Guatemala Part 3: Castillo de San Felipe

John decided he really wanted to see Castillo de San Felipe on our way home from Tikal. It’s an old fort on Lake Isabal (which connects to the Caribbean Sea via the River Dulce) that was actually used by the Spanish to defend against pirates and was looted several times. The tour was in Spanish so I had to listen pretty closely, but it was fun to walk around the old building. I banged my knee pretty good on one of the stone steps and it’s still purple. Yay for remembrances of Guatemala. 
Because the castillo is surrounded by water, there were lots of people swimming and riding jetskis. This was also the place I discovered that some public bathrooms in Guatemala have bathroom attendants who give you toilet paper when you go in so that nobody steals the rolls. Interesting.
Crazy hair...
I loved that there were air plants growing everywhere -- even on the electrical wires. 
The next day I really didn’t take many pictures because we spent most of the day in Zona 1, which was one of the areas John served in during his mission. John didn’t think having the big camera there would be a good idea because it’s not necessarily the nicest area, so we used his phone to take pictures. There’s a big square and a market (where we bought some beautiful paintings for so cheap and plenty of other souvenirs, including a Guatemalan nativity and some cool shoes).

That night we got to have dinner with a lady that John was friends with and I got lots of Spanish practice since she doesn’t speak any English. I understand most things, but I dislike speaking because I get nervous that I’ll use the wrong words.

It was such a fun trip and I’m so glad we got the opportunity to visit. Can’t wait until the next time we can go back!

Guatemala Part 2: Tikal & Flores

This was probably my favorite part of our trip. We woke up at 3:00 and drove to Tikal, which is about a six hour trip (not because it’s actually very far away, but just because the roads aren’t great). We drove through lots of little towns out in the jungle and it was very interesting to see how people live there. Everything was so green and beautiful. We also hit a couple of unmarked speed bumps going pretty fast and lost two hubcaps, so that was exciting.
Wild turkeys in Guatemala are a lot prettier than wild turkeys here.
This was an anteater that ran by a few times. I’d never seen one before.
After we were finished at Tikal (and I got a bunch of GIGANTIC mosquito bites -- they’re pretty nasty there) we drove to Flores, which is an island in Petén. I absolutely loved it there. The architecture was beautiful and it felt like a beach town, even though it’s technically on a lake. There are actually steps down into the lake and lots of people were swimming.
This was our hotel. It was really nice for Guatemala (other than the part where a chunk of our ceiling fell down at 2 AM and landed really loudly on John’s nightstand, scaring us both to death).

Since it was our anniversary, we had dinner by ourselves at a little restaurant overlooking the water. The food was amazing (I had chicken with a cantaloupe sauce) and the view was incredible as the sun set.
It was such a beautiful and unique place to spend our anniversary. I wouldn’t have minded staying a couple more days, but we had to head back to Guatemala City early the next morning. 
Just as a sidenote: I’ve decided to use Disqus for comments on my blog. Because there’s no way to import old blogger comments, all comments that have been left previously are no longer visible (still a little sad about that). Just didn’t want anyone to think I deleted their comments.

Guatemala Part 1: Antigua

This was definitely kind of a spontaneous trip--we booked the tickets the week before we left. We’d always played around with the idea of going because John served his mission in Guatemala, so when we found flights that were pretty inexpensive we decided we should. We had to drive down to Las Vegas because flights from there were $500 less than flights from SLC. We left after work and arrived at my grandma’s house around 10:00, then spent the night there and woke up at 3:30 the next morning to get to the airport.

We landed in Guatemala City after a long layover in Miami. John’s friend Jacobo picked us up at the airport, which was so nice. We spent the night at his house and his parents even made us dinner. The next day, we spent the morning with Jacobo’s cousin (and I felt like everyone was staring at me because there aren’t too many blond white people in certain areas of the city) then rented a car and drove to Antigua. The first thing I should say about renting a car in Guatemala is that if you’re not a very confident/aggressive driver, I wouldn’t bother. The driving there is INSANE (and I’ve been to Rome and Hong Kong before, so I’ve seen crazy driving). People are constantly swerving into your lane or trying to force their way in. There are basically no traffic rules at all and you can do whatever you want. The roads are also very windy so it takes forever to get anywhere, and most of them have big speed bumps or potholes (more on that when I post about our trip to Tikal). We spent a good couple of hours trying to get to Antigua because the main road there was being blocked by farmers who were upset about corruption in the government. Apparently that’s a normal thing and they always have it unblocked by evening... but we had to take a winding path through a lot of really poor areas of the city and I was told not to take my camera or phone out because we didn’t have dark-tinted windows and if someone saw me with them we might get stopped and they might be stolen. I wish I could have taken pictures because it’s so different from the way we live here in the United States. That said, John was a great driver and Antigua was beautiful. When we arrived, it was pouring rain (hence the scary pictures of my hair). But about an hour later, the rain stopped and it was gorgeous. Antigua has amazing architecture, including colonial churches (now in ruins, but fun to tour). Also, check out this fountain. Interesting.
That big mountain is actually a volcano. You can’t tell from these photos, but it was smoking.
I have no idea what I’m doing in this picture, but I had to include it because this woman is part of a group of people they call típica, meaning the people that are native to Guatemala and still live in a traditional way (including the food they eat and the way they dress). 
And here’s our rental car. It doesn’t look too bad in this picture, but its hubcaps were actually zip-tied on and it made a really bad grinding sound when you drove it over the cobblestone roads. In hindsight it’s good it was such a piece of junk because it took a beating on the road to Tikal (aka tomorrow’s post).
I think we definitely could have spent a couple of days in Antigua--there are lots of great hotels and it’s a good area for tourists--but we had so many things we wanted to do that we drove back to Jacobo’s house and spent the night so we could get an early start to Tikal the next morning.