GUATEMALA:ANTIGUA:lukey´s here! woooo hooooo
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2008
1
21
63
Trip End
Ongoing
Antigua Guatemala,
Western Highlands,
Guatemala
Monday, November 3, 2008
monday was lonnnnnng, waiting, and waiting, but when his plane landed our hotel was only 5 mins away. immediately he had me laughing with his walk (into the glass door), his eyes, and his smile. so good to see him. me loves him.
tuesday morning we catch lukey´s first chicken buses (old american school buses..the yellow ones...but painted in fabulous colours, eveeryone different, some even with bad boi alloys!) to antigua. it was a cheap ride, which we found only with the help of a friendly local in guatemala city (dont know what people say about it being dirty and scarey..everyone was so nice even in the short stay we were there). lukey and i giggled our way on the hour journey, being thrown around like chickens...well on a bus!
the views were great, as this area has 3 main volcanoes surronding it,one even is active!.... and lots of trees...antigua actually means...forrest!
we are welcomed off the bus by a tourist police????? hmmm.... nice man, but do they work for someone, we just dont know. we were guided to a local hostel, which has a kitchen for us to use.... good for us, as need to save some pennies.... we negoiated a good deal later by knocking down an ensuite room, with a balcony of a view across the city for the same price....my bartering skills have gotten us a shower and a tv...oh the luxury!
poor lukey then got dragged to spanish school, and i signed him up for 40 hours of spanish...he wont admitt it , but when we turns his brain on, after about 10 am..he is quite good... shame the lessons start at 8...tee hee... the first few hours he is a peeps still i think. but, i am a peeps by 8pm...great fun arent we! so since then we have been putting our basic spanish to practice in the shops etc, as no one speak english, and even lukey is enjoying being able to understand what they are saying..at times...lol.
we have been lucky that the food here is a bit better than the other places i have visited, and on sitting in one lovely cafe:rainbow cafe (which has great salads, and sandwiches, a happy hour for beers, and a great sunshine courtyard), someone tapped us on our shoulders, and asked if we knew any english people...... it happened to be shell and wayne, who i had met in tikal.
it was great to see them, and we ended up spending the evening with them, playing plop trumps and dodging smelly women.
our spanish lessons have been good. yes i even think 5 hours sat in the classroom is intense! thankfully we are in a beautiful courtyard, and get to go out on trips for a few hours each day. one of our adventures has been the local market. lucia our teacher took us andering through this HUGE area, where you can literally buy ANYTHING you want. fresh fruit, veg, meat, fish, clothes, donkeys, and even a kitchen sink if you wanted! another trip we have been on was to a local organic macadamia nut farm. we learnt how they grew, how they were harvested, and how they provide local villages in guatemala with free trees to give more nutrients to the kids, and give them some way of earning money for selling the nuts. we also foun they are fantastic trees for taking the carbon out of the atmosphere, thus their shells are so hard you need a hammer to smash them......nut crackers wont work!
being able to go out like this allows us to put our spanish to practice in front of our teacher. we do have a lot of revision to do though. but the magic is we have the afternoons off, and are able to go to the park, and sit and do it there in the sunshine, whilst eating bread, cheese, and drinking cool drinks.
thursday afternoon lukey helped me dye my hair back to blonde..we had a good giggle as he dyed his aswell. i even used my hair straightners sarah and chris bought me (which lukey brought out).... so grateful for those..you stars.. put on some make up for the first time...a pretty dress, and felt like a girly again!
lukey and i headed out and bought a HUGE bottle of barcadi Oro for as little as 4.50 earth pounds, and its twice the size of the ones at home. check out the pic.... lol.
we played cards all evening, popping out for some chinese and inidan...all in one restaurant..which had cool candles all over. lukey taught me too well how to play poker..and i whipped his tight ass....but then again i am a triple $%& head!
WE ARE BOTH SO SO HAPPY...WE HAVE DANCING FEET AND HUGE GRINS.
thanks mumsie bear and daddy poos xxx
