Guat a start to Central America Amigos!

This is a conversation that will roughly describe my first day of Guatemala, as I had written it down in a chat with a friend so here goes....

“yeah man....oh and that all followed about 12 very interesting hours of getting into Guatemala and then getting to the city quite a doozy of a day

ahhh finally got a hold of my friend

so I guess he was trying to call my phone but the calls weren't coming through

I could call his phone and send him messages but he couldn't call mine and the messages weren't coming through

funny thing is that his boss is staying at the same hotel

so he has to come here tonight to drop him off anyways

ha ha...man I have to write up yesterday because it was a doozy

i took an all nighter bus from the one town to a town near the border and barely slept at all...and had about 20 minutes to catch the bus to guatemala but then they wouldn't accept my pesos saying i had to pay in american and change money at the border...or so I understood

so I ran around the bus station looking for a money exchange place, but couldn't find one, so some taxi driver told me

he would take me to the border where I could change money and catch the bus

so I get down there and then the money exchange guys are trying to rip me off and then I'm speaking in broken spanish and arguing over money and bus fares and then want to go back to town but then they convince me that I'll just lose money so I walk across the border but get ripped off on money exchange

oh and then some guys try and take my bags and carry them and I have to fight them off

then when I get across the other side I'm talking with two french people, and we are surrounded by about 15 yelling shouting money changers and passport guides etc etc. and they take our passports and run to the front of the immigration line

then make us pay a bunch of money for that "service" and then I ask the bus driver from the original bus if I can get on but they tell me they don't pick up passengers across the border that I had to take hte bus from Mexico

so then we take some van into a nearby town (getting ripped off again) and then arrive and some guy asks me where I'm going I say to Guat he puts me on some bus with all these locals...the French stay behind

so I ride this bus for an hour...it's a 1970s school bus with terrible seats and suspension and is flying around the curves...people are crammed in

it drops me off at some bus terminal/market and tells me the bus is done running there, even though the guy who put me on it told me it was going to Guatemala

so then I'm in this market and taxi drivers are telling me i have to go the nearby bus terminal to catch a bus and that it is 5 minutes away but will cost 2 dollars so then I say i'll walk

then some elderly man and hsi family tell me to wait there as a bus will be arriving

then 2 others say there's no bus, then 3 more people say there is a bus...huge argument

so i just stay there...only tourist/white guy in this market...everyone is looking at me like a piece of meat/money bank....then a bus shows up and some more people yell at me to get on it...so i get on it...and i ride this bus for about 7 more hours....with up to 4 people per seat....it's hot, it's cold, people are throwing nuts shells out the window, they fly back through the window and are hitting me in the face

the road is full of bumps, giant turns...guys who are sleeping are falling onto me...i try and sleep, bang my head on the metal bar on front of me several times as well as fall into other people

then i finally arrive in guat city but have no idea where to get off...the bus driver and helper are asking me where I need to get off...I have no idea, so they take me to their bus parking garage in some sketchy area of the city (where I later returned to when looking for a cheap hotel)

so I sit around there for awhile, and then finally decide to go to a main street and sit in a McDonalds for a few hours, thinking it will be easy for my friend to find me, but they have no wifi or computer plug in points, so i go to some coffee shop and wait there for another 2.5 hours before they shut down and i repeatedly call my friend, no answer

so then I try and get money out from an atm, but TD is a piece of shit and my card doesn't work, so I ask the cab driver how much to go to this hostel that I had found on the internet that was relatively close by...I have just enough money to get there according to his estimation...we go into the area, he can't find it....gets lost, then asks around several times, finds it, and the place has a "permanently closed" sign on it and is for sale

so I keep trying to call my friend, asking if he knows any cheap places, no answer...and I tell the driver I only have enough money for the previous fare, not enough for him to drive me around further, so we try 3 more atms...none work...then he takes me the shady area of town, finds a hotel room for me but they don't accept cards as payment so i tell him to take me back to the area with all the expensive hotels since they'll accept cards

and as luck would have it, there was an atm in this hotel I'm at now, so I was able to get money for the cabby, and a room for $80 CAD...and now it turns out it's also the hotel where my friend's boss is staying

so....in the end...all is well! so yeah...that's one of my adventurous days”

Sorry for the hard to follow format of that description, but it is a rough summary of my adventurous time making it from the border of Mexico into Guatemala City. So after sleeping in and enjoying the room and services of my fancy hotel, I popped down for breakfast and managed to get a hold of JD through Facebook. Apparently he had been trying to call my phone several times without being able to get through, since I had that crappy Mexican phone....so he told me a few places to check out during the day, and as luck would have it, his boss happened to be staying at the same hotel as me, so he said he'd come by after work that night and pick me up there.

Ridin' dirty on the chicken bus with the locals

The on bus entertainment, clowns telling jokes and selling candy

The sign says "Canadian type houses"

So I had several hours to kill, so I just wandered out around the Zone 10 area, but there really wasn't a whole lot to see. It seemed peaceful and tranquil enough, as many people warn about the dangers of Guatemala City, but I guess I was in a good zone so it wasn't a problem. After wandering around a little bit, I ended up finding the Oakland Mall that JD had recommended, and had a bit of a laugh when I saw a huge sign on the mall that said “SIMAN”. Our mutual friend Andres, who is from Guatemala but lives in New York City has Siman as a last name, and as a joke I thought that JD had sent me to the mall because his family owned it or something. Hilariously enough, I later found out that his family owns a chain of huge department stores called Siman, one of which happened to be in this mall, however, they didn't outright own the mall....crazy times.

So I just wandered around the mall for awhile, before checking out a movie, that fortunately was in English and had Spanish subtitles. After watching Taken 2, I still had a few hours to kill, so I just found a Guatemalan restaurant near my hotel, and settled in there for a huge meal, that I could barely finish. It wasn't the best meal I've had, but it hit the spot. By that point, I still had 2 hours to kill before JD was meant to pick me up, so I just wandered back to the hotel to watch some tv and have a beer in the pub, After killing some time there, I just lounged around the lobby, playing on the computer and chatting with a few new people who were checking in. I had to laugh at one man who checked in, and was talking about his flight from Dallas to Guatemala, and then couldn't walk up the one flight of stairs to the second floor, and had to take the elevator. I decided to snap a quick photo and post it as a laugh at society, as I had assumed from his accent and him speaking about Dallas that he was American. 

JD told me to go to this mall, probably just to support Andres's family!

Nothing like arriving in a dangerous city at a hostel in the late evening and finding it closed for business...ughh

First meal in Guatemala

One of the few sites of Guat City I saw

My posh hotel for the night

had to take the elevator to the 2nd floor

About 30 minutes later, it was already 1.5 hours past the time JD was supposed to come to the hotel, I was starting to wonder if I should be looking for a new place to sleep for the night, and ended up having a coffee in the restaurant to kill some time, and sure enough, I happened to sit next to the large man. Well we ended up having a nice little chat for quite sometime, and I had to eat a bit of crow, as he was born in the US but had been living in Canada for quite some time, so he wasn't the stereotypical lazy American man that I thought he was. After sitting and chatting, JD finally showed up, about 2 hours later than he was meant to show up. It was good to see the guy again after several years, and he apologized for being late, but I have become to suspect it's simply a Latin American thing to do, being several hours later than expected (based on my experiences with Horacio in Mexico) so I had no problems with it.

We hopped in his car, I met his g/f Sabrina, and we were on our way to his house, or so I thought. I was teling them about my adventures of taking chicken buses to get to the city, and they were quite shocked and appalled that I would take those means of transport, and told me it was really quite dangerous to be doing such things, but I didn't feel like there was really a problem. We ended up pulling up to a really really nice place and I thought it was maybe JD's apartment building, so I grabbed my bags out of the car thinking we were stopping there before heading to a pub, but then they informed me we were actually at the pubs....they were in buildings that would double as very very fancy and expensive apartments. So I switched into some clothing, and we popped into the Irish bar there, had a few beers, and chatted awhile, but JD was pretty tired, so we just ended up heading back to his place for the night. Upon arrival at the apartment, I was really quite amazed at the size of the apartment he was living in, it was easily the largest apartment I've ever seen, I think it had about 7 rooms, 4 bathrooms, and was just absolutely amazing. The artwork and such in the home was so incredible as well. I ended up being put into JD's brother's room, as he wasn't supposed to be home that night, but then around 4 am I saw a man enter the room and stop and stare at me, and then turn on the light and I realized it was his brother who had decided to return ha ha ha. He was quite shocked but then chatted for a bit and ended up just crashing on the couch, even though I offered too, such friendly hospitality!

