24/01/2011

After two weeks of studying Spanish here in San Pedro and with a few more lessons to go I really have had a wicked time learning Spanish and meeting some cool people, I spent most weekdays studying hard at the hotel where I stay its not the cleanest nor stylish hotel but im a backpacker and cost is my biggest concern and at $2 a night for my own room with a bathroom and shower it is certainly the cheapest place to stay in San Pedro.

I was debating whether or not I should do a home stay but at this price where im cooking for myself and keeping myself out of trouble I am saving quite a lot of money.

On the previous two weekends ive done quite the opposite with trying to hold back saving money… I have to enjoy myself sometimes and as I have mentioned before that the effects of alcohol changes my view on being tight with my money.

A bar called buddah bar is where I spent all of my drunken nights meeting new people and running into old friends met in other places in Guatemala and mexico and to mention one specific instance where this guy who is friends with my good friend from Kelowna in Canada, Phil, I first met on a very drunken night in Kelowna at his house where I crashed out on his couch for the night. Good times, both now and back then.

My teacher Manwela was a fantastic teacher, it did take me a while to wrap my head around some things but after 2 weeks with her I think I did really well. I liked to keep things entertaining and funny for her and concocting random sentences instead of the basic sentences like “I like the beach” and “she is eating food” instead I would make something funny up for example “mi gustar destrier gatos y perros con la cuchillo cocinar” – I think that’s right – I like to destroy cats and dogs with a kitchen knife, not that its something that ill actually need to learn, but it was fun.

Some afternoons there was a free conversational class with the new students to the language. I attended a lot of the classes and this is where I met 3 canadian girls Melody, Emilie and Meg, very chilled chicks of which two of them tree plan like I do, so we have a bunch in common.

After completing the two weeks at the school I had my graduation which involved me giving a speech about my experience at the school and that went well.

I decided to hang around here for another week but only to have 3 more lessons at another school for 3 days and then I want to head to another country – perhaps El Salvador.

One thing I want to mention during my time here is this past weekend where apparently I was celebrating my graduation by drinking quite a bit and where Friday night involved me hooking up with a Finnish chick named Anni (emphasis on the ‘i’) but didn’t lead anywhere because of her annoying D.U.F.F (Designated ugly fat friend). On Saturday evening I got drunk with an Americn girl who I cant remember her name, got involved and then somehow lost her – I would like to say it was a long story but it really isn’t I just got too drunk when the bar closed at 11 (which sucks)somehow lost her and ended up walking home by myself.

Sunday day I must mention was the most surreal and exhausting in a lot of respects, despite drinking quite a lot on Saturday evening I got up at 5 am to hike up the nearby volcano with the three Canadian girls I studied with that was organized by a tour operator. I was hungover but able to climb 4 hours to the peak reeking of stale alcohol… I thought it was quite an achievement. It was a bit of a shame that the view of the beautiful lake wasn’t too great because it was overcast.

After a solid lunch I tried to nap but for some reason or another I couldn’t, instead I went out drinking meeting up with the Canadians and the two Swedish girls I first met in Mexico. It was a fun evening where at 10 minutes before the bar closed at 11 I met two more Canadian girls from Nova Scotia (Amber and Leanne) who liked my comment about me having shaved my balls – this led to their hotel with them, another guy and a bottle of vodka – then a game of truth or dare started and then we were kicked out by the security guard for making too much noise.

We ended up going to my place continuing the game of ‘truth or dare’ well it was just ‘dare’ and the dares involved were solely removal of clothes and the inevitable happened as you can imagine – the fantastic news is that Scott (the other guy) was uncomfortable and left.

As much as I would love to share the details of my experience this website dosent have a restrictive content option. So lets just say one girl didn’t have a gag reflex and the other was into yoga and could position herself in so many different ways.

 

The view from around the lake and my teacher Manwela and I.

The hike up the volcano that i successfully hike despite still being drunk when i woke up in the morning for it

The view of the lake from (not quite) the top of San Pedro Volcano

11/01/2011

The Brazilian guys headed off this morning, I had to change rooms to a room costing less than $2 a night which has its own bathroom.

Today I also had my first class of Spanish with a cool Guatemalan woman named Manwela.

To learn this language im really going to have to put my head down and try not to go out drinking… I know it may be difficult, but im really going to try.

