traveling

Yesterday we climbed a volcano. 12,000 feet! It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Near the top it was 5 steps, stop, 5 steps, stop....terrible. I was glad I did it, though. The view from the top was beautiful. We were above the clouds and we saw the volcano next to us spurt out some smoke. I have pictures, but the connection here is too slow to upload, so I may not be able to get them up until we get home.
Speaking of home...we'll be there in 19 days. In the meantime we're going to see the country. I made a map of our travels, but couldn't get it uploaded, so we'll have to settle with this:
Tomorrow we're going two hours east to Lake Atitlan, said to be the most beautiful lake in the world. We're going to stay five days at the Vulcano Lodge.
From there we're going to Antigua, Guatemala's old capital. It's supposed to be a pretty city, but we've heard it's full of tourists. The locals call it Gringolandia. We're only going to stay there two nights, long enough to hike another volcano where you can poke the lava with a stick.
After Antigua we're going to Guatemala City to meet up with my grandpa's friend for an afternoon.
From there we're going to the Caribbean, which is only accessible by river. So first we'll go to Rio Dulce and then take a raft to Livingston. We think we'll stay there 3 nights.
From Livingston we'll go to Tikal and check out the Mayan ruins, we'll also stay there 3 nights.
Then, we're off to Semuc Champay, which is said to be the most beautiful place in Guatemala, it has rivers, waterfalls and caves. We'll stay there 3 night too, then head back to Guatemala City to fly home!
I don't know how much internet we'll have along the way, but I'll do my best to keep this up to date. We are excited to travel, but we can't wait to be home.

Spanish School Dropouts

We got to Quetzaltenango on Sunday. That afternoon we met our family, let's see if I can remember: Susana, Ethel, Danny, Mario, Angel, Lily, and Abuela, which just means Grandma, they never gave us her real name. There's also a bird and a dog.
Over lunch I told the family about my experience living with a Spanish family. For those of you who don't know, I'll fill you in: my Spanish "dad" grew marijuana in his closet and the grandma who lived across the hall smoked crack. Sometimes that's just a figure of speech, but in this case it was true, she actually smoked crack. As I'm telling all of this Grandma is sitting across the table wide-eyed, shaking her hand up next to her head grunting, "oof, oh, no." The rest of the family is fascinated, "The grandma smoked crack? Well, here you don't have to worry about that, she's on controled doses." Then the told me that they were pretty sure she'd never done drugs (Grandma doesn't really say much besides oof and oh) but that she'll drink wine if you give it to her. At this point Grandma pipes up to add that she drinks Gallo, the national beer too. HA!!
After lunch Brad and I explored the town. Quetzaltenango, or Xela is the second largest city in Guatemala and incredibly small. There are no high rises, not a lot of traffic and we were able to cover the city in about 40 minutes. We found the central park and had nachos (delicious) and a drink called ponche, which was equally delicious: milky, sweet and topped off with Guatemalan licour. On the way home we bought a bottle of wine to bring to Grandma, she loved it.
Yesterday was our first day of school. The classes are from 8 am to 1 pm with a half hour break at 10:30. Being a student again has given me new sympathy for my students, school is boring! Brad agrees. We decided that we didn't come all this way to spend mornings staring at the clock and hoping for 10:30 and 1:00 to roll around so, we're dropping out. We are going to finish out the week, though. We're not complete bumbs.
But tomorrow we're going to climb a volcano just out side of town with some of the other students, so we won't make it into school until afternoon. Thursday we're going to a concert and Friday our teachers are taking us to a market in a little mountain town. Saturday we're going to leave town early, but I'll be sure to get plenty of pictures of the family before we go.

Guatemala City

We made it to Guatemala City. This morning we woke up early to make it to the bus station on time to get to Xela, but didn´t realize that we´re now in a different time zone, so we have an hour to kill. Guess where we had our first meal in Guatemala...Wendy´s! I had a frostie and Brad had a breakfast burrito. Chocolate ice cream for breakfast, so far I`m liking Guatemala.

Back in Bogota

We have an 8 hour layover in Bogota, so we came back to the old hood, dropped our luggage off at the old hotel and are killing time in an internet cafe. There is a restaurant here called Wok that made it worth the 5 dollar cab ride back into the city. We would have paid 10! They have these delicious dumplings. I´m going to be radical here and say that Wok might even be better than Des Moines´A Dong, but I don´t know, it´s close.

Since the last post we went floating down a river on a raft with a hilarious Colombian family and we went to a LAME Colombian amusement park. We didn´t want to risk bringing our camera on the raft trip due to our terrible camera luck, but the Colombian family is going to email us their pictures. I do have some pictures of the lame amusement park, but they´re not worth the time it would take to upload them.

It´s a good thing we had this little layover because I never got around to booking a hotel in Guatemala City. We get there tonight at 9 and we´ll leave tomorrow for Xela, about a 5 hour bus ride.

So, the next time I post we´ll be in Guatemala. I´m very anxious to meet our Guatemalan family, should be all sorts of interesting.