We were up the next morning to head out for some breakfast before JD held a pool part on the roof of the building, hosting several of his friends. I was beginning to realize that JD and his friends formed the small upper class of Guatemala, as they all seemed to be fairly well off, all spoke perfect English, several of them had studied at expensive US schools, and one guy even had a bodyguard with him at all times when he was out, crazy! They were all super nice guys though, and definitely didn't have any attitude like a lot of upper class people do, so we had a pretty fun few hours of partying, sharing stories, and hanging out. Eventually JD wanted to head to Antigua, so several of us piled into some cars and made the 45 minute drive into Antigua, which saved me a bus ride at least. We stopped by a few places to find some accommodations for myself, before settling on a hostel called the Black Cat that had rooms for $7 a night including a free breakfast. After dropping my stuff off, we wandered over to an Arabic restaurant and shisha bar called Gaia, and had some dinner, shisa, and enjoyed some great belly dancing put on by a few sexy Guatemalan women. After chilling out there for a few hours, we all went down to Reilly's, an Irish pub in Antigua. From that point on I just began to refer to the place as my pub. The place was absolutely jam packed, and one could barely move to get a drink, let alone move around to speak to people or find one's way to the toilet...quite a ridiculous spot. Apparently quite a few of the people from Guatemala City will come to Antigua for their weekends to party and then drive back afterwards or spend the night. So after the crazy party night at Reilly's I said my goodbyes to the Guatemalan City group and wandered to the hostel for my first night.

storks are allowed here apparently

Guat City from JDs apartment

More Guat city skyline

Ain't no party like a Guatemalan hostel party

The next day I got up at a decent hour and asked the staff if they knew of a place where I could end up watching some American football and the manager had recommended a spot called Monoloco to go watch the game, but first I enjoyed my free breakfast which was absolutely huge and so damn tasty. After finishing that up and chatting with an English girl who had missed her shuttle to Honduras in the morning because it didn't actually show up to pick her up, I eventually made my way out and tried to find the place. Well apparently my sense of direction is terrible and I couldn't find the damn place and ended up somewhere in the Eastern part of town (it took me about 2 days to actually figure out the north-south orientation of the town), and I ended up finding a nice little cafe to have a coffee and try and figure out some Spanish schools I could enroll in for the upcoming week. I ended up sorting through a list online and finding a place called Antiguena Espanol Escuela which was fairly cheap and had great ratings. After figuring out the address of the place, and subsequently getting lost trying to find it (google maps is not so good), I somehow ended up back at my hostel, having not found Monolocos or the Spanish school. I asked the guy at the hostel once more for directions, and tried again to find this Monolocos place, which should have taken about 4 minutes as it was literally a block and a half away, but somehow I ended up going down the wrong streets and getting turned around and having to ask for directions until I finally found the place.

I wandered inside and found 3 big screen tvs and a huge crowd ex-pats watching football, eating nachos, and drinking beer...my kind of place! I sat down next to some long haired surfer type dude and was shocked to hear his Aussie accent encouraging the New York Jets to win the football game. I have a friend from Sydney who I travelled with to Thaland a few years ago, and my team, the Cincinnati Bengals were playing the New York Jets in the playoffs and I was shocked to find that Dan was a Jets fan, as he had played a few Playstation football games and always picked the Jets, so he was cheering against me, and I was quite shocked that an Aussie who never watched American football would be supporting a team that was playing against mine. Needless to say, this Aussie in Monoloco was cheering for the Jets because he was a rampant sports gambler, as I soon found out once I got to know him. He ended up being a super cool chap named Tim, who was from Port Macquarie and was just roaming around South and Central America, and of course he was a surfer. I ended up meeting a few other customers and some of the workers there, and ended up loving the place and spending most of the day there. At some point Tim asked if I was keen to go out on the town after the games ended and try and pick up, so I said sure why not, and we ended up heading back to Reilly's for the last few hours and it was a considerably quieter environment that night, with only 10 or 15 people there. Needless to say, there wasn't really very many women either, so we ended up just chatting with a few blokes that were there, including a few Canadians. At one point some drunk Guatemalan woman came up and started chatting with us, and I wasn't all that attracted to her but Tim was right in there. Needless to say, after about 35 minutes and one drink he was gone outside with her, and I was kind of tired anyways so I wandered outside, saw them making out, and just wandered back to the hostel for the night to watch some Game of Thrones in the bar area, and I think there may have been bed bugs in the cushions on the bench, as after 2 hours of watching tv, I had some pretty itchy bites all over my arms that resembled the bites from the bed bugs in Malaysia. I went to sleep and had an itchy night.

The next day I managed to somehow sleep in and miss the free breakfast, even though it's served until 11 am...damnit! This started an ongoing trend of missing most of my free breakfasts throughout my time in Antigua. I ended up wandering out, finding a nice bagel shop, grabbing a coffee and checking out some cute girls before wandering around Antigua until I found the school that I was seeking, and popped in for a quick chat with the director's son who was a nice enough fellow. Once I found out the price was only $80 US for a week's worth of classes, I signed up at once....other schools were charging around $150 a week, so it was a pretty good deal. I had thought about doing the homestay, where you stay with a local family that only speaks Spanish, but I kind of felt like I could only handle about 4 to 5 hours of Spanish per day, and still wanted to meet other backpackers, so I chose to stay in the hostel. After signing up for the classes, I just hung out in a coffee shop and chilled out until the evening, when I wandered back to Monoloco's for some Monday night football. I was happy to see that Tim had returned for the game, and we had a few beers together, watched the Monday nighter, and then called it a fairly early night, as I didn't want to be too foggy for my first day of Spanish classes.

Central park in Antigua

Lovely colonial era town

Cars and horse drawn carriages, welcome to Antigua

Why not have WiFi in the central park

Iglesia La Merced

La Merced

Colourful buildings and cobblestone streets

I was up the next day, albeit itchy again from the possible bed bugs, so I switched beds, and grabbed some breakfast and stopped for coffee and then was over to my class a few minutes early. I met my instructor, and we grabbed a small room and began the first day of classes. She was a kind woman, and I really enjoyed the classes with her. The school itself was small, but cozy, with 6 teaching spaces, all of which were occupied. I ended up noticing a very attractive woman in the class next to me, who flashed one of those “I want to get to know you” smiles, so I spoke a bit about her with my Spanish teacher and told her how pretty I thought she was. After the day of class wrapped up, I wandered back to the hostel but didn't find anyone kicking around so I just wandered down to a nice looking local restaurant and tried a local stewlike dish that had chicken, beef, and vegetables, which was fairly tasty. After dinner, I just wandered back to the hostel, had a few drinks with some of the Israeli guys from my room, and then had a quiet night in.

The next day I somehow managed to sleep through breakfast again, arghh, and ended up having to go grab a bite to eat before class, and a coffee before heading over to school. This day we worked for about 4 hours in the school with a quick break to relax a bit. The Spanish classes were helping a lot with my vocabulary and speaking habits, although I was still a beginner, but the confidence was already starting to come. I was surprised to see the cute girl i the class next to me playing scrabble in Spanish that day, and was a bit jealous of the fact they were playing games, while I was only doing homework. We ended up leaving class a bit early that day, as my teacher had to head over to her son's school to pick up his cap and gown, since it was his graduation the next day. Since it was his graduation, and she couldn't be teaching that day, I agreed to attend the graduation cermonies instead of going to class, as I figured it would be a fairly interesting experience. We waited at the school for 35 minutes chatting about her family and such, while waiting for the director to show up and give the garments to her, but eventually she said she'd have to grab it the next day, so I just wandered back to the hostel. I ended up hanging out with the Israelis again, and a few American girls, and we all ended up heading to Monoloco's for ladies night, before making our way to the nightclub next door that had a salsa night. It was basically a group of 7 guys, and 1 girl, so it was turning into one of those typical competitive matches for the one girl, one of the types of contests I really can't stand, so I just had fun hanging out with the group and didn't worry about it too much. Eventually that place closed, and we met some local guys outside who were going to try and find the afterparty, but I was too tired to bother, and we all just wandered back to the hostel for the night, hung out for a bit in the common area, before being told to be quiet by the hilarious security guard.

view from class at my Spanish school

Once again, I missed out on the breakfast the next day, as I apparently can't wake up before 11 am.....ridiculous. I grabbed some lunch again, and a coffee before hanging out at the hostel, waiting for my teacher to show up and direct me where to go for the graduation ceremonies. She showed up, and I hopped on the motorbike with her husband, who drove me over to school on the very bumpy cobblestone roads. Riding a motorbike on those streets was so bad, as the cobblestones made my head jar back and forth so much that when I returned to the hostel shortly after, I almost felt a bit concussed! After chatting with the Israelis and a new American girl for a bit, I made my way down to the hall for the ceremony, but ended up standing there like a fool for awhile, waiting for my teacher and her family to show up. It was pretty interesting to see the looks of the people, especially the students, as I was the only foreigner at this ceremony, and they were definitely wondering what the hell was going on with the gringo. I also didn't know if I should wander around the crowd looking for my prof, as everyone looked so similar that I wasn't even sure I'd recognize her ha ha. Eventually she did show up with the family, and I was introduced to her younger daughter and her grand daughter. I was led into the ceremony hall and seated with the two girls, and thought my teacher would return to sit with us, but I soon realized that the parents were to escort their children in and sit in a different area, so I became a defacto babysitter for the kids! The ceremony took a lot longer than I expected, as they had over 200 students and kept presenting awards and such, plus introducing all the students on their way in, their way out, and numerous speeches.....after about 2 hours I was already bored, especially since I didn't really understand the majority of what was going on. Finally the ceremony wrapped up, Aurora grabbed me and took me outside to meet the rest of the family, including her son. Then I was surprised when they began taking family photos and sticking me in them....a rather hilarious sight considering I was in no way dressed up for the occasion, compared to everyone else.....I'm sure they'll look back on those photos several years later and ask themselves “who the hell was that gringo in our family photos?”

