Well the San Marcos experience was amazing, we spent the 2 weeks there doing spanish classes, we both learnt heaps and can now hold up basic conversations. Louise can understand more and I can speak more so that works out well.. We made friends with some local guys who make jewellery, and spent a fair bit of time with them playing music. Brought a local instrument called a Tum Tum which is a wee percussion instument. Our days were spent doing yoga, eating, cooking, talking, walking, swimming sauna-ing, playing music, dancing, laughing and eating more. Louise managed to meet two ppl at the hostel who were traveling with fiddles so she exchanged some music. I played some basketball with my spanish teacher and his mates on the local court which was awsome, getting in amongst the local ways, although the rules were different and I probably looked like a lost confused chicken, but twas fun. Our dorm was cool, for the most part just us and 2 cool chicks from the states that we made friends with. One day we came home to find an almost dead scabby puppy, so we washed and fed him, made him a wee bed and picked all the fleas and ticks off him (which was a huge mission), after a couple of days he was walking and wagging his tiny tail, which was awsome considering when we started he didnt even have the strength to hold up his cute wee head. There are soooooooooo many wild dogs here, a few ppl we knew got bitten a couple of times, at night time in the village its a bit scary with no street lights, the dogs dominate the village in packs. The locals are super friendly, always going out of their way to say hi, we walked to another tiny village San Pablo around the lake where there are literally no tourists, and wandered through some farms n stuff, talking to the farmers in our broken spanish, they were really nice, keen for a yarn and stoked that we were interested. All of us girls had upset stomachs there, possibly from swimming in the lake which has dormant bacteria, cos now that we have left its much better.
We went to a local festival last weekend which was great fun, made friends with some local guys on the way over which was lucky because we were stuck there for the night as the boats stopped earlier than the festival, so they looked after us. We all loved grooving to the local tunes, playing on the trapese and laughing with the locals. So we will remember San Marcos and the lake with love, we had such a great time there. We were going to go to some hot springs in a near-by town next but decided we didnt want to pay the entry fee, so just went to visit the city, which we didnt really like except for the best indian meal ever, but it was lucky we didnt go far because I lost my bag at the festival and a lovely man emailed me to say they found it! Whtats the chances ay I thought it was definetly gone for sure! So we made our way back, not without adventure... we were on the local chicken buses because they are way more of an adventure and cheaper (slightly more dangerous). They have guys on the bus whose job is to yell the destination while hanging out of the bus door whilst driving along, and collecting the money. There are no set prices for anything in guatemala, just what they think you look like you will pay. So when this guys tried to make us pay almost twice the cost of last time, and I argued it, he proceeded to go onto the roof where our packs were tied, and smash the locks off them and rummage through. We wondered what he was doing up there and did see the spanner in his back pocket but didnt think anything of it untill later when we realised. But haha there was nothing he wanted and he didnt find the money stashed in there. All part of the adventure and it could have been much worse.
So after getting my lost bag we headed north towards a lakeside riverside town closer to the carribean called Rio Dulce. On the way there we met an amazing local lady who really helped us because we had to change bus termails in Guatemala City which is apparently extremely damgerous and she was so worried about us that she got us a taxi and came with us to make sure we were ok! Altough at first we were dissapointed to be put on big more normal buses, we were extremely happy to be safer when because of a massive crash we were stuck on the road for hours. We made it later at night in the dark and decided to stay in the closest hostel which was a bombsite with rude people, but we made my bday fun anyway by going to the local waterfall hot springs which were amazing. We met a nice english couple and played around, a local dude took us to walk in the bush to see where the sulpher springs come out, its gorgeous. We could go under the 80 degree water under the rock wee cave things. There were local young girls selling homemade banana fritters there which were a yummy treat. We walked to the next village with some other new friends, and swam with the local boys in rather dirty water but it was so hot i didnt care. A few bday drinks later, we were satisfied and ready to head to the carribean. We are now on a coastal town in Honduras called Tela, which is distinctly carribean, the people here are sooo different and it feels like we are a million miles from Guatemala, whereas in fact its so close. We are looking forward to getting some snorkelling and diving in, heading to an island called Utila tomorrow yay! So thats a pretty good update... until next time!
