Day 3 - Lake Atitlan

I always have such a hard time remembering where I left off the last time I emailed!  I swear it feels like I've been gone at least a week already.  I don't know why, but it does! :)

Okay, so last night we walked back to our fantastic little hostel (I'm being a little sarcastic with the word fantastic) in the pouring rain and got soaked.  

We went to bed fairly early.  I don't think I've been up past 10pm since I've been gone...haha!  I didn't come here to party, that's for sure. :)  Thankfully my cell phone has held it's charge this whole time and I've been using it for my alarm!  So we set the alarm for 7am since we had to leave at 8:30 am for our tour of the villages around the lake.  Well I woke up around 3am and seriously felt like there were little bugs crawling all over me...SICK!  I got up and dug around in my backpack until I found my flashlight (thanks mom!!) and quietly tip toed our through the open courtyard and around the corner to the bathroom, if you want to call it a bathrooml. ;)  Yea, it's nasty and it's not close to our room, and I was kind of freaking out that someone was going to jump out and grab me...haha...I like to freak myself out like that, so I didn't want to wear shoes that would make noise and I was flashing the flashlight around like crazy.  Bet I looked like a crazy lady! ;)  I went to the bathroom and didn't see any bugs on me, so I just went back to bed.  I actually didn't sleep all that bad, but it is very warm and humid here and there isn't any ac anywhere, so we just left the windows open for some air.  And the pillow was super weird and lumpy.  Anyways, when the alarm went off, I jumped right up, grabbed my towel and jumped in shotty little shower they have set up here.  The shower head is suspended my two wire hangers, seriously!  They are very crafty with the way they get things fixed and/or working over here. :)  ICE COLD again.  I have to give myself a little pep talk and count to three before I can even make myself get wet...that's the WORST!  ;)  I scrubbed really good but I guess it was just in my head, I didn't see any bugs or bug bites on me.  But I swear there was something crawling on me!! :) 

I finally managed to get Irene up, she is NOT a morning person!  And the funny thing is, sometimes she talks to me in Norwegian when she gets really excited or really nervous, and apparently when she first wakes up too...haha.  She was rambling something about not getting up yet and I just gave her a weird look and shook my head at her until she started laughing and realized she was speaking the wrong language!  How cool would that be...I'm so jealous!  In Norway, they start speaking English and 6 years old, and then French and German at 12 years old.  So she is now learning her 5th language, and she said she does get confused sometimes...so funny! :)  Finally got her up and we packed up and went out for some breakfast.  Not much was open that early, but we found a nice little local place that looked open.  We both had pancakes, since the ones in Chichi the day before were so good.  They were decent, not qutie as good, but the BEST fresh squeezed orange juice which we actually watcher her squeeze in front of us! :)  And all of it for like two dollars, seriously, ridiculously cheap here. 

Funny story:  when we were sitting at the table, we were the only ones there and obviously tourists, and these two little boys trying to sell stuff walked up to us.  And we recognized one of them from the market in Chichi the day before!!  Haha...he was hounding us there and we gave him money then!  He tried to play it off but when we asked him he finally admitted that he was there the day before.  I guess he travels around with his family from village to village and just tries to sell stuff all day, and he is only 6 years old!  He was with his little brother this time, so yes, of course, we gave each of the one dollar.  So sad, they are so cute and innocent and have no future! :( 

After breakfast we walked down to the lake and caught a boat, along with 4 other European tourists (a young couple from Switzerland and an older couple from France), to the village of San Pedro on the other side of the lake.  This like truly is beautiful!!  Took a couple of hours to get across the lake, but it was so peaceful and relaxing (so relaxing in fact that Irene fell asleep!) and just BEAUTIFUL!!  Did I already say that!? ;) 

First stop:  San Pedro was AWESOME!  We liked it way better than Panajachel, but we only got to spend a couple of hours there.   Irene and I definitely wandered maybe a little too far "off the beaten path" and ended up lost on some little dirt paths in the local part of the village.  Almost a little scary, but we managed to find our way back to the dock just in time for the boat.  San Pedro has a lot of spanish schools, horse back riding, kayaking, etc.  Just a really cool little village, lots of pics to share of course... 

From San Pedro we went to another village about an hour by boat called Santiago.  We didn't like it as much, it was a little more touristy (guys trying to get you to buy stuff as soon as you landed) and not near as nice as San Pedro.  Very dirty and very poor village.  One cool thing:  I saw the most avocados I've ever seen in my life though!  Just thousands of avocados they were loading up on trucks! 

Next was San Antonio, and it was the worst. We were both pretty hungry and asked probably 5 people in five different places where we could eat, and they all said no where!  It was a very tiny village, with NO restaurant!  It just seemed so removed from the rest of the world!  This village was set up almost identical to the favelas in Brazil too.  Tiny little shambles of buildings built on the mountain side one on top of the other on top of the other.  So dirty, children playing in gutters.  I don't even know why we went there, they obviously haven't seen many tourists and even speak there own dialect of Spanish, as they couldn't really understand our basic/normal Spanish.  It was a sad place.  I just feel so bad for these people, to see how they live and think about all we have in the US.  It's just crazy to think that in a country the size of Louisana, there is such poverty throughout!  They truly live off the land, don't have electricity in many places, make there own clothes and food, don't have access to televisions or doctors or anything outside of there village!  There are babies having babies, literally, like 14 years old.  It's just so sad that they have no future and aren't ever going to break that cycle.  But then again, they are happy and don't know how else to live, so I guess it shouldn't bother me. 

ANYways, enough about all of the poverty here...  We got back on the boat and headed back to Panajachel, grabbed a big pizza (for $2.25) and barely caught the last bus back here to Antigua.  This driver was much better (safer and slower) that most of the other drivers we had, so that was a relief driving on the windy mountain roads.  He even paused to let me get a picture of this beautiful waterfall on the way back up the mountain (out of town).

We are back here at McDonalds in Antigua again!  Haha...you just really can't believe this place.  I'm telling  you, it is like the place to be in Antigua.  Definitly the cleanest, and probably the nicest place here.  They are playing Black Eyed Peas right now...haha!  I'm sure you all think I’m crazy for hanging out at McDonalds, but they have free internet, and wait until you see the pics of this place!! :)

Tomorrow morning Irene is heading up north to Coban and then on to Floures.  She has to be in Mexico City on July 1st to fly down to Argentina to meet her friends.  I am going to (hopefully) catch a bus to Guatetmala City at 9am, then another from there that will drop me off 10minutes outside of Santa Ana, El Salvador.  Not too excited about 1. separating from my new bff and 2. traveling by bus to a new country alone and HOPING my friend meets me to pick me up.  If not, I’m screwed! ;)  Wish me luck!  I should be able to write more tomorrow night from Santa Ana because there is internet at the orphanage!

-TK