 

High school graduation in Spanish? Sure!

After the ceremony I just wandered back to the hostel, grabbed one of the new American girls who was a sports fan, and went over to Monoloco to watch some baseball and the Thursday night football game. We settled in beside Tim, who was having a quiet night, and who was once again betting heavily on the sports games. I think he ended up making about $2000 in the week and a bit I hung out with him...interesting way to pay for a trip! After the ball games ended and I finished my ridiculous huge plate of wings, we returned to the hostel to find it fairly packed. I ended up sitting down for a beer with a cute English girl, and met a few other people that were in her group, when they decided to head out to a bar called El Muro where guys paid 45 quatzales and women paid 25 quatzales for all you could drink until midnight. We made our way over there, where I met a super cute Canadian bartender, and we hit it off pretty good, but unfortunately I never did catch her name or number. The rest of the group I was with were kind of in their own defined group, so I was kind of a bit of an outsider and didn't really get to know them all that well. After way too many drinks, it was getting late, and even though the place was hosting the “after party” that night (as bars in Guatemala have to stop serving at 1 am and usually close by then, although in Antigua places will sometimes host after parties and continue serving, but the police have recently started to crack down on it), I decided to make my way back to the hostel. I wasn't entirely sure if it was alright to walk by myself or not, so I ended up waiting until the group that I had gone with to the bar were making their way back. I got back and found the Israeli guys from my room still up and having a little after party of their own, so I joined them for awhile before heading to bed.

I ended up feeling terrible the next day with an awful stomach ache, and I was wondering if maybe it was from all the wings I ate the night before or just from the drinks. On top of that, my throat was killing me and I felt the worse I've felt in quite some time. I couldn't even eat my free breakfast at the hostel and struggled to make it to my Spanish class. I had a hard time making it through the entire lesson, and we ended up having skipping our break so that I could finish my class earlier and head back to the hostel to rest. I ended up falling asleep by 4:30 pm, waking up at 6 pm to go find some dinner, and then going back to sleep around 7:30 pm and not waking up again until 11:30 am the next day! After the 14 hours or so of sleep, I felt a million times better, and class was certainly a much easier endeavour the next day. We ended up going out to wander around the town a bit with the cute girl from the other Spanish class and her professor. It was a bit awkward when my teacher told her how I had been talking about her and how pretty I thought she was ha ha, it felt something like I was in grade 4 again. Interestingly enough, she had been talking to her teacher about me, as well. We ended up wandering around the church near our school for awhile, before making our way back to the school to finish up the day's lesson. I ended up exchanging emails with the girl, and tried to make some plans to meet up. There happened to be some sort of party in the park that night, with some Mayan dancers, and I said I would try and convince JD to go there with me, as he was meant to be coming to Antigua that night to hang out.

After hanging at the hostel for a little bit, and waiting to see if JD was coming still, and not being able to reach him, I ended up heading over to the park to check out the party, but it wasn't really going on yet, so I just went back to Monoloco's to watch the baseball game and have dinner. Tim was there, and was already a few beers in, so I ended up hanging out with him and watching the ball game, while having a few beers myself. I still hadn't seen JD so I tried calling him several times, but there was no answer....strange guy, hard to get a hold of always! After several hours and beers, it was already last call, and I still hadn't seen or heard from JD, so Tim and I went out to try and find the afterparty. We wandered down towards a place called Ricky's that used to have them on Saturday, but found that the place had actually shut down. Then we ended up finding some guys who had just attended a wedding and they told us to check out Red's, a soccer pub, so we started walking that way when we ran into a huge group of women from Guatemala City. They were on a hen's night, and ended up taking a liking to us, At this point, they noticed that Tim was wearing a Quiksilver surfing shirt that said something about the France Pro Championships, and they asked if he was a Professional surfer, so then he began to go along with it and say that he was in fact a surf pro. Then, they asked who I was, and he told them that I was his business manager.....it ended up being rather hilarious, as we both played along real well to the lie. At one point, he told them that he had no idea how much money he had, because I looked after all his money, and to prove that point he came over to me and asked for some money to buy some beer, which I quickly provided to him. Then he convinced them that I had actually started Facebook, and that I was smarter than Bill Gates with managing his money....these girls were just loving it all! They ended up inviting us to tag along with them and head back to their house for an after party, so we went along with them. We were just getting inside the house when the girl who owned it decided she didn't want any strangers in her house, and ended up shooing Tim and I out...damn! By this point it was already 4:30 am, and we just decided to call it a night.

The next morning, getting up for 11 am football was a bit of a chore, as I was rather tired from the night before, but managed to make it to Monoloco's for the start of the games. Tim was aready there, and looking a bit glassy eyed as well, but we soon got on the beers. After being at Monoloco's several times, and witnessing the workers carrying out these enormous plates of nachos, I figured I would try and eat a plate to myself throughout the day, since I planned to be there for at least 6 or 7 hours. So I ordered one of the big ass plates, and it totally kicked my ass. I think I finished maybe a third of it, or maybe even half but it was just so damn much food, plus the beers were filling me up. Tim kept goading me on, making fun of me and telling me to just give up and throw the plate away, but I was persistent about keeping it and working on it some more. Meanwhile, a group of Americans and several Canadian girls showed up to watch the games, and they were a pretty fun and rowdy bunch. At one point Tim and I had goaded them all into yelling USA USA USA!! in the bar. Meanwhile, the one Canadian girl was absolutely rowdy and very very flirty with me, even though I had made arrangements for the girl from my Spanish class to come meet me, so when she showed up and I went to go sit with her for our little informal date, the Canadian girl was a fair bit embarrassed. Unfortunately it was a very quick date, as Mina, the girl from my class, had a prior engagement, but we agreed to meet up again in the next few daya and spend a bit more time getting to know each other.

I returned back to the bar and found Tim had made the kitchen staff take my nachos and throw them out, damn him! Although to be fair, I was probably wasn't going to finish them all anyways. We continued to crush the beers, and watch the football games until the last match was over, and the San Francisco Giants win the World Series for the 2^nd time in 3 years, wooo!! To celebrate that I bought several of the baseball patrons shots of tequila before closing off my tab....what another long ass session at Monoloco's! Tim decided to head home since he had Spanish class the next day, but a few of the people hanging out with us still wanted to head out, and decided to go to Cafe No Se. I had heard about Cafe No Se before from the Israelis at the hostel, but hadn't checked it out yet, so after dropping my bags off at the hostel and asking for some directions, I was on my way to Cafe No Se. It was definitely one of the coolest spots I've been to, as it is a little hole in the wall type of bar, with candles to provide the light, and doorways that are so small you have to actually duck to get through them into the Mezcal bar area. It had that old antiquated feel to it, and the close quarters provided a very intimate setting for a drink or two with friends or lovers. After having another celebratory shot with the bartender from Kansas, I found the rest of the group, but they were pretty full, especially Nikola the Canadian girl, who could barely stand, so they finished off their one drink and were on their way back to their hotel.

I stuck around until closing time, where I was witness to one of the more stranger performances, by some drunk Englishman who did an impromptu and fairly perverted speech/poetry reading. It was quite entertaining, and a very unique way to end the night. I just made the wander back to my hostel and called it a night. The next day I managed to make it up for breakfast for a change, before heading off to my Spanish class for the afternoon. After class wrapped up, Mena and I took a walk towards the city centre and stopped a super cool restaurant/bar called Sobre Mesa. The owner was from the Bahamas, and was a novel writer/painter/restaurant owner, and a really cool character. He had a lot of interesting stories about the people coming and going through Antigua, and some interesting ones about himself and his family. We enjoyed our beer and his stories before Mena had to head back to her host family's place for dinner, while I made my way over to Monoloco's again for the Monday nighter. I wasn't all too surprised to see Tim there, but this time he had the two Canadian girls there with him, as well, since they were now living in the same house as him and the host family. After having a few beers with them, we decided to head over to Reilly's, since it was Tim's supposed last night, as he was going to be heading to El Salvador the next morning, so we had a little going away thing for him. We arrived at Reilly's and found a pretty big group of people there. We made a little party there, and met some pretty cool Irish girls, as well as a few other new people. I ended up staying until close and made my way back to the hostel, and had to laugh as Tim was sneaking away to his hotel with the Canadian girl even though he had said there was no way it would happen, since his host family had spilled the beans about him having many g/fs while he was staying with them...sneaky bugger! I laughed and waved them off and made my way to bed.