Valle del Cocora

The Valle del Cocora is home to the world's tallest trees, the wax palms. In order to see the trees I had to conquer one of my greatest fears: horses. I had a two hour bus ride and an hour in an old Jeep to alternately talk myself in and out of getting on the horse. But when we got to the valley I decided to be brave. We wanted to see the whole park, the hummingbird reserve, the cloud forest, the finca, the wax palms, the waterfall and that meant four hours on a horse. FOUR HOURS?! Okay, I´ll do it.
As soon as I got on the horse my knees started trying to knock together, but of course there was a huge horse between them. Brad was nervous too and the horses knew it. They took off running and I can only imagine the enjoyment the locals got out of seeing two terrified gringos being hurtled down the road on horseback.
We settled down once we realized that the horses knew what they were doing and weren't going to try to buck us off onto the rocks below. My horse´s name was Pulvira, by the way. I decided that sounded way too much like Pulverizer and called her Petunia instead.
Our first stop was a waterfall, which is the end of the river that we ended up crossing six times. The first time we crossed it I squeezed my eyes shut and made a whimpering noise. By the sixth time it was almost fun, but not really.
Next we went to a hummingbird reserve, the people that live there set out sugar water and the hummingbirds come flocking. It was neat to see so many and to be able to get that close, they really are loud.
After that we went to a farm on top of a hill where the park ranger lives, a true Colombian cowboy. He and his dog led us into the cloud forrest and then into the trees.
To my terror the horses knew that after we passed the forest we were close to home and they ran the whole way. Do horses run? No, gallop. See? I don't know anything about horses. But they took us safely through the whole four hour journey and I have a new respect for the things.
After patting Petunia-Pulvira goodbye we went to the local restaurant, which is famous for its river trout. It was delicious. The coffee region is full of these old jeeps called Willys, which I guess were used in World War II

Six times we crossed this river




Maria and Petunia-Pulvira


I love this picture




Pretty tall huh?

Santa Rosa

On Monday we took a three hour bus ride to Santa Rosa for the thermal baths. Santa Rosa has the added bonus of having delicious, or as they call them there, exquisite chorizos.
The baths are property of a hotel, which charges non-guests 15 dollars to use the spa. What we saw when we got there were two waterfalls, one hot, one cold. I was confused about the hot waterfall but I eventually determined that they pump the hot water down from further up the mountain and just make it look like a waterfall. We tried to climb up to the source but we were walking on steep, slick ground and decided it wasn´t worth it.
We spent a couple of hours alternating between floating around in the hot water and running to the cold waterfalls. It was good for our muscles after the four hour horse ride.
On the way back through town we had some exquisite chorizos for dinner and then went home.
Santa Rosa's cathedral


It may look like Brad is prancing into the waterfall, but he's just being careful on the rocky bottom

This was our transporation from Santa Rosa to the hotel
I found this dog on the bus, Brad wouldn't let me keep it

Coffee

Julian, the owner of the coffee farm, took us into town to see the coffee processing plant, the place where the coffee is delivered sorted, packaged and shipped. ¨Somos muy profesionales,¨ Julian explained. ¨Somos expertos en el cafe.¨ The process is impressively high-tech. After the farmers bring their coffee to the central plant it´s sorted by size, weight and color. This is mostly done by machine, but when the plant gets a superb batch of coffee it is sorted by the hands of thirty women.
After wathcing the coffee get sorted and packed we went to the quality control room for a lesson in coffee tasting, which is highly sophisticated. It´s done like wine, slurping, swirling and spitting. After watching an expert demonstration I felt ready to try. On the first taste I sent coffee shooting straight up my nose and down my throat. While I was clutching my throat coffee was dribbling down my chin and Julian yells out, ¨We need napkins!¨

Coffee Region

We´re alive and well in the coffee region. So far we´ve
gone horseback riding
been coffee-tasting
sat in hotsprings
slept on a coffee farm
ridden a lot of buses
stood under a waterfall
eaten delicious chorizos
AND
filled up the camera´s memory card

I´ll post pictures soon.

Oh, Iowa

Zipaquira

Zipaquira is a small town about an hour north of Bogota that is home to Colombia´s most popular tourist attraction: a cathedral made of salt. It´s all part of the world´s largest salt mine and sits a ways underground. We took the bus from Bogota that through Colombia´s farmland, which to me looked like a mix of Switzerland and Iowa with a South American twist. When we got to town we had a ten dollar steak lunch.
We had to walk to the other side of town to get to the cathedral, which was worth it because we found a little shop and I got a new scarf. Plus the town is pretty cute.
The salt cathedral is in a big park, we could almost smell our way to the entrance, which pumps out sulfur. It was stinky, but out tour guide told us that sulfur is good for the lungs. When we first entered I immediately thought of Fraggle Rock, but things got more sophisticated as we got further in. The cathedral is on three levels. The route to the cathedral is made up of the stations of the cross. Brad and I both felt the lack of a Catholic education, but they had these helpful little plaques so we weren´t totally lost.
After the tour was over we were free to roam around, take pictures and lick the walls, they really are made of salt! Then we crossed back into daylight and took a bus to Chia.

Monserrate

We could see the church in the distance and just kept walking toward it. Along the way several people warned us about getting robbed, but I feel like that is kind of an unhelpful warning. I mean, what are we supposed to do about it? But we didn´t get robbbed. I think people might have thought we were intending to climb all the way to the top, but apparently it´s only safe to do that on Sunday when big groups of people go.
The funicular wasn´t running so we took the cable car up. It was steep and I was a little nervous, but obviously we made it up safely.
Monserrate has the double attraction of a church and a view. The view was really amazing. Bogota is huge! Seven million people sprawled across a shallow basin. It made me feel kind of dizzy.
After taking in the view we ate an over-priced lunch and then went back to the embassy to pick up my new, thicker passport.