Well! The last 9 days have been fun filled and packed with daughter/father time (for the most part). It started with an early morning pick-up at the Guatemala city airport after an overnight flight for my dad (and few hours of sleep for me). We spent our first day in a daze mainly, but talking and catching up. Our second day in Antigua, we went on a Pacaya Volcano tour, which is an active volcano near Antigua. Last year there was a large lava flow (6 ft wide) and now, while not so impresive, is still active with a bit of flowing lava. The tour was a bit of a trip really. The walk up wasn´t too bad, until we got to the hardened lava field that we walked over, and whose heat increased the higher up we went, trying to get as close to the flowing lava of course. One girl in our group actually melted the bottoms of her tennis shoes. It was a pretty intense experience, so hot and really quite dangerous, but definitely an experience worth having. We spent the rest of the day resting/sight seeing in Antigua and the next morning found us up early (yet again) looking for a cup of coffee for dad on the deserted streets of Antigua before starting our long travel day to Finca Tatin, our home for the next 4 days.
Needless to say, it was one long day, nearly 12 hours later, 2 buses, 1 taxi, two boats and minutes of wait time in between, we found ourselves at Finca Tatin just in time for dinner. Finca Tatin is located along the Rio Dulce River, closer to Livingston/the coast rather than Rio Dulce, but is in the middle of the jungle on the river. The heat and humidity were a bit of a shock, especially for dad, who granted was still just trying to get adjusted to being in Guatemala, much less the tropical smothering climate! Our time and Finca Tatin was divided between card games, backgammon, jungle walks, a kayak trip to a nearby reserve, swimming, reading, and a trip to a nearby Mayan village where we had lunch in the house of a local family.
From Finca Tatin, we took a boat to Rio Dulce and a bus from there to a place called Finca Paraiso that was listed in the guidebook as this spot with a natural hotspring waterfall cascading into the cold river where you can swim, hang out and...even stay the night! There was indeed this incredible natural phenomenon of hotspring mixed with stream water, but we didn´t get there until later in the day. When we got of the bus, there was just this old, dilapidated sign that said Finca Paraiso, bungalows-restaurante in one direction and Aguas termales in the other direction. Being weighed down with our backpacks and wanting to first unload our stuff before a relaxing afternoon by the water, we started walking the direction of the bungalow/restaurant sign. I was sure we were in the completely wrong place. We were walking by fields and peoples houses, with the lake still looking a ways a way...plus, the guidebook mentioned nothing about the place being over a mile of the main road! We persevered though and eventually ended up at the hotel, although we quickly learned that if we wanted to enjoy the cascadas and hot springs, we needed to walk all the way back from where we came! We did do this though, after checking into a room and taking a quick swim to "cool" off (the water was so warm). Our night at this finca was worth it though, although we ended up walking a lot more than we planned to! Twice with our backpacks on...
The last adventure of the last week or so was Tikal, up in Northern Guatemala. We traveled up on Monday, opting to stay in the park at one of the slightly more expensive hotels (rather than busing from Flores as many do). It was very worthwhile to do. We entered the park both in the evening on Monday and then also on Tuesday. The ruins were so different from Copan-mainly, they were simple huge. Plus, the whole place is in the jungle so you are walking under all this jungle canopy and then come out to a clearing with all these large ruins of an ancient civilization. Not something you get to experience every day. The one downside was that our tour guide was a little lazy/not good and our tour was very short and not as thourough as we´d like, oh well. that is life.
So, now I am in Flores, frantically trying to get myself ready (aka this blog, buy a new toothbrush, get dad to the airport...) for the next leg of the trip. Dad is flying this afternoon from Flores to Guatemala City where he will stay with the same lady who I stayed with when arriving in the country, and she will see him off tomorrow at the airport in Guatemala. What a whirlwind! This afternoon I´m setting off for Belize with a traveling friend, Robbert (who we actually ran into at finca tatin, although I met him in Semuc Champey) where we will make our way accross the country up to Cay Caulker to go on a 3 day sailing/snorkeling trip starting the 3rd of July. What fun!
P.S. due to internet snaffoos-way to common down here-it is now Thursday and I'm in Belize. I haven't yet heard if dad got home yet, but I hope so...
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