Aussie Day in Antigua

Aussie Day festivities kicked off at a rooftop bar in Antigua watching the sunset over the volcanoes. Met up with Chook and Krispy for a few Aussie day tins, supplemented by a few "Aussie treats". Solid night, not much else to say about it, enjoyed the local Mojitos.


YYYYYuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Put a smile on your dial!!!

Chichicastenango Market

Here are some shots of the Chichicastenango markets. They are one of Guat´s Biggest but are becoming more directed at tourist nowdays and so are the prices. The sellers will attack you and make you buy things you dont want let alone can carry. The barganing over here works like this - if you ask the price you will be expected to buy the item. There is no such thing as ¨just looking¨ in spanish!!! The seller will always start at an extrordinarily high price in the hope that you have just come for a weeks holiday from the states. They let you know that they want to barter with you - ¨tell me your price¨. But for us, most of the time, after we suggested a price, the seller reacted as if we had just asked to trade thier first born for a rabbit.... the seller would rather not talk to us then barrter further.

We did see some crazy things, including the thing/object/animal in the first photograph. You all have to come up with ideas and let us know what you think it is!!!!!! Winner gets a price.

P.S click on the photo to get a better look.

Semuc Champey

After our time in the markets of getting more hassled than a kebab shop owner at 4 in the morning, we headed for a bit of the laaaaiiiiid back tranquility and peace that was on offer at Semuc Champey. It is a national park kind of thing, and so the only places to stay are either the town of Lanquin (a half hour ute ride from the pools) or the solo Hostel Las Marias (a place just 10 minutes walk from the pools).

These pools are ridiculously clear, no other fancy words are required. Visibility is simply from one end of each little pool to the other. You can see that they are a series of pools that cascade into each other, through the middle of a gauge between a couple of mountains. There´s not much life in the pools, only a few little fish that if you sit still long enough, and haven´t washed your feet adequately enough (like Ebs) the fish will swim over and give you a free pedicure.

We were lucky witht the weather, for although this area has apparently a wet season, and really bloody wet season, we managed to get to solid days of sun, not that the sun was necessary for the activities of the second day.

Just near the swimming pools are a series of big (and as we later realised not so big) limestone caves with massive stallictite and stallicmite formations. We entered the caves at about nine in the morning, only to see daylight again 3 hours later. We were accompanied by a guide, and by a local family of four fairly plump guatemlans (a teenage girl, a 55 year old bloke, and two women also in their fifties) - none of whome could swim.

We entered the caves to immediately be met by chest deep water, luckly our guide told us to keep our candles (yes candles, not waterproof torches) as to not extinguish our only means of seeing the way out. Ebs´then made the comment ¨I hope there aren´t bats in here I don´t think I could handle that¨, to which Richo replied ¨me too¨ having just seen a bat fly past Ebs´head.

We then made our way at a meandering pace, as each time we had to cross a body of water, the four plumper people on our tour who were unable to swim, had to don their rubber tube they had been supplied with, get tied to one another with a long rope, wait for the guide, Ebs and Richo to swim to the next point where people could stand, and then wait for the guide to pulll them through the darkness. It was bloody funny to see this little aquatic guatemalan train come toward us each time, all holding their candles.

Only got a little worried when one of the individuals in question got stuck in a small gap, through which we had to pass, and through which a heap of water was pouring. This poor lady was panicking a fair bit and so were we, and we didn´t know whether to try and hoist her back up or simply put our foot on her head and push. Luckily after about 5 seconds gravity kicked in.

Cracker of a time, but knew by the 2cm candle stubs that we had at the end that we had been in there more time than the average punter.

Xela and our 5th month of travelling

Hi All.

It has been a while since our last blog, and we have a

lot to tell... We spent a week in Xela, studying spanish again and living with a family. The spanish was fantastic compared to Argentina; the school was very inviting and the teachers were there to do what you wanted.. A long way from Huliana´s lessons. We stayed with an elderly couple, Liddia and Francesco, who were very hosptiable but would ¨prefer it if we kept to ourselves¨. We had to play cards in our room to conserve energy (1 light bulb in our room compared to 4 in the kitchen). We figured they must have alot of gringos come and go and ¨its best not to get too attached¨. On the upside Liddia was the latin Martha Stuart, doing things to beans and rice the rest of you can only dream about. In all seriousness it was great to have home cooked, healthy meals and to live in a home for a change.

Another great thing about the school is we went on little trips about Xela everyday. These photos are of us heading to a natural hot spring in the mountains behind Xela. It was really beautiful up there. We past all the farms on the way and watched all the harvesting and planting etc, of all types of different veggies. you also pass the women washing in the rivers and its really quite cool. P.S do you like Ebony´s Roy Orbson glasses.

To celebrate our fifth month on the go, we went to Xocomil Parque Aquatico (after much persuasion by Richo), which is the biggest water park in the Central Americas!!! Pretty impressive place!!! For one of the slides we did not look at the structure beforehand only to get a total shock when we were spat out of the tube into a giant sink!!! only to have to go down the sink HOLE!!! freaking out we went anticlockwise 5 times around the sink trying not to fall backwards down the hole!!!! real good time.

