el Hotelito Perdido Fronteras

That is what our Spanish teacher Paulina said to us when we were rushing to espanol class a couple minutes late that I really took a liking to- mostly because that's one thing I really want to work on during the year: relaxing. Ha, that sorta sounds silly, but its true. I felt immediately more relaxed upon boarding my flight. The last couple months felt more like a stagnant waiting period and now I'm finally ...

Leaving Lanquin, we opted for the most direct route to Rio Dulce. The public transport option is a rather roundabout trip, heading quite a ways west in order to go east. The alternative was a private shuttle, directly there in less than half the time, before you even count transfers, that it would take on public transportation. I must say, before this morning, I must have had a lot of pre-conceived notions regarding ...

Im catching up slowly but surely....

Just awoken from a mid morning snooze in a hammock outside my room. its pretty tough you know, getting the exact right position to be able to doze off whilst reading, still, im working on it and will let you know once its perfected.

Right, so i wanted to post something about the last week arriving back in Guatamala. It has been somewhat of a fun time and a bit like living in a giant playground.

We managed ...

... to port in Guatemala.

The rest of the boat tour included going through some tributaries and seeing the houses of the rich on the river. After the tour we went back to our room to relax a little and then headed back across the river to check out the local restaurants. We had mildly enjoyable meal and Rachel was given a local remedy of fresh lemon juice with lots of salt in it to help her upset stomach by the very sweet waitress of the restaurant. We started to ...

... we were to catch for the next week which was a very sad looking catamaran - but were still expecting great things.

Highlights:

Huntington Caye - Belize. The reef, the eagle rays, sharks and the fish - were stunning. On the last day we feasted on lobster and crab and fish courtesy of Belize.

Our fellow boat passengers. We met some great people on the boat who we travelled with for the next few ...

... because what do you do when you are falling? You put your hand out to stop! The lava was sharp and jagged and impending doom at its highest. We stopped at a place where we could see the lava and actually watch it flow. Teryn and I didn't continue all they way up to where our guide was as this was good enough for us - we were only about 3m away! The sound it makes was fantastic... It got pretty cold when the sun set - walking down the lava rock was more difficult ...

... too much of the rollercoaster effect. An electrical outage apparently darkened all the shops and homes in Guatemala; we drove in virtual darkness towards the shores of San Pedro while sporadic bits of lighting lit the shoreline. Like some horror story, the engine suddenly cut out. The guy hammered away at something while to no avail. Stacey and I just looked at each other and wondered what would happen if we were actually marooned ...

It took me ages to learn how to say Quetzeltenango. Only to find that everyone actually calls it Xela (pronounced Chela). We waited for a bus here at our hotel in San Pedro. When a bus arrived the driver shouted: "Antigua! Antigua!" which is in the opposite direction to Xela. So we ignored it. Just as he was about to leave, a man ran out of our hotel and told us to get on the bus as it was, in fact, going to Xela. But when we got on the ...

We went to Semuc Champan for a few days. Semuc is a natural swimming pools. we did an excellent tour of the caves and some river tubing. Semuc was one of the highlights of my trip. The tour was great and I did the highest bridge dive I have ever done off the bridge after the tour.