Chaska in South America

When I last posted, I was on my way to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. I didn’t have an exact plan when I left Monte Verde–I just knew I wanted to go to the Pacific coast and had a couple different towns in mind.  Monte Verde is tiny, and the only bus that leaves from there goes to San Jose, so I was told that I needed to get off along some highway and then just wait for a bus to come along headed to whatever town I wanted to go to.  These were the most detailed instructions I could get from anyone.  The bus ended up being completely packed, including the aisles full of people standing…it was claustraphobic, hot, and incredibly uncomfortable.  I luckily didn’t miss the spot I was supposed to get off, despite the fact that there was no indication as to where we were each time we stopped.  By this point though it was late afternoon and would be getting dark soon, so I was a bit worried about actually getting to the Pacific coast that day.  One other guy got off at the same spot as me and we started talking.  He was trying to get to the Pacific coast too and was trying to get to a town called Puntarenas to catch a ferry over to the Peninsula de Nicoya on the Pacific coast.  I decided that it was probably best to join him rather than trying to get over there on my own, so the two of us figured out what bus to get on and got ourselves to Puntarenas.  On the bus ride, we introduced ourselves–his name was Tony and was from Portland, Oregon..an architect interested in ecologically inspired architecture and had just finished a conference in the south of Costa Rica.  Once we arrived to Puntarenas, it was dark and we figured there was no way we would be able to get anywhere else that night.  We compared guide books and found a cheap place to stay for the night and decided to try and catch the ferry early the next morning.  We ended up getting the ferry at 8am and then were able to get a bus to a place called Montezuma at the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula.  Montezuma was reccommended to both us by several people as being a cool layed back town where a lot of young travellers went.  It was a nice little town with beautiful beaches, but I just couldn’t get over how full of foreigners it was.  Like the rest of the places I had been to Costa Rica, I was a bit turned off at how overtaken it was by Ameicans and Europeans.  I spent two days there, hanging out with Tony, and then I decided that I wanted to see another place before heading back to San Jose.  I headed to a place not far from Montezuma called Malpais.  Malpais was a bit more remote than Montezuma and didn’t really have a town center.  I got off the bus at one hostel only to find it was full and then had to walk about 20 minutes to get to the next hostel.  Malpais is definitely a surf town, again just completely overtaken by foreigners (primarily Americans.)  It was a bit sad to find that practically the only Costa Ricans I encountered were the hired help at the American or other foreign owned establishments.  I had a nice time hanging out at the beach for a couple days in Malpais and met some cool people at the hostel I stayed at and had a nice time with them.  I spent the most time with a Canadian couple and Swedish couple, both who had been to Guatemala before coming to Costa Rica, and I got some good tips from them.  Both agreed with my feeling that Costa Rica was nice but had virtually no culture, and they assured me that I would not be disappointed by Guatemala.  After two nights in Malpais, I headed back to San Jose and was reunited with my poor sick travel partner.  Matt had spent the entire week in a bland hotel room, only leaving to eat and check his email. He made up for the months of being completely cut off from the rest of the world by watching cable television for a week straight and was able to update me on the occurences of the world.  He also was feelling A LOT better and felt like he definitely could finish up the trip with me (yay!!!)  Here are a few photos from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica before moving on the Guatemala. 

This is the beach in Montezuma.   The hostel I stayed in was directly on this beach. 

 

 This is another part of the beach in Montezuma.  The weather was great and it was really beautiful. 

The morning of the day I left Montezuma, Tony and I hiked to this waterfall.  It was really pretty.  When we got there, there was hardly anyone there, but soon after a tour group of about 30 senior citizen French people showed up!  

 

 Tony and I checking out some tide pools on the way pack from our hike to the waterfall. 

 

After spending one last night in San Jose, Matt and I took a really short plane ride over to Guatemala.  We had been told that Guatemala City is not very safe and not really worth seeing anyway, so we immediately took a shuttle bus to a town called Antigua, which is about an hour from Guatemala City.  Antigua is described in our guide book as being “impossibly cute”, and that’s a perfect description.  The town is seriously perfect looking…a huge difference from Guatemala City!  It’s a colonial town just as cute as Colonia, Uruguay and Paraty, Brazil but on a much larger scale.  Because of it being such a cute town though, it is FULL of tourists.  There are tons of language students there and a lot of rich foreigners, so things are not nearly as cheap as the rest of Guatemala.  We spent two nights there and basically just walked around and enjoyed the pretty town.  Here a few pictures of Antigua.

