Jess and Stacey’s Travels

Yeah-Lava!-click on photo for more pictures

Housekeeping Note:  If you click on the pictures and they first appear blurry, wait a bit, and they should adjust to be clear.  Or else, just select slideshow option and captions will appear with the pictures.

After three weeks based in Xela, we have packed up and moved on to Antigua.  The three weeks were fun and event-filled.   We went to jail, warmed our toes by some lava, and enjoyed a swing from the tree tops….but more on that below.  More importantly, we improved our Spanish at ICA, our school which was a great school.  We met many really nice people – students, teachers, and homestay families.   The school arranged many activities for the students everyday after classes and also on weekends.   Some of the more notable activities were:

• We visited a woman’s jail the day after Mother’s Day to bring them Mother’s Day gifts, dance and have cake with   them.   The women in this jail are from towns outside of Xela and do not have people coming to visit them.  They are all being held while their cases are being investigated which sometimes takes up to two years.

• We visited a traditional cholocate maker (well-known in Guatemala and a mother of one of my Spanish teachers).  We sampled her yummy chocolate.

• We learned to make traditional El Salvadorian food (even though we’re in Guatemala).  Yummy nonetheless.

• We took a trip to a coffee plantation for the weekend.  The plantation is owned by 40 families who took over from the first owner after he neglected to pay them for 18 months.  One of the founders told us the story of the plantation.  It was an inspirational story.  They day we arrived was their 5 year anniversary from securing the land so they celebrated with music, speeches, and pinatas for the kids. 

Piñata-click on photo for more pictures

On the plantation they also grow macadamia nuts, create biodiesel, make bottled water, and have some other projects underway.  We spent one night there and enjoyed a tour of the plantation and a hike to a waterfall.  But our favorite thing of all was the swing that you can see in the pictures below.  At the end of a little tour through the jungle our guide, an 11 year old boy, climbed up a tall tree to loop a rope over the branch(picture of him climbing – click on Jess swinging for more  pix).The kid created the longest rope swing we’d ever seen-about 75ft tall.  We each took turns on the swing, launching off the hillside and swinging above some of the little tree tops.  It was very cool.  We thought that Will and Michael would have had a blast on the swing and probably hurt themselves somehow. 🙂

We also switched host families for our final week.  Jess was being harassed at night.  The family dog, Scott, was howling and barking all night starting about 1am.  We decided all Spanish and no sleep makes Jesse a very crabby boy.  We moved into the Rodrigues household.  Anita Rodrigues (60ish) and her daughter Mapi were our hostesses.  Nice family.  It was much quieter and Jess was much happier – and as a result, as was Stacey. 

We joined the school trip for this weekend to Antigua (about 5 hours from Xela due to road construction ).  While in Antigua, we hiked up to the base of volcano Pacaya, an active volcano.  We fulfilled our mission of seeing flowing lava up close.  As you can see in the pictures, the safeguards are less stringent than what you might expect.  Walking across the lava flow was a bit harrowing at times but worth it to get up close to the flowing lava.  The lava was flowing right next to us so we stayed warm but had to be careful where we walked to ensure that the soles of our sneakers wouldn’t melt.

Instead of going back to Xela, we took all of our stuff with us so that we could continue on from Antigua this week to our next destination which will be the ruins of Tikal.  We’ll come back and wait for some friends from school to arrive next weekend.  Karen and her six year old daughter, Katarina are in their final weeks of travel before going back to Papua New Guinea.  We’re going to travel together to the east coast of Guatemala, to the Rio Dulce for a few days and then on to the Bay Islands of Honduras.  Unless we take a detour to Belize…that’s the beauty of no agenda, and mucho tiempo. 

Tags: Antigua, Guatemala, ICA, Lava, Pacaya, Travel, Xela

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 8:24 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.