Central America Pt 2. Guatemala

Tons of ancient churches line the streets in Antigua, Guatemala

Heidi and I arrived in Guatemala city airport at around 9:30 at night, on the same day that we had absconded from the hospital in Costa Rica. We had previously arranged with our hostel that they would meet us at the airport as we were slightly under the weather (understatement!). We were both quite keen on an airport pickup as we had heard that Guatemala city (called Guate by the locals) was one of the most dangerous cities in all of Central America. Walk around there and you will see heavily militarized security forces, and all sorts of busses with little coloured flags on them.

The coloured flags are for gang loyalties. Each bus driver pays apparently a good chunk of their monthly earnings to a gang in return for "protection", and they fly that gang's colours on their bus. They don't really seem to have a choice in the matter of paying for protection or not. What most often happens, is that rival gangs will stop these busses, make some get off, sexually abuse them, and most times rob them, kill them, and the driver as well. So we were pretty excited to pull out our cameras and tourist maps and walk around there (NOT!).

We were picked up and whisked to our hostel with no problems, and as it turned out, we landed in quite a nice place! (Hotel San Pablo - big two thumbs up!) The little old lady (Grace) that ran the place had no other guests and she was quite determined to take care of us after having heard the hospital ordeal that we had been through. She sorted us out with our spartan rooms and left us to sleep it off.

The next day, being quite keen to get out of the city, we looked for ways to get to Antigua, apparently this ridiculously beautiful town, kept in the colonial style, ringed by volcanoes. We talked to Grace and she with her husband decided that they would drive us in their car all the way there! How nice was that.

We arrived in Antigua, still a little bit bushwacked but very excited when we saw how incredibly beautiful it was. Picture cobble stoned streets, colonial buildings everywhere, traditionally dressed Mayan people selling homemade crafts and such. It was awesome.

Beautiful sunsets were an everyday occurrence as the volcano there provided a stunning backdrop.

Beautiful Mayan people were everywhere. 

Grandiose churches were everywhere. 

Some of these churches were older than others. 

Cigarette or multivitamin? You decide. 

We ended up staying in a really cool hostel which was actually an outdoor adventure outfitter. So at night time, we had this whole massive house to ourselves and during the day, people were in and out on big multi-day expeditions into the volcano national park. We were so keen on it, but it turned out to be way out of our price limit and physical ability at that time! Bummer.

As with most Central American towns, the majority of people congregated at the Parque Centrale, which had a massive church and other cool attractions. The vibe there was amazing. We also happened to meet up with a good friend of mine from back home, Kiera while we were there! She decided that she was going to come along with us for a while, which was more than cool.

Reunification! 

From Antigua, we travelled a very long ways up to Semuc Champey, an incredibly beaituful and less frequented locale in Central America, but by far the most beautiful place either of us had ever been to!

Heidi catching up on some serious chill time at our rainforest hostel in Semuc Champey.

The eating area at our rainforest hostel. Everynight was a communal barbeque. Too bad I was only eating bagels until my stomach settled down!

Picture this, Matt didn't bring his camera that day because he was told they were getting wet. DAMMIT!

BUT, he did take his small little dinky underwater camera, so you will have to extrapolate how beautiful it actually was from the small shots provided.

Semuc Champey (SEE-MOOK-SHAM-PAY), is this really cool (I assume) limestone region where basically there is this huge river that comes right up to it, and disappears straight down in a crazy sort of underground waterfall! Don't want to go river rafting down there! The area after that is filled with these amazing cascading light blue-green pools rimmed with orange silt on them. Absolutely stunning! We hopped in and swam in them as well.

Heaven on earth.

Enjoying the water!

Underground whitewater rafting???

Something is under the water!

Beautiful Semuc Champey 

There were also these very cool cave systems that they have there, which you obviously can go on a tour in. They give you a nice big candle, you put on your swim trunks, and off you go into the darkness. Most of the time you are actually swimming one handed, trying to hold the damn candle over the watertop so that you can see where you are going, but it was an amazing experience overall. By the end of it, we had gone more than a kilometer back into the mountain, climbed a waterfall, jumped down a very small and scary hole with no bottom in sight, and had multiple candles go out. Overall, it was an exhilarating day!

After Semuc Champey, we headed over to the local caves in a town called Lanquin. These caves were well known for their massive bat population. As we went right at dusk, standing at the cave mouth, we were able to witness the thousands of bats that lived inside come out for their nighttime hunt. It was another exhilarating experience to have them flying all around you but none landing or running into you!

The next day, we bade farewell to Kiera as she was headed over to Honduras, and we forged north to Flores, where we were to see the ancient Mayan city of Tikal (Heidi was really excited about this one). On the way there, we met two very cool photographers from New York who gave us all sorts to talk about. We ended up staying at the same hostel there and had quite a great time together.

This lady was a bit apprehensive but she let me take a photo of her baby after all!

The day that we headed off for the Tikal ruins, we arose at somewhere around 430am and got on our bus to head out there. Melanie and Ryan (photographers) were with us on this day, and as we set out together, Ryan mentioned to me that I could borrow one of his lenses for the day. As he was travelling, he put black tape on the markers on his lens so I didn't know what I was using until I came home. I just met the guy and he gave me a $1500 lens to shoot with for the day! More trusting than I would be to some fellow that I just met. (Melanie and Ryan have since gone on to win the Host our Coast competition and are hanging out in Delaware this summer! Check out their awesome work here!)

Ryan and Melanie doing their thing at sunset. 

The ruins at Tikal were amazing. Heidi was more than excited to fill me in on all the nitty gritty details of the culture and what each of the things signified. I was incredibly amazed not only at how much she knew about the place, but how amazing it was that a culture had built it so long ago!

Lots of fun to explore. 

Heidi and Melanie leading the way to the next massive temple. 

Might be one of 4 photos that we are together in...ever.

Heidi....just stoked. 

Examining the structure for weak spots. 

Apparently there is a King buried under there with all sorts of jade masks and stuff. I forgot my shovel. 

We spent one last night in Flores taking photos and interacting with some of the locals there, who were out along the expansive boardwalks by the water. It's just a magical place.

The kids here just loved to pose for us!

That's a copy of The Great Gatsby stuffed in Heidi's pants. I guess she didn't have any free pockets...

Potentially my most favorite picture of Heidi. Ever.

Enjoying a nice sunset off our balcony.

Heidi having some Edamame! MMM!

Scuzzy Matt, hammock sharing.

After our last night in Flores, we hopped on yet another minibus, and this time, we headed for our next destination, and one that we were super excited about....BELIZE. Primarily excited because we would be working on a farm for the majority of the time that we were there. 

Thanks for checking out this post, and stay tuned for next month's installment of BELIZE!