So, for the next week or for however long, im going to pause this journal and only going to point out the highlights of my life whilst I do this course.

10/01/2011

I have developed a bit of a cough over the past few days perhaps from over drinking and was also not feeling to great. I tried spending most of my time today in bed resting but I felt I needed to get out and organize my Spanish course and grab some food.

In the evening I caught up with Julien who I first met in Mexico and had a drink with him and had a relatively early night.

09/01/2011

This morning I was far too hungover… I suppose it was punishment from stealing the bottle of JD last night. I struggled to eat breakfast and even pack my things for leaving back to San Pedro at 2.

Until I had to leave I drifted in and out of consciousness on the rooftop.

It was a 3 hour journey to San Pedro and the bad taste of alcohol in my mouth didn’t help my motion sickness winding around mountain roads and if it wasn’t for the punctured tire on the van half way through the journey where we had a break I would have almost certainly thrown up.

Arriving in San Pedro I bumped (like I always do) into so many people I have met in Guatemala including Andrew again and even into two girls I first met in Vietnam a year ago. I know I keep saying it but my god it’s a small world.

The three Brazilian guys were also on the same bus as me and so the four of us shared a room in a place nextdoor to the hotel I stayed at last time I was here.

I cooked up some food for us all and then went out to Buddha bar where I caught up with a load of people.

I didn’t last out long because I was so tired but here the bars close at 11 and people were headed to some kind of after party so I snuck away to bed.

08/01/2011

Didn’t sleep all that well last night because I was thinking about different ways to fix my camera, I had a few ideas on what to do for the repair that generally involved using duct tape (honestly I use duct tape to fix most things). Unfortunately for me my camera needed more intricate work than just using duct tape so after eating breakfast I got to work ripping apart everything inside the camera, the main issue was that the lens was jammed so I needed to disassemble the lens and the gears that drive it. After several attempts of pulling my camera apart and putting it back together, and despite everyone’s disbelief that I would fix it (including myself) because the camera was literally in 100 pieces I managed to resurrect it from death. Yay!

A slight issue is that the screen sometimes goes black, a sudden jolt seems to fix this when it occurs, but my camera is somewhat in a working order to take pictures.

I napped in the afternoon on the rooftop terrace under the shade before getting more beers and consuming them before going out.

I went out with three Brazilian guys (Carlos, Bjorn and Gustuff ) to the only really night club that again wasn’t my taste in music but still alright fun. Whilst outside I managed to find ½ a bottle of Jack Daniels that was right beside the bouncer and the four of us went around the corner to finish the bottle before returning.

The bars close at 1 and we went out looking for some kind of after party but we were unsuccessful, instead we went back to the hostel where I cooked up some food, but don’t actually remember and after a drunken cooking session I crashed out.

07/01/2011

Because I was up so late waiting for Edwin to leave and also having to checkout of the room and move into the dorm before 11am I was tired all day. I suppose it wasn’t such a bad thing because I really didn’t do much anyway.

I cant sunbath in the sun because of my tattoo and so I just chilled in the shade chatting to a Dutch girl (Lienke). We wondered around town for a little while when my camera broke again and then I spent the time with the remaining daylight trying to fix it… I honestly think its ruined this time L

Lienke and I went out for tea and bought some beer at the supermarket and because the streets were empty we had another chilled night on the terrace of the hotel.

06/01/2011

Just lazed about the hostel for most of the day and went into town to find a tattoo shop willing to tattoo me up sometime in the day. There were only two tattoo shops in Antigua one slightly cheaper than the other. I opted to get the tattoo done at the more expensive place because it was much cleaner and the artist had 28 years under his belt.

The tattoo artist was from LA and just by looking around the shop it was obvious why people came to him for tattoos. So I made an appointment later in the afternoon and went souvenir shopping with Edwin.

I was a little unsure where I wanted the tat, I had two options, on the side of the torso where it would hurt a lot or the back of one of my calves. I was literally asking people in the street where I should get it done and after a lot of mental debate I decided for the torso.

Getting the tattoo later was intense, it feels like a cat scratching you but the longer the needle is in contact with the skin the more the pain. It especially hurt at the top of the tattoo, under the armpit especially on the ribcage.

Where I got the tattoo is apparently the most painful place to get one, and ill tell you what it really did hurt.

