Susannah, approximately 2:30 am, LAX
Poking volcanoes with sticks
Grand Plaza, Tikal
Lake Atitlan
Guatemala, February 2008
Sus and I headed to Sea-Tac on the evening of February 1 for two solid weeks of fun in the Guatemalan sun. It took about three hours for things to go awry. Our flight to LA was delayed a bit and so we missed our red-eye to Guatemala City. After a lengthy and unhelpful discussion with numerous TACA airline reps, we spent a delightful night at LAX waiting until 3:30 am, when we could check into our new flight, which included a layover in El Salvador. Good times! We finally arrived at our destination around 10 hours late on Saturday afternoon, sans luggage. So - we were immediately whisked away to Antigua by Sus's friend Lisa and a couple of her coworkers. Despite our zombie-like state, we had fun wandering around the city, getting some food and adjusting to Guatemala. The next day, we headed back to the airport, where miraculously, our backpacks had arrived and were waiting for us, fully intact. Monday morning found us on our way back to Antigua, which we used as our home base for the next two weeks. By the afternoon, we were climbing up Volcano Pacaya. After much climbing and navigating a rather treacherous field of loose volcanic rock, we hiked right up to some real live flowing lava. We stood around poking the red hot lava with sticks and engaging in other generally unwise behavior for a while, then we headed back down the mountain in the dark. A minor stumble in the lava field left my ankle so bloody that I had to throw my socks away, but otherwise we managed to escape relatively unharmed.
Tuesday morning we were back at the airport for a quick flight to Tikal, which is an ancient Mayan temple complex in the north part of the country. It was really hot and jungley, it the place was absolutely packed with birds. It took us about 45 minutes to walk the 200 yards from the hotel to the entrance because we had to stop every couple of feet to look at all the birds flying around, including the TOTALLY AWESOME Oropendola, which were crazy loud and prone to rather hilarious displays of flipping upside-down while making turkey noises. Later that afternoon, we hung out by the pool and watched the spider monkeys jump from tree to tree and hang from branches by their tails. We got up super early the next morning for more birdwatching and, although we took a wrong turn and missed out on seeing the sun actually rise over the jungle, we saw plenty of new bird species to make up for it.
After Tikal, we headed back to Antigua, where we spent a couple of days eating, reading, generally relaxing, and making a few trips to different tiny towns near by. On Saturday morning, we met up with Lisa and a coworker and headed to Lake Atitlan, which is a huge highland lake that is surrounded by volcanoes. We stayed in a tiny hippie enclave called San Marcos, where I was dismayed to realized I had arrived without my dreadlocks or book of Earth Songs. ah, well. Despite the emphasis on healing, yoga, and anything related to earth/goddess worship, San Marcos was gorgeous and totally relaxing. When we weren't kayaking, reading or eating the insanely cheap, absolutely delicious food, Sus and I had our binoculars glued to our eyes, and we saw a good 20 different species just sitting by the garden in the afternoon.
After another brief night in Antigua, we decided to head up to the cloud forests and the Quetzal Biotope. Sadly, this turned out to be a bit of a dud - we ended up in the middle of nowhere in the cavernously empty, overpriced tiki hell known as the Ram Tzul hotel. Because it was the off season we were the only people there, and the whole experience was totally bizarre - not the best use of time and money, but the cloud forests were absolutely beautiful and we did see two female Resplendant Quetzals, which are not only the rapidly declining national bird of Guatemala, but are super reclusive and hard to see. We also did some great hiking through the cloud forests, which was really amazing. It was sort of like hiking in the Cascades, only even wetter and more dense and with huge fern trees and different plants with leaves two feet wide. With little else to do, we spent a lot of time watching the clouds literally roll through the hills and valleys of the forests.
On Thursday, we packed up and headed back to Guatemala City, where we narrowly survived multiple high-speed passings around blind corners and a rather suspicious 'inspection' by a police officer who seemed to be trying to extort money from our driver. Our final night was spent in Guatemala City (murder capital of Central America!), where we spent our last quetzales on delicious drinks and a terrible dinner.
All in all, it was an amazing trip. The country is amazingly diverse ecologically and culturally for such a small area and the people are wonderfully nice and helpful. Besides all the amazing sights we visited, Sus and I each added about 30 new bird species to our life lists (click here for a full list of species identified) and we were lucky enough to see spider monkeys, coatimundis, and even a wee fox (which I immediately scared away when I repeatedly shrieked "ohmygod what is that?!").
Although the food wasn't quite as exciting as I had hoped, we did have some really great meals and both of us fell in love with the desayuno typico (typical breakfast): scrambled eggs, fat corn tortillas or toast, beans, fried plantains and avacado. So delicious!
I'm happy to be back, but I feel like there's so much I didn't get to see while I was there; I would go back in a minute!