 

Bavarian bar I found, that John Kerry apparently liked 

The next day was my last day of Spanish classes, so I decided to buy an exercise bookto hopefully help me continue working on the language. I had a nice final day with Aurora, who was such a kind and loving woman, and she shared some of her more hilarious stories about former students including some Koreans that were “playing games every night” at their homestay for the three weeks they were there, but never explaining what games until the home owner came to Aurora and told her there was a problem, as the bed in the one room had a broken leg and was sitting on a cinder block for stability. Apparently the “games” the Koreans were playing, were sexual in nature and had resulted in a broken bed ha ha ha. Then on top of that, they didn't want to pay to replace the bed, and when finally agreed to, they wanted to buy the cheapest model to replace it. It was quite the event as Aurora had to go with the home owners and the Korean students, and act as a translator, which made for quite the adventure. After the lesson was all done, Mena and I agreed to meet up for dinner that night, so I just went back to the hostel and got ready for my date. We ended up heading to Gaia, and had an amazing dinner and some Hookah pipe. She was such an intelligent person and we got along so great, but unfortunately she was too old for me, or so she felt. I was actually surprised to find out that she was 40, as she looked like she was 28 or 29 at most. We had some amazing conversations, and it was too bad that the age difference was too much, as we both found each other quite attractive, but oh well. After several hours together, it was time to head home for the night, as Halloween was the next day and I still had yet to get a costume together, so I figured I would need to be on my game.

I was up and having breakfast the next morning, when much to my surprise, Tim wandered into the hostel to say hello. Apparently he had decided to stay a few extra days because of the Canadian girl...but that's how it goes with travelling! He said he was on his way to find the girls and that they were going to head out costume shopping at the market, so I said I'd tag along. I had initially thought about going to a tailor and trying to have a suit made like the new Korean sensation PSY, as I had fallen in love with Gangnam Style and thought it was just absolutely hilarious. Unfortunately, I didn't leave myself enough time so I figured the 2^nd hand shop might provide something to use for a costume, as I've used them in the past for last minute Halloween costumes. Before we made it to the market, we had to stop and grab the Americans and Canadians who also wanted to go to the market, but we ended up waiting for them for 15 minutes at their hostel, and they were not organized and were taking way too long, so Tim, Sydnee and I just went ourselves to check things out. We arrived at the second hand store, and immediately a few ideas presented themself. There were these giant pinatas that one could actually cut the head and arms off and fit inside, so that was a fall back option. Then Tim found some leopard pant prints that would have gone well in making a costume resembling the guy from LMFAO. He tried them on, but they didn't quite fit right. Then he found some coveralls that said Jack on them, and immediately I looked to my right and found a lovely dress and the idea came to me that we could be Jack and Jill.....and bingo, a costume set was born! I tried on the dress, and it fit relatively well, so all I needed to find was a bucket.

After having wandered over to the west end of the second hand shop, and finding some blocked off areas, but sneaking through them, I managed to find some old bucket and then met Tim and Sydnee over at the “arts and crafts” area of the store, where we basically had free reign to use all the supplies there, so we set to work making parts of Sydnee's costume, as well as labeling my “pale” of water....well after Sydnee wrote that, I had to chew her out for obviously misspelling pail....some people just struggle with spelling...after having a good laugh over that snafu, I was able to find the second pail and have her rewrite it with the proper spelling. Just for good measure, I found a christmas card where I could write Jill on the back of, and stick it to my shirt. As a joke, when we went to pay I put it on the counter thinking they wouldn't actually charge me for it since it was a tiny white piece of paper, but then they were so confused by our random array of items that we had used to make Sydnee and my costumes, that they just associated a random price of 7 Quatzales to every item, including my dress and Tim's coveralls....so we still ended up paying very little for our whole outfits, and were on our way to try and find Jack a crown to finish off his costume. Fortunately there was a Burger King in town, so after sorting that out, we were all set and just went down to an English pub to watch some English soccer for a little bit before Tim and I went over to Monoloco's to get our evening started. 

Getting ready for Halloween parties in the streets

Dogs can climb roofs too, not just cats

ummm how do I spell a Pail of water again?

We had dinner there, and after a few beers, decided to play the basketball game there for shots against the bartender. After losing the first round, I managed to win the next 5 rounds so all my shots were free after that first round. We ended up spending several hours there, before running over to the Black Cat for one quick drink, before heading back to Monoloco's. The place ended up filling up pretty quickly and before we knew it, it was a packed house and we were having a good proper party. When Gangnam Style came on, there I was, in full dress, dancing through the entire line kitchen, much to the laughter and surprise of the workers. I figured I was pretty much a regular there by this point, and that they wouldn't care too much if I went for a quick spin through the kitchen, so I flung open the door, and initially some of the staff may have been excited that it was a woman dancing through, but then soon realized it was a man in a dress, but they still had a good laugh. After those shenanigans the bartender started up a bobbing for apples competition on top of the bar for the women who wanted to play, and I was shocked to hear the bartender call out Jill on the microphone, and turn around and realize he was pointing at me and telling me I had to get up and compete...so here I am climbing up and competing in this competition, and I've never bobbed for apples in my life. The girl I was going against wanted to just cheat and use our hands to pick up the apples and put them into each other's mouths so I agreed, but then she got disqualified so I ended up moving on to the next round, where the next girl was much more fierce competition and I had to actually learn to bob, but I ended up losing to her. After that there was a voting contest for best costume, and Tim and I actually ended up taking down 2^nd place so we ended up paying for our costumes and for a few drinks with our winnings..nice! In the end we stayed there till the very end of the night, before heading outside to see some really drunk dude passed out in the streets, so after a few funny photos with him, it was back to the hostel where the Israelis were hanging out with some other girls from the hostel, so we had a little after party in their room until they were all heading to sleep and kicked us out. At this point the night was pretty much complete except for my entering the room and the Israelis trying to scare me, so I sat in the corner screaming and yelling to go along with the joke, waking up the two new guys in our room who had no idea what was happening..fun times to a wild night. 

jaggerbombs to start off the Halloween party!

Jack'n'Jill went up the hill

found a few new friends

First round of bobbing for apples

2nd round..regretting all of it

terrified of my competition

in action

partying with the Israelis

Not too sure who's dress is prettier

random passed out dude

terrified of Israelis in my room

The next day we had organized a trip to head to the Day of the Dead celebrations, including a kite festival in a nearby town. Unfortunately we had to be up at 8 am to head out, and after going to bed around 4:30 am, we were all feeling pretty rough, myself included, and probably still all drunk. We piled into our van, met a few new people and were on our way to the town. We arrived and had to make a fair bit of a walk into the town, as the traffic was way too heavy. We arrived into the crowded streetways, and the first funny site had to have been some man with two scales, charging 1 quatzale to weigh yourself! After fighting our way through all the street vendors, we made our way into the big and very colourful graveyard, where people were placing flowers, painting tombstones, and children were flying and selling kites everywhere. Apparently the kites are a way of connecting with the dead spirits in the sky, and since it's a celebration of the dead loved ones, there's a lot of kites! It was a really beautiful scene, as beautiful as a graveyard can be at least. We wandered around that area for awhile, before making our way over to the giant field where they were having actual kite competitions. It was fairly awe inspiring so see kites that were over 30 feet high, with amazing artistic creations. I had a hard time believing that they would fly the big kites, but Aury, the local from our hostel, was insistent that they would fly them. We wandered around checking out the kites for awhile, and a few other sights and sounds before finding a spot in the field where the actual competition was starting. The smaller kites went first, and there weren't too many issues with them getting up into the air, but as they started to increase the size, then the problems were arising due to lack of wind. It was absolutely hilarious as they would start reeling in these kites, getting them airborne, before they would come crashing down onto the crowd in the field....people would be watching, and then start scrambling for cover as the kites came smashing down....fortunately no one in our group was hit, although there were a few close calls. kite flying shenanigans

 

On the way to the Kite Festival

packed streets, excited people

get some barbecue on your way in

and weigh yourself afterwards for the low price of 13 cents

Colourful graveyard

Everyone decorates the graves for Day of the Dead

Massive kites!

Amazingly huge kites, couldn't believe they would actually try and fly them

Building a kite

Kites are grouped into competitions based on their heights

Trying to get a kite flying

Protective gear from falling kites...smart man

Coloured corn

Festival from an upper viewpoint

Convenient transportation device for selling beverages

Locals flying smaller kites on the side of the competition, which is a way of connecting with their dead loved ones in heaven

Children playing futbol

Locals and the Israelis

My love note to Aury, our tour guide of the day

After a few hours of hanging out, watching the kites, we found our from Aury that they weren't going to be flying the big huge kites due to the lack of wind, so we all decided to head back to town. After arriving back and shaving a wicked cheesy moustache in for Movember (which was described as a Clark Gable style stache), I just wandered down to Monoloco's for the Thursday night game, where I met up with Tim and Sydnee, and waited on Mena to come join me for a drink since I was supposed to go do a day tour with her that day, but opted for the kite festival instead. She popped by and we just hung out relaxing for awhile, having a laugh over some of the Halloween stories before I walked her back to the taxi stand so she could head home. After going for an awkard kiss goodnight, I popped by at Mono's and paid off my tab that I had forgotten to pay the previous day (I was seriously a local by this point considering I walked out on a $40 tab on Halloween without realizing it until the next day and they didn't hunt me down or anything over it), and then just walked with Tim and Sydnee back towards the hostel, said my goodbyes since Tim was for sure leaving the next morning, and called it a night.

