Cat Tails, Inland travel

Hi all, we have just returned from doing inland travel. We left the boat in Bahia Del Sol El Salvador, we were able to find someone to watch Captain Cubster for the time we were gone. Linda was worried about the poor old guy as he had gone blind on the trip from Mexico to El Salvador, however he did just fine and watching him walk around the boat you wouldn’t know he’s blind.

We departed Bahia Del Sol and headed into San Salvador the capital city of El Salvador where we spent the night in a hotel for 13 usd. The next morning at 0600 we took a taxi to the bus depot and purchased our tickets for Guatemala City which was a four and a half hour bus ride but in a very comfortable bus (we would come to learn this bus was the standard by which all others would be measured) big seats that recline, movies while traveling, AC, hot food, cold beverages, and all for 26usd!
As we crossed the border into Guatemala the conductor took our passports down to the immigration official so we didn’t even have to get up. We arrived at Guatemala City where a minivan was waiting for us to transport us to Panajachel on Lago Atitlan. Now the folks down here are wonderful however they are quite small in stature, a tall person is 5’-6, so it makes sense that they build vehicles for people that size, they also weigh less however they must have considerable more padding on their butts because after an hour of sitting on the one inch foam in that minivan my butt had gone to sleep then awoken and was screaming at me thru my sciatic nerve, it might have had something to do with the steel pipe under my ass! Oh well, only another hour and a half to go. “Sweetie pass the Advil and didn’t I put a bottle of rum in my backpack”….

The trip took us out of Guatemala City and up into the mountains but not before we stopped on the main highway three cars behind a carload of what I’m guessing were drug dealers, the cops were fighting with them on the freeway and it had reached the point that they had their weapons out and were threatening to shoot them!! I had slipped my shoes back on and was eyeing the door and the direction to run. Our driver had gotten very quiet and looked nervous but a few seconds later he slipped the van into gear and slid past the action as one cop was smacking a rather large man upside the head, I never looked back and the scenery for rest of the trip took my mind off my left leg which was howling. We got a short break for lunch about 2pm and then back into the van. When we arrived in Panajachel I fell out of the minivan and stumbled around for a minute I know the locals thought I was drunk but I swear I hadn’t touched the rum……..Yet.

It was now about 5pm and we loaded our backpacks into about a 25’ boat along with 20 other people and proceeded across Lago De Atitlan, which is a lake at 4600’ ringed by Volcanoes, very spectacular. About half way across the lake I could see the wind
building and for the last 10 minutes we bounced hard across the choppy water (remember they have no padding on seats in this country). We found a hotel on the lake for 100 Quetzals, which is about 12.50 usd. Following Dr Roy’s advice I medicated my tired butt with 4 ounces of good Rum. We then strolled the ¼ mile down a dirt trail to the Spanish school where we were enrolled for a week, they told us our host family would pick us up the next day. We awoke the next morning to a spectacular view from our room and after lounging in the hammock for a while I was having a hard time getting going, however we packed our backpacks and headed for the San Pedro Language school where we met our host family, Benjamin the husband led us thru town and up the side of a hill to their house, the hill we went up was so steep I got a nose bleed just looking at it! By the end of the week we would go up and down it four and five times a day and not blink, I think we could have scaled Mount Everest without breaking a sweat.

Now picture this you’re in a third world country people are still dressing the same way they have for hundreds of years, Linda’s teacher owned five native dresses called Cortas and they would probably last her her whole life. Some of the houses didn’t have running water, a lot of people washed their clothes in the lake on rocks, there were no large grocery stores and the streets were all cobble stone or dirt. BUT on the corner on the way to school was an internet café that is now the gold standard for Mochas. The first morning we stopped there I ordered a mocha, a local lady dressed in her native corta, guipil (the blouse) and a farja (the bright colored belt) brought my mocha out on a silver tray in a clear coffee cup in which you could see the layer of chocolate on the bottom followed by the coffee followed by the frothed milk, along side the cup was a long spoon to stir in the chocolate should you wish. Sitting at a resin table in a resin chair staring out at the lake and watching the people go by I felt very elegant. Starbucks has a long way to go to beat the flavor of that coffee which was grown and roasted right there in that little town. While sipping our coffees a young girl came by selling fresh cinnamon rolls, banana bread, carrot cake, coconut bread and pineapple bread. Each morning we would get coffee, cake, and then check our email (if the net was working) and then on to school for four hours each day. I would like to say we’re a whole lot smarter but it just made us realize how little Spanish we know and how much more school we need. However we sure had a good time, our host family was wonderful, they had three teenage boys and a sewing business that kept them busy. They had lots of questions about the USA and the difference in our cultures, but dinner time was the same as any house I have ever eaten in, Benajmin would tease his sons and one night when he was quietly kicking one under the table to get a rise out of him he almost died of embarrassment when he realized it was my foot he had been kicking, I had caught on to their little game and didn’t say anything until his son started laughing.

