Because we are really behind in our story telling and are already in Honduras, we will give a brief synopsis of the remainder part of our trip in Guatemala.
Post volcano hiking we ventured to a town called Chichicastenango and visited the World famous Maya market. After a day of haggling and bargaining we slipped out with some of the most amazing food we had eaten in Guatemala and a beatifully hand stitched Mayan calendar. We traveled back to Antigua for a night and began our journey to Rio Dulce where we conveniently ran into our Swiss volcano hiking friend Jian (hi Jian) on our way to Guatemala City. It was love at first site when we met Max and Ali in the Guatemala City bus station waiting for our bus bound for Rio Dulce. They remained our travel buddies for the next few days of our traveling. Coming all the way from L.A. they kept us entertained and ate lots of mangoes with us. Our trip to Rio Dulce turned out to be a ride on a notorious drug laundering bus and what should have been a 4 hour ride ended up taking us about 6 or more. However, the little cabin village that awaited us on the Rion Dulce (Sweet River for the non Spanish speakers) was quaint and hidden. We enjoyed a dug out canoe ride along the river and exerienced a waterfall that had steaming hot volcanic water falling into a cold lagoon of water. Upon waiting for our bus we were greeted with about 10 little kids who taught us the local Mayan language and threw stones at big wasp nests. Not cool.
With our friends Max and Alli, now Alli, I hope I am spelling your name correctly, we traveld all the way up to Flores and experienced scortching heat. We took another long trip to Tikal and after a day of traveling Joe and I set up our tent in the National Park and slept. Our day in Tkial was magnificent. The tall Mayan pyramids towered over the jungle and we were lucky enough to see wild monkeys. We stood at the top of a very tall and very steep pyramid imagining the human sacrfice rituals that occurred there. The sneaky park ranger that was minding our things, we found out later well after we left, stole our little bag that contained our camera chargers, iPod charger and speakers. I am still very bitter and upset. After a few days in the tranquil town of Flores, we took a night ride to Guatemala City and a day ride to Copan Ruinas on the boarder of Guatemala and Honduras. We took the luxury bus Hedman Alas, which was luxury on wheels. We enjoyed a movie (Into the Wild) and a Burger King snack. Copan was not as impressive as Tikal in terms of ruins, but Copan offers many restored Stelae from the Ancient Mayans and a great museum. The town was similar to Antigua with the colorful buildings and central park.
After Copan we decided to go to the paradise that are the Bay Islands, but that is another entry all in itself which will have to be written another time.
p.s. for those of you wondering where the volcano photos and videos are, Joe lost his camera and we never had a chance to salvage them... quite the tragedy.. our apologies.