The next day I had a pretty quiet day, just hanging out having some coffee, working on some Spanish exercises, before heading out for lunch with the Israeli boys and then wandering down to check out the market to find a new hat that would go well with my stache. The market was surprisingly big and full of a lot of interesting items, particularly loads of cheap and decent clothing, but I only wanted a hat. I found some old man who offered to get me some hats, and brought back a bunch of cowboy hats, so I tried to describe to him in broken Spanish that I wanted a fedora style hat, but he had no idea what I was looking for so I just continued to wander until I found a hat shop, and found the perfect hat. Hilariously enough, he came to return the hats he had brought me to that exact same shop, so I showed him what a fedora looked like for his benefit. After grabbing a quick bite to eat, I wandered over to meet Mena to head for a drink with an old fellow named Christian who absolutely loved Tim and I, and talked about us all the time, and couldn't get enough of us. Mena had brought a young Dutch guy from her homestay and we made our way over to a small bar called the Ocelot to meet up with Christian, and just chilled out there for an hour or so before making our way over to Cafe No Se for a few more drinks. After hanging out there for another hour and a bit, everyone made their way back to their respective places, and I called it a night.

The next day after catching up on some sleep, I just ended up working on some Spanish work, and wandering around town for awhile, just the same old same old. Eventually the evening rolled around and I ended up meeting a sweet dude named Denzyl, who had just got to Antigua the day before after being sucked into staying at Lake Atitlan for over a month, so he needed to get out and go see something different. He ended up inviting me out with him and a few other new people who were all at Lake Atitlan together, including one very heavy drug using dude named Spencer from Arkansas. He was quite the treat, as he passed out at the dinner table from whatever he was on at the time, and we found out he had stolen a bunch of money from a hostel in Lake Atitlan while on drugs and had fled the place and was going to El Salvador since he didn't know what to do and heard they were looking to kill him...crazyness. After dinner we ended up heading over to a cheap hostel called Banana Azul where they had 5 Quatzales drinks. The group I was with all knew each other well and I kind of watched on in surprise when they bought a round of shots but didn't include me in the round even though i was standing right there, but I just shook it off and when they went to sit down at a table, I bought a round of 4 and brought them over, but I made sure to buy vodka shots just to punish them slightly for ignoring me ha ha. They all felt pretty bad, but there was no real hard feelings. We sat down and listened to Spencer ranting and raving about women, drugs, black people, and various other crude topics in a manner that was slightly shocking to most people in the vicinity of our group, including a friendly Swedish couple that joined us for awhile. Eventually the place really picked up, with another 12 or so people showing up including a group of 4 fairly cute girls who all seemed to be fairly interesting and up for a good time. After destroying a pinata and grabbing all the candy and finding sexual lube?! (no idea why the hell that was in the pinata) we all made our way over to a super cool hostel called the Terrace, where some of the girls were staying. They had a super wicked upstairs bar that overlooked most of Antigua, and provided a great spot to have a drink and socialize. I ended up chatting up some lady who was down looking to purchase the hostel itself, and hit it off pretty well with her, but then the group of 4 girls that were up from Honduras wanted someone to take them out and show them the nightlife in town, and since I had been for awhile they looked towards me to do the guiding from them. I was already having a good enough time where we were, but they were all pretty cute and a few of them seemed interested in me, so I figured I could go ahead and show them around.

I ended up taking them to Reilly's first, which was absolutely packed full of mostly Guatemalans and pretty much impossible to grab a drink and move around, much like the first Saturday I had attended the place. We probably stuck around for about 15 or 20 minutes before 2 of the girls wanted to leave because it was just too many people, so we got outside, but of course 2 of the other girls had liked the place and wanted to stay, plus 2 other guys from their hostel had shown up and had ordered drinks and were still inside, and one of the girls wanted them to come with us. Of all the girls, it actually ended up being the Canadian one who was the biggest pain in the ass, as she was a bit snarky and complained a lot, but she was from Toronto, so that explained things ha ha ha. So after going back inside and finding the other guys and rounding them up, I took everyone down to the disco next to Monoloco's where they were having their salsa night, and it was again a pretty fully house, but with a bit more breathing room. We spent a bit of time there, and I got to know the German and American girls a bit better, but then we lost the Swiss girl somewhere in the place, and it was getting close to closing time, and the girls wanted to go to the next place where the after party would be, but they didn't want to leave their friend and were becoming all worried that something had happened to her....well after about 20 minutes of that drama and searching all over for her, she suddenly appeared and said she was dancing the whole time and liked the place and wanted to stay, but the others wanted to leave and make sure we got to the after party spot before it closed its door, so she came with us much to her chagrin.

The next and final stop was El Muro, where I had been the week earlier, but didn't exactly have any recollection of where it was precisely, but I had a general idea and started leading the girls that way, and after meandering around for awhile, and thinking we were lost, while the Canadian girl was bitching about how I didn't know where I was going and how we should be asking for directions, while the other girls said I was a fine leader and had faith in me, I found the place and we managed to get inside, take that Toronto! We arrived inside and it was already becoming fairly full, as once 1 am rolls around, they shut their door and unless you're in a very small group they generally won't let people inside so that they don't draw the police attention for hosting the afterparty. We hung out there until probably about 3:30 am, while I hit it off well with the German girl and ended up walking her back to her hostel, having a little makeout session in the street and then finally making my way back to my hostel for the night.

 

a Pinata party, why not!

I was up the next day and made my way down to Monoloco's to start watching the NFL games. It happened to be a much quieter Sunday than previous ones in the downstairs bar, and I was one of the first to arrive. I could have asked to have the Bengals game put on, but didn't realize that whoever showed up first, had priority on tv selection, and of course 10 minutes later some other guys showed up and picked some crappy game to watch. I also tried to explain in my broken Spanish that I had paid for a 2^nd beer on the Thursday night that I didn't end up drinking, and that there would be a note left for the bartender explaining the situation, but he didn't understand me, and I figured I was out a beer since Grant, the American bar manager, wasn't working that day and I had hoped to be leaving the next day for San Pedro, possibly with the German girl and her friend. I ended up heading to the upstairs bar and settling in there to watch the Denver/Cinci game beside a Colorado guy so that we could have some friendly banter and a bit of a rivalry. Eventually Christian ended up joining us too, as well as some American guy that I had actually met in Puerto Escondido several weeks earlier (the guy who spent the night in Mexican jail and said it was actually an alright experience).

After watching the first batch of games, and generally hating the terrible servce of the bartender, but admiring the beautiful Guatemalan women that were constantly filling up the tables surrounding us, a fellow at the end of the bar came over to ask me about my Sask Roughriders jersey and if I was excited for the game the upcoming weekend. I had known that they were going to be playing Calgary, but I hadn't really been following it all that much, and since I wasn't going to be home, wasn't too concerned about the game. We got to chatting a bit, and he mentioned he was from Calgary and then asked about what I had done, so I told him I had worked for an oil company in Canada, so he asked which one and I replied Devon. He then had this intrigued look and said he currently works for Devon, and it was about that time that we realized we actually knew each other from conferences and various other work functions! Small world indeed! So we got to chatting about life at Devon, and he was amazed how I was still travelling after all this time. We ended up watching the 2^nd batch of games together before he had to head off to his hostel, which happened to be the Terrace and I told him I would be heading there later on to meet up with the German girl anyway, so I'd see him there. After watching the last batch of games, I just made my way back to the hostel, showered up, and headed over to the Terrace with Denzyl, as he had wimped out the previous night a bit early and was bummed out that he had missed going out with all the girls. We arrived there and joined their whole group, as well as a few of Denzyl's friends from San Pedro, and one Kiwi dude that I had also met in Puerto Escondito. We hung out at the Terrace for another hour or so before the girls wanted to go check out another salsa night at a spot I hadn't been to, so several of us made our way down there. I have zero salsa skills, as did Denzyl, so we mostly just watched as the local guys took the girls and them around a fair bit. I was quite impressed with the German girl, as she really seemed to know what she was doing as well, but fortunately she wasn't wooed by the locals and still kept coming back to me in the end. After awhile there, we ended up all heading back to the Terrace, but found the bar to be closed, so I just hung out with the German girl for awhile before she said she was going to bed since they were going to be leaving at 8 am the next day. I walked her down towards her room, and found a nearby room that was free and unlocked, and asked if she wanted to join for a bit, so we grabbed that and called it our “secret room”. After having some fun there, we both ended up falling asleep, and then she woke me up at 4 am telling me that we should leave the room in case someone from the staff came, and that she had to get to her real bed, so I sauntered back home for the night.