School would end each day at noon, we would pop back to the house for lunch and then go exploring around town. Rosa the host mother showed Linda a selection of the brightly colored native belts called Farja’s that her sister makes, Linda picked one that took ten days to make as it’s hand sewn and very pretty. (A girls gotta have a souvenir)

One day we took an afternoon trip to a small town called Santiago where we met Kathy a friend of a friend who gave us a tour of the small hospital. Kathy is a retired RN who donates her time to help run the little hospital in Santiago, after talking with Kathy and seeing their need we are thinking of going back there and volunteering, it would be a wonderful opportunity.

We left San Pedro and headed back across the lake taking a butt pounding on the hard seats once again and climbed into the same little minivan for the two hour ride to Antigua.

We spent three days in Antigua and had a great time the city is rich with history and has lots of old buildings, impressive churches and museums. We went to a fabric museum and learned all about the native weaving and how each town has it’s own colors. I know the guys are thinking “yea and how was the beer” but it truly was very interesting. Now one night we went out and a local bartender introduced me to Espresso Martinis WOW, Espresso, Kahula, triple sec and Vanilla Stoli one’s all you need…… However it was my fiftieth birthday so I had two and waddled back to the hotel. Antigua is also in the mountains and the volcano was active when we were there, smoke would belch out the top, we were hoping to see glowing lava come spurting out in the evening but no such luck.

After a screwup with the arrangements for bus tickets ( it seems I don’t understand the difference in AM & PM in Spanish) we left Antigua a day late on the same little crappy minivan for a two hour ride to Guatemala City to catch the nine hour bus ride to Santa Elana. After spending the night in a hotel we would once again get in another shitty little minivan along with 10 other folks and be herded off to Tikal the Mayan ruins, I was now starting to run low on Advil and despised those little vans. However……We arrived in Tikal and Life became wonderful, it seems all they had left in the park was a couple of first class rooms, we had been paying between 10 & 20 uds’s a night for rooms, this was 95usd a night, it was inside the national park where they would chase all the tourists out unless you were staying in the hotel. It was also the only way you could do the sunrise hike to the Mayan Temple. They would take you in by flashlight at 0445 with a guide who jogged most of the way and kept yelling “keep up, keep up”, we had been at altitude now for over a week and had scaled the hills of San Pedro, we could here the people behind us huffing and puffing, we chuckled and marched on thinking…bring it on pal. As we reached Temple four in the dark it was tough to see the top as it was thru the clouds and somewhere in the heavens (hence it’s name temple four) Half way up the steps of temple four the young lady next to me sprayed her breakfast over the side of the steps, I kept climbing and thought… knees don’t fail me now. We reached the top and took our spot on the top of the temple with a bunch of other folks and sat quietly to await sunrise. When the valley started to fill with light you could see forever as the temple is the highest point in the valley, the air was filled with the sounds of the jungle, that was something we will never forget, howler monkeys make a sound somewhat like a lions roar I thought we were on a safari in Africa. Once again third world meets first world, along with the sounds of the jungle the sounds of digital cameras and flashes were everywhere, I’m just thankful someone’s cell phone didn’t ring. We climbed all the temples in the park that day and thinking after temple four it would be a snap, we found out temple four was the easiest. I finished the Advil bottle that night along with a double prescription of Rum, Doctor Roy you did say 4 ounces didn’t you ??

While we were in the park they had a canopy tour, they put you in a harness, clip you to a zip line (a big wire) shove you off a very tall tower and send you flying thru the jungle 90’ off the ground. After you quit screaming you giggle all the rest of the way. We also did a bridge walk across the jungle canopy, our guide identifying lots of the trees and birds, very interesting. After two days in Tikal we were exhausted, we packed our backpacks once again climbed in that shitty little minivan and headed for Santa Elana to catch the Luxury bus with the big comfy reclining seats, movies, hot food and cold drinks for the nine hour ride to Guatemala City. Well, traveling in third world countries teaches you to be flexible!!!! It seems the bus broke down before it got to us, they did however manage to get another bus for us one and half hours later. While traveling in the bus we passed the big luxury bus along side the road, they were loading the passengers into one Nissan pickup and the luggage into another. Now I know you won’t believe you can get 25 people into the back Nissan pickup but I saw it with my own eyes. Linda pointed out how lucky we were to not be on the bus when it broke down. Oh and the bus we were on didn’t have the big comfy seats, movies, hot food and cold drinks, however they did give us a box of apple juice and a sandwich on bimbo(wonder) bread with cheese wiz for our nine hour trip.

We arrived in Guatemala City without hotel reservations, however the bus stops in a very seedy part of town so we got in a taxi and had them take us to the local Holiday Inn, where they smiled and relieved us of 95 usd for one night. I will say however it was worth every penny. The room was plush and had a huge marble bath tub, something Linda had been looking for for a very long time, gotta remember to drop them a line and recommend they have bubble bath in the room, we had to use shampoo…better than no bubbles!

The next morning we tried to catch the morning bus back to El Salvador but they didn’t have space available so we went to the zoo and caught the afternoon bus. We arrived in San Salvador in the evening and stayed at a nice little place for 13 usd . We spent the next two days cruising the museums and then doing some shopping for important things (clothes for Linda).

We’re currently sitting on the boat waiting for a window to travel south to Costa Rica.
Hope everyone is well, Love and hugs to all Rob & Linda… A couple of tired Cats