Casa Del Mundo - Lake Altitlan

Ebby it was your Birthday, happy Birthday Ebby. We hadn't treated Ebs to a night of luxury that was meant for her birthday, so we took the opportunity to stay in La Casa Del Mundo. This is a little Hotel built into the cliffs that surrond Lake Atitlan.

We were lucky enough to get a reservation, unfortunately the only room left was the presidential suite.... and so it was out of our hands, we had to take it (shame).

We only had a night there, but making we got the most bang for our buck we arrived 3 hours before check in and departed 4 hours after being kicked out of our room. On our first day we arrived and had a very tasty early morning lunch before heading down to one of the multiple balconies that overhung the lakes' edge. We thought about hiring a kayak, or taking on one of the many walks that surounded the area, however four hours after lunch we were still baking it up on one of those "multiple balconies that overhung the lakes' edge".

The water was a bit chilly, and extremely deep and clear (despite our solid efforts to get to the bottom didn't even come close) later finding out it was hundreds of metres deep in parts. It did look like an abyss and Ebs was convinced that we were going to stumble across or at the very least be nibbled on by the Latino relation of Nessie.

As you can see from the photo's we had the best view of the lake from our private balcony, and one of the best sunrises of the trip (awoken by a panoramic view of the light coming over the volcanoes from our bed). So all in all it was a pretty sweet way to spend Ebs' very belated birthday pressie, and a really luxurious change from our normal accomodation. From the second photo down you can see our room (the top corner room of the building on the cliff).

Cheers guys,

Richo and Ebs

Lake Altitlan

These are shots from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, where we have spent the last week hoping around from village to village by boat. It is such a beautiful place, surrounded by non-active volcanoes, and the lake itself is formed as a result of a previous volcanoe.

Ebs has joined the YMCA, as you can see..... It's actually just a pic of Ebs getting kitted up to go zip-lining through some of the 100m high rainforest canopy that surrounds the lake. We have some great movies of us actually zip-lining but can't get them on the blog.

We stayed for the most part on Panjachel, which is a little overcrowded with the standard weaving hippy tourist sitting in the street who came for a holiday and stayed to weave and dread hair (get a job) but otherwise was very pleasant.

Richo and Ebs out

Antigua Guatemala

Well this is our first from Guatemala, and so far we have loved what we have seen. Having flown into Guatemala city, we decided to skip the capital and head straight for the town of Antigua. A mecca for Spanish schools, and still very colonial in it´s design with cobble stone streets and all that stuff.

On our first afternoon of arriving we decided to go to the main tour agency and check all the stuff that could be done around the place. Whilst in there we managed to bump into one of the daughters of one of Richo´s mum´s school mates, Robin and her boyfriend Luke, which was a fairly random but very cool encounter. Hope Honduras was awesome kids!! The sunset photo was taken from the skybar (rooftop bar) whilst having a few settlers with them.

Following a very late last minute decision last night, we decided to climb the still very active Pacaya volcanoe (one of the 4 that surround Antigua and can be seen from our rooftop bar and one of the 33 in Guatemala of which three are active), that can be seen in the photos above. We got up at 4 am in the morning (not needing to get up until 5am but forgot to wind the alarm clock back) and drove in the usual if ´I survive this bus trip its a bloody miracle´ manner which we have now become accustomed to, and reached the foot an hour and a half later. From there is was a 3km assent to the part of the volcanoe where the old molten lava had formed. Our guide then escorted us across the recently hardened molten rock, upon which we could see the glowing red molten through the cracks. OUr guide demonstrated just how hot it was down some of these holes by hovering a stick just barely inside the openings, only to have it burst into flame. This being the case, they allowed us to freely walk across the rocks, and generally do as we pleased despite the rumbling from the volcanoe above and the somewhat unstable ground beneath your feet. It is fairly safe to say that the public liability craze that is sweeping the globe is yet to reach Latin American shores.

Thats all for now,

Richo and Ebs

Bringing in the New Year

When New Years came about we were still hanging out in

the rain at Bocas... We ended up in a great little Hostel - Boca Backpackers - with a great group of people that felt more

like a share house then a backpackers. We spent the night hanging out at the various gringo drinking holes before hitting up Splash once

again. From there we did one of the more stupid things on the trip and swam back to Bocas in the dark, instead of taking the 50 cent water taxi. (you can see how far splash is from the main land from the Christmas photos). We swam right up into the Wreck Deck bar (which is a bar built around a wreck funnily enough) to avoid the 15 dollar cover charge. We were so happy to have survived the swim and avoid the gaint squid and baracooders, that we were certain inhabited the area, that we didn´t see the armed marshal waiting for us . We got escorted out of the pub, in our underwear in which we had swam. All and all an eventful night.

Other ohotos here include signs of sun, us chilling out at a restaurant over a reef, and us hanging out at red frog beach.

Hope you all had an awesome New years, and all the best in 2007. We leave Panama today and speak to you from Guatamala.

Ebs and Richo