Like a Bunch of Trained Monkeys

We woke up at a decent hour considering the evening that we´d had the night before. Kate and I grabbed 'desayuno' (breakfast) at a little shop across the street. The food here is so good. All of the ingredients are fresh and so long as they wash things in 'agua pura', you won´t catch anything. The night before, we had all decided to hike to the nature preserve so that we could see some of the local wildlife. A group of about eight of us hiked up into the hills where we met up with the wimps who´d taken 'tuk tuks'... the tuk tuks are their own story that I´ll go into some other time, but they´re basically three wheeled 'taxis' driven by 15 year olds that only occasionally obey traffic requirements. Once into the reserve it cost about $5 to walk around, and we crossed a number of suspession bridges on our way up into the mountains to view the waterfalls (consequience of it raining here all of the time...)

The hike was a blast and the group we were with certainly helped to make a great afternoon. Everyone is really easy going and interested in taking advantage of the time we have here in Guatemala... a few of the are also fluent in Spanish, which obivously has its advantages too. Carlos and I found a rope swing that definately would be a law suit back home... but again, we´re in a great country in which you´re responsible for yourself. So we spent some time trying to get hurt. The swing is on the side of the mountain, so it was a good warm up for our next activity...the Ziplines. The national park has a series of six lines which you can ride for the reasonable sum of about $25. Everyone was game, and it turned out that no one in the group had gone on a zipline before. Because the lines go through the mountains, most go over the steep canyons and take you passed a bunch of waterfalls. It was definately worth it.

We did have to do some battles with the mosquitos, and I think I only killed one or two for every three or four bites I got. But again, it was totally worth it. One of the lines was alomst a 1000 feet long and took about 40 seconds to go from one end to the other. Stopping also took a little while to figure out, but our local Mayan guides had seen it all before and managed to stop everyone before they went crashing into the side of the mountain ...a fact that was not overlooked when it came time to tip them.

Everyone in the group survived, and afterwords we celebrated with beers and snacks as we strolled through the national park, enjoying a huge butterfly preserve, which also served as a rehabilitation spot for an injured hawk. We also checked out the local spider monkeys and coatis (cousin of the racoon, with a longer snout and big tail). Begin the biology dork that I am, you can imagine that I was in 7th heaven and the group was kind enough to put up with me. We rode in tuk tuks back into town which means that we narrowly survived run'ins with the chicken buses as well as numerous pedestrians.

As soon as we got back to town, we ran into Whitney and Jason, who had arrived that morning from San Diego. Apparently, they saw us hiking towards the national park, but weren´t able to catch up. A big group of us, including Brandy, Matt, Oscar y Misty headed out to a restaurant down on the lake. As we were eating, it started to rain, so we went through a few buckets of beers before we finally moved on. The food down here is outstanding. We get fresh tortillas with just about everything. Fried platanos are also pretty common, and are great.

The next morning a bunch of us headed down to the lake to go kayaking. It was a really great way to spend the morning. We found a few places to cliff dive, but because it had rained all night, it was probably best that we didn´t. Reality of this place is that it's beautiful, but everything from waste water, to the street gutters runs straight into the lake. And even though I´m immunized again almost everything at this point... probably the best decision not to go in. Paddling on Lake Atitlan is pretty cool. In addition to the various towns surrounding it, you also spend your whole time looking up at the three volcanic peaks that dwarf the rest of the landscape.

After the kayaking, we headed to breakfast where we met up with the Fox´s (Brandy´s parents). We had a blast, but Brent made the fatal mistake of looking at some of the street vendors wares. Needless to say, as soon as one of the vendors knows that you´re looking, the rest decend like locusts ...on one hand, it sucks when you´re trying to eat and have a conversation. On the other, you have to recognize that some of these people have very little, and they´re looking at you eating a huge breakfast while they´ve had nothing that morning. Which actually lead to our latest discovery. The best way to get them to leave you alone, is offering them the food you´re not planning to eat. At the end of a meal, there is always extra tortillas, plantains or juice. And these folks get the biggest smile when you ask them if they´d like any in Spanish... it´s definately frowned upon by the restaurant staff... but so what? The best is when you give the fried platanos to the niños... absolutely make their day... mind too Good lesson and a quick way to make some local friends.