Day 2 - Sun. June 26, 2016 From Antigua to Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan
We
woke up in Antigua, Guatemala in the very comfortable El Hostel. For breakfast I had
watermelon juice with homemade bread and jam, with a side of fruits (I tried papaya
for the first time and it was gross).
After
breakfast, our guide, Rubin (mmm… sandwiches), took us on a tour of the city.
He told us about the history of the city and how it used to be the capitol of
Guatemala, Guatemala City is the capitol now, before a 7.9 earthquake hit and
destroyed the city. He showed and told us about the 19 churches, 12 of which
are still active. We heard the church bells ringing for mass to start and we
saw the people waiting for church to start. Rubin took us to one of the
inactive churches and it was in ruins. The ruins were beautiful though. So beautiful
that people often come down from Guatemala City just to get married there. Next
he took us to the markets where people in amazing, very ethnic clothing were
selling homemade goods such as, headbands, blankets, paintings, dolls, clothing
etc. This part of the tour was really hard because I wanted to buy everything I
saw. We also saw a lot of dogs on the streets… adorable.
After
the AMAZING tour, we hit the road on our way to Atitlan Lake. If I am being
honest, I slept most of the way. It was kind of an off and on type of thing. So
the things I did see were very mountainous and green with trees, which I
personally appreciated greatly because you don’t get to see as many trees in other
places in the world. For lunch we stopped at a roadside restaurant with very
traditional, and good Guatemalan food. Most of the girls had tortillas with
chicken and Guacamole. But I had a crepe with lots of fruits grown around the
area. Then we hit the road again.
When
we got to the lake we were driving downhill, fast, so it made our ears POP as
if we were on an airplane. When we got to the bottom on one of the mountains
surrounding the lake, we came to a town where we unloaded our things and loaded
them onto the boat. We were going to ride to the other side of the lake. The
boat ride was really fun because the water was choppy and made the boat bounce
up and down. We could also see the water spraying behind us. When we got off of
the boat we arrived at our new hostel, La Iguana, and it looked truly magical. There
were so many plants I had never seen before growing so many beautiful flowers-
even the leaves were interesting. There were also trees growing bananas and
limes which was really cool. All in all, it looked like the hostel was plopped
in the middle of a paradise. I guess It kind of is. What made the hostel even
better was that it is right on the edge of the Atitlan Lake, so you could hear
the water slamming against the shores and see the volcanoes in the
distance.
Once
we settled in we got to explore the hostel a little more and I saw a dog and a
cat. I played with the cat. I don’t know why as I am a dog person, but I named it
Penguin. My sister didn’t like the name much. We also saw a most curious room
titled Dress Up. So of course we went to investigate the room. Inside we found
a whole bunch of dress up clothes people could try on if they wanted to. It was
cool, and weird. It was cool and weird. After exploring we went on a hike up a
really, really steep mountain to the village of Santa Cruz. My sister and I
reckon that the earth was trying to do us in because going up the mountain it
was hot. But going down it was cool. The opposite of what we needed it to be.
The town was really different. I thought it was especially amazing because of
how trusting the town was. Small children could wonder the streets by
themselves because the town is completely safe.
When
we got back from Santa Cruz I got ambushed by our troop leader to write an
entry on this blog… I hate writing and I am really bad at it. Surprisingly,
writing this was really enjoyable. It usually takes ages for me to write. But
this was really quick, surprisingly. Oh and we saw a rainbow.
After
writing the blog, we had dinner and it was a really enjoyable meal. We had chard
soup with homemade bread, then homemade pizza which was really different as it didn’t
have any pizza sauce or cheese. Well it kind of did. It was bread with green
seasoning then one slice of mozzarella cheese, on top of one slice of a tomato,
on top of one slice of meat. We had that with salad. Then for dessert we had
homemade orange cake that was just heavenly. While at dinner we made friends
with some people who were here on vacation. They were nice people.
After
dinner I wrote the part of the blog about eating dinner, then I went outside to
play cards. – Goodbye
-
K. Johnson
No comments:
Post a Comment