Was it worth it? In my opinion, Yes. It’s a design I’ve been working on in photoshop and been wanting to get for over a year now and I’m very happy that I finally got it done.

Later in the evening I soothed the pain from the tattoo by drinking quite a bit.

I went to a place called Sala where I found Carolina (Hot German girl I first met in Agua Azul, Mexico), it was a good night out where I met a bunch of people including this Lea a cute Austrian girl.

Edwin didn’t go out because he had to pack and prepare for the flight he had at 6 am, he left the hostel at 4 so I stayed up to say farewell to him.

He was a fantastic travel buddy and I’m going to miss him, I do hope to catch up with him at some point maybe in the Philippines. Later’s Edwin its been great!

The entire process of me getting my tattoo – you can see how painful it looks

 

And the night out in the evening – these three girls are awesome

And the end result the next day – still a little red

05/01/2011

Edwin and I took off from Monterrico today but our bus didn’t leave till 4pm… we just chilled with the others for the morning and early afternoon, cooling off in the pool every so often when the midday sun got too much.

The shuttle we took back to Antigua was much more comfortable and twice as fast than taking a series of chicken buses.

Arriving back in Antigua in the evening the first thing Edwin and I did was get some beers in. I met some people wanting to go out later and we sat back watching some basketball and headed out looking for a decent bar to drink, being a Wednesday it took us a while and also some beers on the street to find a decent place but I did run into some other sweds I met in Puerto Escondido in Mexico.

It was a good night out ending up in a Salsa dancing club where some “flash packers” from England and NZ kept on bringing me shots of tequila.

Coming back to the hostel with one of the girls who we went out with (Hainin from Taiwan) she wanted to also get a tattoo, I worked with some photoshop in my drunken state and designed a nice tattoo and after a tiny bit of fooling around I went to bed.

Hainin with my dreads 

04/01/2011

Edwin woke me up this morning because he and some others wanted to head to another beach 15 km down a dirt road. I grabbed some chicken from the corner store and we set off.

The black sand beach was secluded and the waves massive, it was a nice place to chill and get very sun burnt from the lack of tall trees to cast their shadows – lets say my back was about the same colour as strawberries and although it didn’t hurt I will be shedding my skin soon enough.

The group of us got too much sun so we gunned it in the van and headed back to the hotel where I slept in the hammock and said goodbye to the two groups of sweds.

Later in the evening I met a coked up Guatemalan guy who invited a few of us to his hotel down the road.

He was kind enough to buy us all beers but the bar wasn’t much fun so after the drinks I headed to bed.

03/01/2011

Happy birthday Me!

Turned 25 today…and started things off not feeling so great… but this was self inflicted, so only myself to blame.

I chilled for most of the morning at the bar with the Swedish girls and grabbed breakfast at a local place down the street.

When the black sand cooled I started a game of Volleyball. The locals were good but also quite drunk, they were the ones keeping score (badly, so we apparently lost).

After a short nap I put on a nice clean shirt and went out to dinner with the Swedish girls, Edwin, a Swiss guy and two Danish people. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant but the food was pretty decent coming in at $10 including a few beers.

Later pretty much everyone was in a food coma or feeling tired and went to bed… I still wanted to do something and later met some other Swedish girls and bought a bottle of rum and again got very drunk.

It was a good evening but doesn’t match my birthday in Thailand last year.

02/01/2011

Edwin and I wanted to head down to the beach to a town called Monterrico, there were shuttle services from Antigua to get there but they were quite expensive, we decided to take a series of chicken buses to save a little bit of money and to experience more foul smells from local Guatemalans sitting next to us.

In the long run it only saved us $4 taking public transport but the duration of doing this was 5 hours as opposed to 2 on the shuttle.

We did however get a go on a cruise on a small boat through a mangrove swamp where many people go bird watching, so this was a nice touch to the trip.

Arriving in the very small town of Monterrico we went in search of the only hotel in town with dorm rooms called Johnnys.

Johnnys is a nice place right on the black sand beach with several swimming pools, beach volleyball, bar and a restaurant, it was packed with people when we arrived but most of them were leaving and going back to work as the new years holidays were over.

Shortly after arriving at dusk we were told the leatherback turtle babies were getting released into the ocean at sunset, we went to go check it out; you can see by the photos below.

