Hotel & Restaurant Juana de Arco Antigua Guatemala

... it an early night- 3 of the guys were leaving early the next morning anyways, so it was a good excuse to go to sleep early. <br><br>The next day it was rainy again, however Farrah, Sophie, Theresa and I really wanted to hike Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano that´s about an hour away from Antigua. We signed up despite the weather. We opted for the afternoon/evening tour which left town around 2:30. We had no idea what to expect from the hike and boy were we surprised! We ...

... br>The last member of the family that we see on a consistent basis is Omar, Monica y Cesars nephew. He is about our age and is the only one in the family that speaks english very well. He has introduced us to many aspects of Guatemalan culture that we are extremely thankful for including Sunshine Grill Karoake night, late night random pizza joints, sports bars that play US related sports and his sacred bar schedule for each night of the ...

... some very drunk Nicaraguans (one of them looking like a very toey Freddy Mercury, our conversation went something like this:<br><br>Ryan: Hey man, what`s going on out here?<br>Mark: (Wide eyed and alert!) Dude, there`s a man***** here!<br>Ryan: A what?<br>Mark: A man***** dude, a man*****! See that guy over there who looks like Freddy Mercury, he keeps rubbing himself against me and it`s ****in` freakin`me out. He keeps trying to sell his **** to me in spanish ...

... pretty much half the hostel (mostly Israeli don't forget) which resulted in a completely full bus.<br><br>Poor Cal had an adventurous journey to Antigua via chicken buses with flat tires and a crazy taxi run through Guat City. Needless to say he made it to Antigua about 3 hours after I did. Antigua is a beautiful colonial style city which at first glance is a colourful single-storied cobble-stoned grid city. However upon entering these building you soon find that they all have ...

... in computers, the internet, and emailing photos enough for him to be able to send us all photos to see the progress! He's already sent us a first batch of a few photos of the walls going up at the school...be sure to check them out in the photo album!<br><br>And, as I mentioned, the water project that I was working on for Engineers Without Borders (EWB) finished well, as well. We busted our butts to get the project done "on time" whatever ...

... collections of fake watches and for some bizarre reason a extreme collection of calculators! We moved around for a good while looking over a good amount of stores but after a while challenging ourselves to find something unique, as in something that we had not seen before which is way i am sure that people payed less interest to us than as if were dressed like the many American tourists just off from the mega bus that had passed through. Right in the center of the huge market ...

Today was our first day in Guatemala! Our diplomatic briefing started at 9am, an hour late, but was very short so we were able to disembark the ship around 10am. I along with eleven others are renting a house in Antigua for the three days we are in port. Al, Audrey, Jessica, Bri, Thomas G, Thomas B, Brittany, Zach, Marissa, Dana, Marley, and I all hoped the shuttle to the area outside of the port where we caught a taxi to Antigua. It took about 2 hours ...

... busy. It was my last week of Spanish classes too. My oral skills have definitely gotten better, but I certainly wouldn't be putting "fluent in Spanish" on my resume just yet. This past Saturday I spent sometime walking around Antigua seeing things I hadn't seen yet. Here are the pictures. Sunday I went on an adventure with Marta, Sandra, Marta's sister and her daughter. Turns out Marta's daughter, Marta Maria (prrretty sure that's her name ...

... something better than the gulf of Río Dulce, but there is...Semuc Champey is better, given its uniqueness, than the marvelous Panajachel and the Gulf of Polochic. There are magnificent lakes by the hundreds in the world, and rivers similar to Izabal, there are by the dozens. In contrast, two rivers that meet like in Semuc, there can't be, not even in unexplored parts of Africa, nor in the Amazon jungle, nor in any part of the world."

... toast them!! The lava really was incredible to see, moving down the mountain. It sounded really quite bizarre too - it made a kind of clinking, cracking sound. <br>We decended by torchlight and headed back to Antigua at around 8pm. I bought a sandwich for dinner, went back to my room, watched a bit of telly and went to bed, still struggling with a screwed-up body clock!! <br><br>Saturday 13th - Got up early again....caught a bus ...