The next day I saw Denzyl, and had a good laugh over the night, as they had went out to Cafe No Se after we had arrived back at the Terrace, and found it was closing down, but Guatemalan's most famous soccer player Pescado was there and bought a whole bunch of booze and invited everyone back to his place for an after party that was pretty wild. Ben-O, the Kiwi from Puerto Escondito had found some metal detector in the guy's yard, so they were all playing around with that, checking the women's bras for metal to see if they were pushup bras or not, and then I guess they found some bicycle and a kite, so Ben-O was driving that around the streets trying to get it to fly, but then ended up crashing the bike and falling pretty hard but being alright. Then they were swimming in some fountain at the guy's place as well, so it was a pretty wild night. There was a pub crawl organized through the Terrace for Monday afternoons, and since I didn't end up going to the Lake and had no real plans for the day, I decided to go and join that, along with Denzyl, an Aussie girl named Tess, and a few others. The place was already getting pretty busy in anticipation of the pub crawl, I did have a bit of a hangover, and I noticed they had Canadian caesars on the menu, so I ordered one of those and passed it around to a few of the curious onlookers at my table whom had never tried one, and they were all hooked on the flavour. After a few drinks there, and having a round of shots bought for us by a guy from Guatemala City who owned a few bars there, and I would later find out was best friends with the Pescado guy, we were on our way to the first bar of the pub crawl, a nearby hostel that had cheap tequila and mojitos on special. After way too many shots of terrible tequila there, we arrived at the next place called Lava. I had to laugh when we arrived there because there was an older couple there that were clearly trying to have a nice and quiet dinner together, as it is a fairly chilled out kind of place, but then this huge group of 30 rowdy drunks show up and spoil their dinner party. Needless to say, they finished their food quite quickly and got the hell out of there. After that it was on to the final stop of the pub crawl, some cigar bar that had a really great selection of cigars, but unfortunately were sold out of pretty much all of them! I grabbed one of few remaining cigars and even though it wasn't the greatest quality, it was still decent enough and I made sure to pass it around so everyone could at least try a little bit. We probably spent another 40 minutes there or so before the pub crawl was finished and everyone headed back to the Terrace.

When myself and a guy nicknamed Sleepy got outside (he was called Sleepy because he had been sick the past few days and in the same room as the girls so they just called him Sleepy), we found Ben-O hobbling along saying he had banged up his knee and could barely walk. We offered to carry him back, but of course he wouldn't accept the offer, so we decided to grab a tuk-tuk instead. Hilariously enough, the ride was literally 1.5 blocks away, but it was still pretty funny to take transport that short of a distance, even though Sleepy and I really didn't need to. We arrived back in the Terrace and continued on with the party for awhile until the one Canadian girl told me that the German girl hadn't actually made it to the Lake that morning as she was feeling ill, and that she could use some company. So I bailed on the group for what I figured would be a short time frame, but then once I got into her bed I never ended up leaving it for the rest of the night, even though a big group of them were all going out on the town, but I had a great time with the German girl so all was great. I think it was around 2 am when I heard Denzyl and the Canadian girl talking in the hammock outside the room, Then about 15 minutes later I heard some very strange noises and was wondering if somehow they were up some funny business in the hammock so I popped my head outside but realized they weren't coming from the hammock, but from the nearby secret room, or so I thought. Then about 10 minutes later they both showed up in our room since all the girls were actually sleeping in the same room, and I asked them if they had been in the secret room, but apparently they were in the bathroom...dirty Canadians and Aussies! So I tried to get to sleep at this point, but then they both were alternating snoring and heavy breathing, it was terrible! I probably didn't fall asleep until at least past 4 am sometime and subsequently slept until 12 pm the next day.

 

View from the Terrace hostel

We hung around the hostel for a little bit while waiting for the Swiss girl to return from Lake Atitlan, as she had ended up going by herself since the German girl had cancelled due to being sick. Once she returned, we went to some French restaurant for some crepes and smoothies before deciding to hike up a nearby hill for a view of the city. Well at least we wanted to, but then the girls had to organize their bus trip back to Honduras the next day, which took forever because there was a huge queue in the office, with a few people who spoke no Spanish and with the employee who spoke no English. Then the girls had forgotten their passports, which you need to buy tickets in Honduras, so they had to go all the way back to get those before finally getting everything all sorted out. We finally made our hike up, which didn't take nearly as long, and were treated to a lovely view of the surrounding area of Antigua. After our quick hike up and down, we decided to stop by some art museum, which provided some fairly diverse and graphic photography and sketches. The one section focused on the violence and death in Guatemala over the past few years of Civil War, and there were some fairly gruesome photos of people who had just been gunned down, or were being prepared for their funeral. Another fairly interesting set focused on the people who's families hadn't paid their graveyard fees, and it depicted photos of their corpses having been dug up and left on the streets....crazy! After touring around and receiving a vivid education on death in Guatemala, the girls made their way out for dinner at some Indian restaurant, while Denzyl and I made our way over to the “McMansion” which is the McDonalds in Antigua that is pretty luxurious and swanky. They had triple bacon cheeseburger day, so we couldn't resist smashing those down before heading back to the Terrace to see the girls one last time. The German was still feeling pretty tired, so I spent a bit more time with her in bed before saying my goodbye and heading upstairs to watch the American elections. Hilariously enough, several of the people watching had made a drinking game out of it, where one group would have to take a shot if Obama won a state, and vice versa for Romney.....oh the things backpackers come up with! After pretending to have any interest in the results, I ended up just hanging out with Dave, the engineer from Devon in Canada for awhile. He was leaving the next day, as was I, so we ended up just catching up a bit more over some beers before i took him out to Cafe No Se for a bit, since he had yet to have visited the spot. We ended up seeing Pescado and his bar owning friend there. I had to laugh a bit, as the Pescado guy seemed to be a fair bit of a drunk and not really in tip top athletic condition, but I guess there's always that offseason where you let loose a bit. Dave and I hung out there until close and then just made our separate ways back to our hostels for the night.

Hiking up to the giant cross

Denzyl...the sign says no climbing on or over the wall!

Basketball court turned into soccer field, of course

Picture of a man dug up from his grave because his family didn't pay their graveyard fees

Hard work and sacrifice in the Sugar Cane fields for next to nothing....tough life

Jesus saves McDonalds

I woke up the next day and just bummed around for a little bit before heading out for lunch with Denzyl to some wicked local restaurant that had huge meals for about $3. It was a pretty funny little place as they had their barbecue insidee the house and were using a blow dryer to blow the smoke out of the restaurant into the street. The food was damn good though, especially for the price. After enjoying our food, I just wandered back to the hostel, where I ended up chatting with an older Canadian fellow named Rory, whom I had run into a few times here and there and had grown to like a fair bit. He was in his 50s and had backpacked Central America in the 70s so it was interesting to pick his brain about what the backpacking scene was like before the days of internet, booking flights online, guide books, etc. He had been spending the last 10 years going to Thailand during this time of the year, but decided to come back to Central America this time around, and was kind of humming and hawing about going back to Thailand, but in the end decided to just stick in CA. He was a fairly chatty fellow, and before I knew it, my shuttle had arrived and I still hadn't paid my tab or anything, so I asked them to wait a minute while I did that, but then 5 minutes later when I came out with my bags they were gone, damnit! I sat around waiting and waiting, and started to wonder if I had completely missed it and would be spending another day in Antiigua, but they eventually showed up again and I was on my way to Lake Atitlan! 

Check out the little hair dryer used to blow the smoke out of the restaurant...amazing food though!

The shuttle ride there is fairly long and winding, and a lot of people get car sick, but fortunately that doesn't bother me too much. I was pretty tired and did try and have a nap but kept sliding back and forth against the wall of the van, which kept me awake pretty much the whole time. It's fairly interesting passing through Chemaltequa, which is a large city outside Antigua, as it's such a strange sight to see. It's basically one very very long strip, with pretty much nothing but tire shops and car repair shops, with a few tiny restaurants sprinkled in between. The traffic is thick and heavy, the air heavily polluted from exhaust, and people just roaming about the streets. I really don't know if there's any other industries in the city, but apparently it's the 3^rd or 4^th largest in Guatemala. Anyway, after getting through there in a decent amount of time due to lack of rush hour traffic, we continued on towards the Lake. When you are taking these winding roads and then all of a sudden come over the top and start driving down towards the Lake, it is one of the most awe inspiring and incredible views I've seen on my entire trip. The Lake was a volcano at one point in time, and erupted violently, leaving a huge cauldron that eventually filled with water and became Lago Atitlan. It's surrounded by several other volcanoes and mountains, and has several cities lining it's waters. We arrived in San Pedro la Laguna, which is a town of about 4000 people, most of whom are ex-pats, fugitives, and businesspeople. Guatemala is a known haven for a lot of people on the run from the law, as it's super cheap to live in, and visa issues are easily solved with a few bribes.

We arrived into San Pedro, and were dropped off near the main dock and the vehicle was immediately surrounded by local touts. Before they could get onto the bus, a white American dude popped on and asked where we were all staying and if we were interested in staying at the new hostel in town, which was literally 30 seconds away. I had been planning on staying at Yo Mama's, since so many people in Antigua had raved about the place, and the guy admitted it was a pretty cool place and had stayed there for a month before moving to this new place. The Swiss girl in Antigua had stayed at the new place called Mr. Mullet's and said it was clean and they had great hot showers, so I decided to at least give it a look, as I really didn't want to have some local lead me to the Yo Mama's hostel and charge me some stupid fee. I took a quick look at Mr. Mullet's and saw that it was a pretty nice spot, so I just decided to stay there instead. After checking in, I wandered downstairs to their kitchen/snack bar area, and met the owner and his gf who were two super cool Dutch people, and ended up having a bite to eat with them. I decided to have a quiet night and wanted to hike up for the sunrise to a spot called the Indian's Nose the next morning, so they found the local guide who would take me up there, and I was all set for a super early morning wakeup. After sorting out some snacks and water for the next morning, I crawled into bed and tried to fall asleep, but couldn't help but stay up laughing at some Americans in the room next to me, who were having some hilarious banter about their sexually delusional friend back home. It was fairly crude stuff, but quite hilarious to hear. Eventually I was able to get to sleep, but had to be up at 3:30 am.