In the dorm there were a few people; two Swedish girls (Torra and Emmylou) and a weird young English guy (Raza). Edwin, Raza and I wanted to grab some food in town where I found some cheap burnt pizza and some fried chicken, we then grabbed some Rum and coke and went back to the hotel to get drunk to celebrate my birthday at the stroke of midnight.

The rum hit me hard and I was doing well by midnight, this is where Edwin handed me a packaged chocolate finger with a candle shoved in it and a gift; it was a fantastic gesture, one that I didn’t expect and the gift was a t-shirt. Thanks man.

This evening was a new moon and we all wanted to go swimming in the ocean, perhaps not the smartest or safest thing to do because the waves were big and they crashed hard but in the water we did get to see Phosphorescence. There were a lot of these little green sparkles of algae and as the waves crashed under the star light the waves were eluminated as much as the night sky… amazing.

After a few more drinks we all hit the hay.

On the Boat and Bird watching

The Sunset, a dog on the beach enjoying himself a little too much and the bucket of turtles they let go into the ocean

Turtles, turtles and more turtles

Releasing the turtles into the ocean

01/01/2011

Another one of those days where I did absolutely nothing, I was nursing a hangover all day and really didn’t want to leave the hostel. Went to bed very early in the evening where I crashed hard.

31/12/2010

I Prepared myself for an epic night in Antigua for NY eve by napping in the afternoon.

Not much to be said for the majority of the day but started in the evening drinking beers and cuba libras. The fireworks in the evening were loud and bright in the main square where we drank for most of the night.

Met some well off Guatemalan girls who bought me hotdog snacks when the night was over.

Arrived back home at 4am. I know im going to have a hangover tomorrow.

 

Beginning of the New Year celebrations

Fireworks, more celebrations and Santa?

More fireworks and the two Guatemalan girls who fed me food.

30/12/2010

Started things off relatively early, repacked our bags and took the 3 buses to Antigua, We filled up on breakfast whilst on the bus when people were selling sandwiches and snacks for the ride… all very cheap.

Last night I rested very well due to the two day hike but felt dazed for most of the morning.

Arriving in Antigua we met a Swedish couple who directed us to a hostel they knew called Umma Gumma that also had availability, it was around $10 a night over the New Year but after it dropped to a much nicer $5 a night after.

After a few drinks at the bar upstairs Edwin and I wondered the market and got some very tasty BBQ chicken with sides for dinner.

For the rest of the evening we continued to drink and at some point I got too drunk to go out and party, so I just crashed out. This wasn’t a bad thing because tomorrow is the New Years party and I wanted to start thing level headed tomorrow.

29/12/2010

Throughout the night locals were firing fireworks and fire crackers consistently and dangerously for their prayers, this went on all night and by the sounds of things more and more people were gathering… none of these people slept during the evening and we were consistently awoken by the sounds of firecrackers and smell of gunpowder that seemed right beside us and indeed they were right beside us because later in the morning all the debris from them were no more than 10 meters away from our heads. During the night I could have sworn I heard gun fire and I was right again as some of the locals we met in the morning were Guatemalan rebels and were possessing hand guns that they showed us… scary stuff.

Hopping out of the tent after a pretty restless night (not as ill rested as Edwin) just before sunset I looked around to see a hundred or so people surrounding us… people who arrived during the night to celebrate the end of year and prey for the new year. All eyes were on me because of my hair but the locals we met, including the rebels were all very nice despite me not speaking the language and I was even offered breakfast from this guy who spent some time in the USA. It was such an experience.

The hike down the volcano was much much easier than on the way back and instead of taking 2 days it only took us 2 hours, but that’s also walking in the right direction.

We were joined by some young locals on the way down that got annoying at times but they were ok.

At the base we got some beers and some burgers in celebration of completing the hike and made our way back to Xela via San Marcos. The journey from the base of Tacamulco to San Marcos Edwin and I hitched in the back of a pickup truck and passed a market where the locals around (as always) starred at us with those curious and dumbstruck eyes.

We grabbed dinner at the market again back in Xela and tried to book accommodation in Antigua but everything over new years was fully booked… we are just going to wing it tomorrow and see what happens.

 

   

Sunrise views and the hike down the highest point in central America.