Weekend Travels

The sunrise over Lago Atitlan taken from the 6am lancha across the lake to Santiago La Laguna.



A fisherman on Lago Atitlan at sunrise.



Another fisherman on the lake as mist comes off the water close to Santiago La Laguna.



Santiago in the early morning light.



One of the chicken busses gets a gas refill on our journey to the coast.



My traveling partner Jenna, another Centro Maya volunteer, walks on the beach in Monterico on Guatemala´s Pacific coast.



My feets touch the Pacific again- on a beach of black sand.



A baby sea turtle crawls its way into the ocean. Tour guides from a local conservation park release the turtles with groups that pay to send off each turtle.



Tourists watch the baby sea turtles race to the water.



The sun sets over the Pacific.



One of the lanchas docks in Santiago on the return trip.



Part of the dock in Santiago.


So this weekend I took a trip down from the mountains to the Pacific coast to hang out on the beach for three days. The kids at Centro Maya weren´t scheduled to start again until Monday (today), and they actually didn´t even show up yet today either. If Guatemala has a catch phrase, it is definitely, ¨Mañana.¨

So Jenna and I left on Thursday morning at 5:30am and walked the 1km to San Pedro to catch the 6am lancha to Santiago on the other side of the lake. Then we took a series of chicken busses (although there weren´t actually chickens or any other animals aboard any of them that I was on) to Monterico on the Pacific coast. It took probably between 4-5 hours of traveling total due to all the connections, mountain roads, and stopping to pick up passengers all the time. It went real smoothly though- after getting off of a bus we never waited over a minute for the next one to come. All it took was knowing the name of the town next on the road in the direction we wanted to travel and we were able to successfully arrive in Monterico in the early afternoon.

Monterico isn´t very big. Aside from the local residential areas, it´s pretty much just one street lined with restaurants and tiendas (little stores selling grocery items) that intersects the beach which is lined with hotels and bars. I didn´t really make too many photos since my primary occupation of my three days on the beach was sitting in a hammock watching the ocean, sleeping, or reading ¨On the Road.¨ At night I hung out with fellow international travelers and went to a bar down the beach on Friday night with a pretty decent group of people including myself, Jenna, a local tour guide, girls from Iceland, Sweden, Estonia, and England, an American guy, and three Irish dudes.

It was a fantastic time. I got back to the lake, again via chicken busses, on Sunday afternoon and have now moved into a new place. It´s a property owned by a Norwegian woman who doesn´t live there most of the year. A guatemalan family lives there to house sit the place year round and rent out the other rooms. So I have my own room, which is a lot bigger than my last one, a kitchen, and a bathroom with a hot shower... all for 20Q a night- roughly just under $3. Today I´ve been running around doing errands and now I´m heading to get some groceries so I can make myself some food.

Adios and cheers...