 

I couldn't actually remember if the guide had said 3:45 or 4 am, so I was down in front of the place for 3:45 am just in case. Around 3:50 am two people came walking up the street, and I thought it was my guide, but then realized it was some couple who were then greeted by a guide right in front of me. He then asked me if I was Diego, and upon realizing I wasn't one of his people, left with the couple. At this point it was 4 am, and still no guide had showed up so I was wondering if I should just go back to bed, when some guy came hustling down the street and grabbed me. He wasn't the guy I had arranged things with the night before, but explained to me that he was his replacement. Unfortunately he spoke no English, so it was going to all be in Spanish. We made our way up the street where we found a chicken bus, and hopped on board and were on our way. About 1 hour later we stopped in a town called Santa Anna, and exited the bus. My guide began walking with me, while the couple and their guide followed. There was a group of 3 Israelis who had just kind of followed everyone and continued to follow us all. At this point, the other guide started telling them that they would have to pay if they were going to follow us all, as it was actually someone's private land that we were going through, but they refused to pay and just followed us all up to the top. The hike wasn't all that bad, even though I'm not in the best of shape, but it was interesting considering it was pitch black, but fortunately I had brought a flashlight with me, as did my guide, so all was good. The couple behind us, well the woman at least, was in terrible shape and they had to stop several times up, but my guide and I just went straight up without any breaks. Upon arrival, I was already in awe of the surrounding area, even though the sun still hadn't even begun to provide any form of light yet. The view from that spot is absolutely breathtaking, and once the sun started to provide some light, I think I can honestly say it's the most amazing sunrise I've seen anywhere in the world. Considering I've been to a lot of places, that's a pretty strong statement, but it was so incredible.

While enjoying the amazing view, I started to overhear the Israelis again arguing with the one guide and the owner of the property who had shown up. He was telling them that they had to pay to walk on his land, and they were refusing. I thought this to be quite stupid of them, as several of the locals in our group had machetes, and the fact that myself and the other couple had to pay to come up was a bit annoying. They continued to argue, and I think they eventually came to some sort of agreement, but the whole thing seemed to be fairly stupid. After enjoying an hour and a bit of the spectacular view, and chatting with my guide for awhile about fishing in the lake and whether they were any good (he said they were very tasty and that I should definitely try some), we started the hike down. We ended up taking a different path near the end which led us into the actual town, where the guide showed me a few areas before finding us a collectivo van to take us back to San Pedro. We were on our way and about halfway back when we had to stop on the hill going down into the lake area as a large transport truck had taken one of the hairpins too sharply and had blocked the entire road. There was no way he was going to be able to drive out and no way anyone could push him out, so he was going to have to wait for some sort of heavy equipment to come from somewhere other than the lake to lift his backend out and open up the roadway. We sat around for awhile contemplating what to do, and the guide asked if I would be alright with walking down the hill and if I could run if needed (all in Spanish of course), and I said yeah it shouldn't be a problem. So, we began the long hike down, which was fairly entertaining, as we had some small conversations. I noticed he had his machete ready, and that he was picking up rocks as we went. I was wondering why, when he pulled out a slingshot and told me that some areas of the road can have armed thieves. At one point, when we were in a low lying area, he said we should start to run for the next 10 minutes or so until we were clear of the area, as it was known for being a bad spot for robberies. So here I am, running along with this 50 something year old man, trying to hold my back pocket from moving too much as I have a bunch of coins, and I'm holding my jacket over my fancy looking watch on my other hand....quite the sight for the local farmers that were walking past us, carrying their own machetes!

After the 15 minutes of running, he said we were in a safe spot again, so we continued walking into the nearby town, where he arranged a tuktuk for us to ride into San Pedro. We stopped at a spot I didn't really recognize, but he said it was the right spot to get out, and we walked the rest of the way into the town, before finally arriving at my hostel. He had owed me some change from earlier in the day, but I thought it was such a funny and neat experience that I was willing to let him keep it as a tip. I arrived back at the hostel and chatted with the owners a bit more, asking where I could get some fish. Hilariously enough, they said that they had been there 5 years and no one ever eats the fish from the lake, as it is so heavily polluted. They had tried it once and had gotten ill, so they highly recommended against trying it. I had to laugh about my guide telling me to try the fish, but then again, his stomach is probably accustomed to the bacteria in the lake and it doesn't bother him. I decided to head over and grab some breakfast from a nearby cafe, do some Spanish work, and then take a walk to find the hot spots of San Pedro that I had been told about, including Zoola and Yo Mama's. I didn't know exactly where I was going, but did eventually find them both, and realized that if I had tried to find them in the dark the previous night, it might actually have been a challenge. After checking out the rooms at Yo Mama's and realizing that the place I was at was much better, I made my way back for a little nap and to kill some time until the 5 pm bus came in, as Tess from Antigua was meant to be coming in, and we had agreed to meet up. While waiting for the bus to come in, I sat down with an American dude named Brendan who ended up being one of the more interesting characters I've met on my trip.

He had this gnarly looking elbow, and explained to me that he had been serving in the Gulf War in the early 90's as a reservist, not thinking he'd get called up, and had his arm nearly blown off. They were going to amputate it in the helicopter but didn't end up doing it, and he had subsequently had 5 elbow replacements since then. He didn't take any pain killers for the injury, just choose to drink several beers a day to cope with the pain. On top of that, he had been living in Guatemala for several years before becoming involved with a local woman who was tied to some gang members, and they didn't take kindly to that, so he had a $2500 bounty on his head at one point in time, so he had to flee the country, as he had already been shot at several times during that phase of his life. To give me an idea of what the value of a life is in Guatemala, he said you could pay $25 to $50 US for a hit there, so when he had $2500 on his head, it was definitely time to get out, so he went to China and Argentina for several years before coming back. Fortunately for him, the people who wanted him were already dead by that point, so all was good again. Interestingly enough, he had also been one of the first owners of the pub Reilly's in Antigua, as I happened to be wearing my Reilly's shirt that day, and he commented on it. We sat around and had a few beers, and pretty soon several other local ex-pats came to join the gathering. The one American dude who had gotten me from the bus the previous night was chatting a bit about how Spencer, the crazy American in Antigua who had stolen money from Zoola, was supposedly returning that night and how he might not make it out of town alive. I guess he knew the owner of the shuttle company, and that guy told him he was coming back to San Pedro, and Spencer had owned this guy like $30, and he was making such a big deal out of it....it was kind of lame really but oh well. So he told me how he was going to be the first guy on that shuttle and grab Spencer to make sure he couldn't get away without paying him his $30. I thought it was a bit ridiculous, considering the guy had stolen $400 or so from the Zoola place, so they should be more worried about grabbing him.

So we just sat around shooting the shit, enjoying the weather, and having some beers until the shuttle eventually showed up. I was plesantly surprised to see that Denzyl had also decided to come back to San Pedro, as he felt that Spencer could use a friend, so he decided to come back to the lake with him to help deal with shit. I wandered over to chat with them for a bit, and they said they were going to Yo Mama's, so I didn't end up having to show Tess how to get there, but said I would try and pop by later to grab dinner with them or something. I eventually got a move on it and made my way towards their place, but then ended up getting fairly lost and then stumbled upon a place called Buddha Bar, where they were showing the Thursday night football game, so I decided to just go ahead and pop in there and watch the game. I looked at the menu, and the food seemed to be pretty decent, so I ordered up a bunch of food and sat down to watch the game. The food actually wasn't really all that good at all, but the beer tasted good and the football was alright. About ¾ of the way through the game Brendan happened to wander in, so he ended up pulling me over to the pool table to play some games with him. For a guy with one really bad arm, he's a helluva good pool player, and even though I kept it close, he got me everytime. At one point, he had to shoot over a ball and all of a sudden he was cursing in pain, as his elbow dislocated, which is a fairly common occurance for him! So he's over against the wall trying to slam it back into place, and can't do it, so he comes over to me and tells me I have to put it back into place for him, so he holds out his arm and tells me on 3 to yank as yard as I can on his arm......yeah, I've known the guy for half a day, and now I'm having to pull on his arm as hard as possible!? So the first time I kind of pussied out, and didn't pull that hard, so he curses at me and tells me to yank really hard, so I do and it's back in place.....oh man what an experience ha ha ha! So we continue our game, and he still ends up winning.

