looking up and seeing the sun come through the surface of the water.

We came out happy and amazed. Our instructor said we were naturals, and he spends 5 hours just trying to show people how to clear their masks. Obviously, we rock, but it was still nice to hear HIM say it.

Ryan came out feeling pretty weird but other than that the experience was a total success.

The rest of the trip was just a day, which we spent mostly trying different places to eat and strolling through town.

(Ryan beating everyone at pool.)

On our last night, in the middle of dinner, I had a strange episode which we're still trying to figure out. It could have been any of a million things. Among them are inner ear issues, panic, anemia, Deet side affects, food poisoning. It happened suddenly, and ended after a few minutes as if nothing had happened, besides being shaken up and tired.
I was dizzy, sweating, nauseous, sounds and lights were warped. It was the most frightening experience, I was sure I was going to pass out, but I didn't. Maybe it was the dive, but the divers didn't think so. Ryan went to the bar next to the room to ask about a doctor in case we needed it and a few people piped in their theories. Nothing seems to fit quite right, so it remains a medical mystery.

(The coolest restaurant ever. Also the scene of the crazy mysterious health moment. That's the ocean in that open space. It has rocks set up at the bottom like an aquarium and they feed fish so it acts as an open water natural aquarium. So cool.)

We left the next day, healthy, but tired. We always seem to have schedules that require a 5am wake up call. This is not natural for us. By a long shot.

I was happy to leave, mostly because the island is small and there was only so much we could do there, but also because being on the move has gotten a hold on me. Its feeling good to just pick up and find a new place. Being able to go anywhere we want is something that doesn't happen very often, and while its nice to settle down and relax somewhere, this is pretty exciting. Tiring, but exciting.

Honduras looks like home...

Last moments at Elizabeth's

Our last moments at Elizabeth's. This is (From left to right) Armando (Elizabeth's husband also known as the "one armed guy" cuz we could never remember if his name was Orlando or Armando), Jorge (our crazy Costa Rican neighbor from down the hall.), Elizabeth, Me, Ryan.

Elizabeth insisted on making us breakfast that morning and sent us off with a handful of gifts she got from her personal belongings: She put a red coral bracelet on my wrist and handed me matching earrings. "To make you even more beautiful."

Armando and Elizabeth