Quinta de las Flores Antigua Guatemala

... style she calls "earthquake baroque" which means low slung, sturdy buildings which have withstood many major earthquakes over the city's history. We toured ruins in various stages of restoration and rehabilitation, government buildings, cathedrals, private buildings and a couple of museums. We also met the woman who archeologist who, with her husband, discovered the ancient jade mining areas in the ...

... which I hadn&#8217;t wanted to because of Tom Cruise but in the end it was really good &#8211; they almost got Hitler but didn&#8217;t&#8230;to spoil it for everyone. <br><br>We flew over El Salvador which was lush green fields, a straight coastline and quite underdeveloped. What I thought it would be but not what Shane thought. Interesting how we perceive things! <br>Coming in to Guatemala we had an amazing aerial view of more lush greenness but also mountains and volcanoes. Cities ...

... met een heerlijke frisse musklun. Het was lekker en voldoende....we besloten nog een toetje te nemen met eventueel een lekkere koffie. Het werd voor beide een kaasplank met een lekker glas rode wijn. En wat voor kaasplank....heerlijke europese kazen met een heerlijke blauwe voor Heleen en een super lekkere camembert voor Mies. Het werd steeds droger buiten, we hoorden muziek, we werden beide roos van de wijn en er was KAAS....het werd een feestje!<br>Er zijn dingen die je gaat missen.........

... to be exact, a local gave me a tip: a small comedor behind a tienda (= small grocery), where a little old lady served me a "pache" or tamal made of mashed potatoes. Not bad but not great either! Oups... .... I think some clarification is needed here. Tamal or tamalito: A tamale (Spanish tamal, from Nahuatl tamalli), is a traditional Mexican dish consisting of steam-cooked corn dough (masa) with or without a filling ...

... The camera began to perform better on the decent. I will post some of those pics as well. My legs are still hurting some three days later. My abdominal muscles also got a workout from the uphill horse wide. We had no injuries on the trip. I will not be surprised to hear in the future of some terrible incident up there, when the mountain burps, or there is a quake. We are glad we did it, I wont do it again. Onward to Panahachel in the Central Highlands.

Okay I admit I am a failure. My brain is just not wired for foreign language and I should know after 3 years of high school languages and the 2 week immersion course here. Wanting to make a serious attempt to learn Spanish I agreed to this 2 week stay and attendance in language lessons each morning. Each day I arrived at the school full of hope that several hours of nonstop Spanish immersion would make an ...