After that, some locals wanted to get in on the games so they played for awhile, while we had some beers with some other locals who kept asking me about my Argentina football jersey, and asking what I paid for it, and if it was a game worn jersey....It was weirding me out a little bit, as I know how little people can earn down in Central America, and wearing a $75 football jersey and being asked about the price of it is a bit concerning. So after chatting a bit more, I kind of just slipped out of the place, went down to Zoola's to see if anyone was there, but it was super dead and Denzyl and Tess were nowhere to be seen, so I just wandered back to the hostel, watched some Walking Dead (seriously wicked show if you haven't seen it yet), and then just called it a night.

The next day I was up and chatted with Denzyl a bit, and he informed me they were going kayaking on the lake, and that I should join them, and to bring some rum, so we agreed to meet up and head out. They showed up awhile later, and we rented some kayaks, got some rum, and went out on the lake. Because it was a group of 5, one of us had to go solo, so of course it was me, but that was alright, I needed the exercise anyway. We ended up kayaking across the lake to a spot near San Marcos, where there was a cliff jumping spot. I was going to go up on it, but then saw we had to pay to use it, and Denzyl tried to sneak up and jump a few times, but some local ended up catching him and he had to pay. I didn't really care that much about jumping, and was content to just sit in the kayak and watch others and just chat. We spent some time there, until we eventually were out of rum and water, so we started making our way back. On the way back, I ended up having Tess in my kayak, and while she was filming a video of Denzyl in his kayak, she somehow managed to flip our kayak into the lake. Since I was in the front of the kayak, I had no idea what was happening, other than all of a sudden I was in the water and scrambling to grab my thongs, and paddle, and get back into the boat. The video of the whole event is actually quite hilarious, and we ended up beng alright, other than soaked, and Tess losing her shirt. Once we got back into the boat, we made our way back to shore, where another nap was in order, as the rum, sun, and kayaking had worn us down a bit. After my nap and shower, I had a few quick beers with Brendan, before heading over to Yo Mama's for the Spaghetti Bolognese night there.

The owner of the hostel has a big pasta night every Friday, with all proceeds going to an orphan boy the hostel had sort of adopted, and was raising money for in various ways. It draws a fairly big crowd of people, including non guests of the hostel. Ali, an American I had met in Antigua, was also working at the hostel, and being a bartender back home, decided to make a whole bunch of mojitos that night for the pasta cook off, so it was pasta and mojito night. We had a pretty good feast, played some games, and had a few beers and mojitos. Eventually the mojitos were all gone, there were a lot of drunk backpackers, and it was live music/party night at Zoola's, so a whole bunch of us piled on down there for the night. I had hit it off with Tess quite well earlier in the day and night, so probably within 30 to 40 minutes of being there, we were already coupled up for the rest of the night. Eventually it shut down, we wandered back to Yo Mama's for awhile, and then I eventually made my way back to my hostel for the night, randomly running into Denzyl on the street at like 3:30 am, and him interrogating me about what happened with Tess ha ha.

The next day after waking up, I just kind of lingered around, enjoying an amazing Vegetarian burger from the hostel kitchen. I had actually planned to try and leave that day for Antigua, but everyone in the town talked and talked about how I needed to stick around for the barbecue at La Piscina, a pool bar down by the lake. I ended up learning about the story of the guy who owned the place, and it was bad luck, as he had moved down to Antigua from Canada with enough money to live comfortably, but decided to build a place near the lake and open a business. Well, the lake has risen in the last few years quite high, and ended up flooding out his home and most of his business, other than the bar and pool area, so it's been a painful endeavour for him. But they still host the barbecue at his spot every Sunday, so I was talked into staying for it, plus Tess had wanted to do the sunrise hike, and it was just so beautiful that I decided I would go along with her and do it again.

The afternoon I just ended up heading down to a place called El Barrio, with Brendan, and playing in the local poker game, before heading to this amazing Italian restaurant with Brendan and his g/f, called Alfredo's. It's owned by an Italian, and it's basically his house, with an open kitchen area, and some of the tastiest sauces I've had, including my time in Italy. It's kind of a funny event to watch, as the owner had his friend come down to help out, but then they end up just arguing in the kitchen half the time over things in true Italian fashion, and the food takes longer than it should, but the taste is well worth the wait. After our amazing and relatively cheap dinner, I wandered over to Yo Mama's for some cards and to chill out for a little bit until a few of us eventually wandered over to Zoola's for some of their famous dessert. Zoola's is an Israeli owned place, and they are probably the biggest weed smokers I've ever met. When we sat down to dessert, I asked if they had an hookah pipe there because I was craving some, and the guy working asked if I had weed, which I said no, that I just wanted flavoured tobacco and a hookah pipe, but he didn't seem to understand that so he said I'll be right back, and then came back with a joint ha ha...shocking I know, especially with how out in the open they are with it there, so I tried to explain that I just wanted to know if they had hookah and flavoured tobacco but he still didn't understand....oh well. So we just had our dessert, some lemonade, and then everyone wandered back to the hostel, and I organized things with Tess for the next morning. 

Whiskey the Hostel Dog

The pier of San Pedro

I was up at 3:30 am again, and as I was coming out of the bathroom I could hear a bunch of dogs barking off in the distance and thought they were having a dog fight. Tess showed up about 6 minutes later and was laughing/sort of frightened, as the dogs had actually been chasing her and barking at her. At first it was just a few small ones which wasn't a big deal, but then it turned into a huge pack, some of them nipping at her legs, and even biting holes in her leggings ha ha ha...poor girl, but at least they didn't pierce the skin or anything. We walked down to where I had taken the chicken bus the previous time I had gone, but there was no bus to be found, so we asked some super drunk guy where they were, but he just wanted money and cigarettes and was no help. Then I found some other worker, who told us they don't run that early on Sunday mornings, but that there was another stop where we might be able to catch a van ride up. So we found that spot, and fortunately there was already a big group of people there, waiting for a van to take them up, as I had sort of told Tess that I could just get us up there on my own without organizing it through a guide. While we were all waiting for the van, a pickup truck pulled up and rolled down the window, and the driver asked in English what we were all doing and if we wanted to go on “an adventure”.....so we asked what kind of adventure, and he had no idea and was obviously high or very drunk, and just said they were going for an adventure ride that may involve kayaks, drugs, and spiritual forces, or something along those lines ha ha ha....but we told him we were all going for the sunrise instead, so he just left us be. The van showed up shortly after, and fortunately had room for 2 extras, so we were on our way.

We arrived there, and since we were within a big group, we only had to pay $5 for the fee, instead of the $14 I had to pay when I was solo. We arrived shortly after, and I was pretty surprised to see a fair bit of the group, especially the girls, not wearing very much clothing. They obviously hadn't realized that it was quite cold up that high during the early morning, and we had to all stand around outside, waiting for the guide's friend to show up so we could start our way up. We made the hike in relatively good time, although had to stop for a few people in the group who were out of breath, or without flashlights, and arrived up top to see an incredible moon overlooking the whole lake....damn what an amazing view again, maybe even better than the first time! We hung out for an hour or so, enjoying the views, having some laughs, Eventually we wandered back down and were back to San Pedro. I went back and had another nap before heading over to Yo Mama's to meet up with some people and head over to La Piscina for the big bbq. We arrived a bit too late, as pretty much all the tables around the pool were filled up, so we had to find a spot on the roof to sit. I ended up getting the meat combo, which came with 3 sides, and holy shit was that a ridiculously massive plate of food!! This picture says it all I would say.

 

Amazing shot with a full moon

Will never get tired of this view

Black and white family photo

Classic Guatemalan meal for only Q27

That's one helluva barbecue plate for $9!!!

Needless to say, I was able to finish all the meat in one sitting and a bit of my sides, but definitely not all of it, even though Tess had challenged me to an eat off. I might have been able to finish it, but I really didn't want to pain that would come with possibly winning ha ha. After the giant feast, and a few of the cheap tequila shots at the bar, I decided to make my way over to Buddha bar to watch some of the American football games for a few hours. It wasn't nearly as busy or rowdy as the Monoloco's bar, but it was an alright spot to catch the games at least. After several hours of football, I just wandered over to Yo Mama's for a bit more, finished off the remainder of my bbq sides, and hung out with a few people before saying my goodbyes, and heading home for the night.

The next day I was up, grabbed another vegetarian hamburger at the hostel, but with bacon and avocado this time, mmmmm. Then grabbed a coffee and just hung out with Brendan until my shuttle arrived, and I was on my way back to Antigua for the evening. I ended up meeting a pretty cool British physicist on the ride there, and we both ended up heading to the Black Cat to spend the night upon arrival, before heading down to Monoloco's for the Monday night football game and some nachos and guacamole. I said my goodbyes to the Monoloco's friends, and wandered back to Reilly's to join Aury, the hostel worker that i professed my love for, and her friend for one last beer. While there, I ended up running into yet another person from the Tower Bridge hostel in Puerto Escondido, which made it 9 in 3 weeks in Antigua...random! She was just on her way out unfortunately, but I said i might come back the next weekend and see her again. After the last beer, I just wandered back to the hostel for an early night, since my shuttle was coming at 8 am the next day for El Salvador. I was, had my breakfast packed, and the shuttle arrived on time and I made my way to El Salvador, the 61^st country in my world travels.

And that's where i'll continue on from next post!

Adios muchachos,

Rye