 Here is one of the main streets in Antigua.  I absolutely loved all the colors of the buildings there. 

 Antigua is surrounded by three different volcanoes.  Here is one of them…I’m not sure which one. 

 The main church in Antgua.  You can’t really tell from this picture.  But the white design on the church is really intricate and beautiful.

 

After two nights in Antigua, we headed over to Lago Atitlan, one of the biggest lakes in Guatemala with several nice towns surrounding the lake.  We went to the largest town on the lake first, called Panajachel.  Panajachel is also very touristy, but in a different way than Antigua.  In the 60’s and 70’s it apparantly was packed full of hippies.  It still retains much of the hippie vibe, although there are definitely more than just hippies there now.  We took a small shuttle bus from Antigua to Panajachel and on the way met some cool people.  One of the girls, Marilou from Quebec, was staying in Panajachel for a night as well, so the three of us went to the same hostel and ended up hanging out for several days after that.  After a night in Panajachel, the three of us took a small boat accross the lake to a small town called San Pedro de Laguna.  We were told by several people that this was a cool little town where a lot of young travelers went.  The town is tiny but has a ton of small language schools there, and a lot of people go there to learn Spanish.  There a lot of cool bars and cafes to hang out at because of this.  One of the days we were in San Pedro, Matt, Marilou, and I rented kayaks and kayaked over to another tiny town called San Marcos.  San Marcos is a town that has been taken over by people really into metaphysical stuff and the place is full of meditation centers, energy healing places, palm readers, etc.  It was really pretty there and we took a small hike and went swimming in the lake, which was much cleaner and nicer than it was in San Pedro. 

After two nights in San Pedro, Marilou went on her way to another part of Guatemala, and Matt and I went to one other town on the lake.  When my dad was a little younger than me, he spent about 6 months living in Guatemala in a tiny town called Santiago de Atitlan.  I decided that I wanted to visit Santiago while we were here, so Matt and I spent one night there.  Santiago is a lot different than the other towns on the lake in that it isn’t quite so full of foreigners.  Tourists come to the town usually just for a couple hours on tours of the lake, but not many people stay there.  There really isn’t anything to do there, but the lake is beautiful and you really get a more authentic view of the lives of the Mayan people and they way they live.  Here are some photos from the towns we visited on Lago Atitlan.  I don’t have any pictures of San Marcos since we kayaked over there and I didn’t want my camera to get wet on the way. 

 Matt and Marilou in Panajachel.  You can see one of the several volcanoes that are located on the lake as well.

 This is a photo of San Pedro, taken from the boat we took to get there from Panajachel.

 

It was really cool–the lake was full of Guatemalan women washing clothes in the river, as you can see in both the above photos. 

 On the same shuttle ride where we met Marilou, we had met two twins from England who were going to be studying in San Pedro for a couple weeks.  We happened to run into them again while we were in San Pedro and hung out with them and a friend of theirs one night. 

 

 

 

 Two photos of Lago Atitlan in Santiago.  In the bottom photo you can see the another volcano on the lake.  You can climb the volcanoes, but apparantly it’s really dangerous because of bandits and robbers on the trails.  Tourists are advised to hire a police escort (equipped with automatic rifles) to accompany them up the volcanoes. 

 

 The traditional dress of the women is SO beautiful.  The bottom picture is of a little girl who I bought some pillow cases from.  She’s standing in front of examples of the tops that the women where. 

 

Here is a women weaving a tapestry.  When my dad lived in Santiago, he learned to weave from an old woman there.  I stopped to talk to several women weaving and told them that my father had learned to weave there over 30 years ago, and they were all SO friendly and interested to know more. 

 

 

 Some photos taken in front of the church in Santiago de Atitlan. 

 

After Santiago, Matt and I went to a town called Quetzaltenango for two nights.  We took a hike yesterday up to some thermal baths but ended up not going in them.  The hike was beautiful though and all the people we met along the way SO friendly.  Today, we left Quetzal tenango and are now back in Guatemala City for a few hours.  We are headed up north to Tikal, the Mayan pyramids.  Tikal is supposed to absolutely amazing, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.  We’ve now been in Guatemala for just over a week, and so far I absolutely love it here.  It is so full of culture (a nice change after Costa Rica) and there are so many great places to see and things to do.  It is really cheap too, which is perfect since we’re at the very end of our trip.  Sorry for making this SO long.  I hope you are well!

 

 

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 8:52 pm 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.