6 months. 9875 kilometres. 4 countries. Impressive Amazing Race statistics they’re not, but then again we’re not exactly “racing” around the world. We’re taking it nice and slow.

Six months ago today, Mike and I stepped foot on a plane to Cancun, Mexico without much of a plan and with little idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Today, we are different people. Here’s some of the changes we’ve made:

Physical Changes

Whether we like it or not, the first opinion we form of people we meet is typically based on appearance. And in six short months, I would say we’ve both altered our appearances fairly dramatically. Luckily, we have our pictures from our International Driving Permits that were taken two weeks before we left for comparison sake.

Check out the two couples… which pair would you say are happier, more energetic, and more interesting?

We’ve both lost a significant amount of weight from our healthier lifestyle (exactly how much is hard to say… weight scales are hard to come by here), our tans are darker than they’ve ever been, we rarely ever sunburn anymore, our hair is bleached from the sun (check out how blonde I am now!), and we’re stronger than we’ve been in a long time.

All is not perfect, however. With our divemaster program, we typically go diving 2-4 times per day. We start “work” at 7:00 a.m. hauling tanks and helping students collect and set up their gear. We help set up the boat, check people into and out of the hotel, and spend at least a few hours each day dealing with hotel business, and working on planning and scheduling for the next day. Often, we won’t really have time to ourselves until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. We have recently started assisting on courses, which adds an extra level of responsibility for the safety of the students around you. It basically equates to having a full-time job (we haven’t forgotten what an awesome job it is though), working 5-7 days a week. And because we’ve got an apartment, there’s housework to keep up with too.

I would be lying if I said that I’m footloose and stress free with all these obligations. Just before Christmas, I found myself with a 72+ hour migraine. Then I woke with an ass-kicking, back-flattening flu on the morning of New Year’s Eve that confined me to nearly a week in bed and is still keeping me out of the water (Mike woke up with the same sore throat that morning, and was fine by day’s end). I know that this is my body’s way of telling me I’m trying to do too much. Just like at home, as responsibilities get piled on and the perfectionist/over-analyst inside of me works overdrive to do everything to 150% of my ability, I lose the ability to keep my life balanced. I become consumed in the stresses of things that are beyond my control and my body starts sending out S.O.S. messages in the forms of headaches and unchallenged bugs that my immune system should be able to beat into submission without much trouble.

So I know I need to keep working at finding balance in my life.  This is a critical lesson for me, because at some point we may find ourselves with 9-5 jobs again and I need to learn how to keep myself from getting burned out.

Emotional Changes – How We Feel About This Journey

When we travelled to the Yukon the summer before last, we stopped and did a few day hikes in the mountains on the way. When we returned home, we were reviewing our photos and found some landscape shots, taken from the summit of a mountain, that surpassed in beauty what we remembered seeing. We put one of these photos on our Traveled Earth business cards to remind ourselves not to take any moments in life for granted. We have truly experienced each and every moment on this journey (the good and the bad)… not just with a snapshot to remember it by, but a true appreciation for everything we are seeing and doing.

It was only about a month or so ago that we realized this journey no longer feels like a mere vacation. It’s now our lifestyle.  I think getting an apartment on Jewel Cay (one of the Utila Cays in Honduras) for a couple months has really helped us reach this point.  Having a place where we could unpack for a while and put the backpacks away helped fight some of the homesickness we were starting to feel.  We still miss the people at home (a lot!), but we now see just how easy it is to start up a life somewhere new.  We have friends, neighbours, and people that feel like family in close proximity to us.

Intellectual Changes

As I reflect over the last 6 months of my life, I am blown away by how much reflection I have done.  Taking away the stresses of a job and a house has given me the time and the freedom to explore other intellectual avenues.  Instead of thinking about my lesson plans for the next day, I spend a lot of time thinking about topics that have always interested me, but have never been enough of a priority to spend adequate mental time and energy on.  I have had some great discussions and reflections on world politics and economies, religion, spirituality, morality, ethics, cultural norms and beliefs, and physics (string theory, quantum mechanics, and relativity), to name a few.

Changes To Our Budget

Our original budget goal was $100/day for the pair of us, including international transportation, accommodation, food, and all other expenses.

As of today, we have spent $10 642.48 CAD, which works out to an average of $57.84 per day, including the big ticket costs of 6 weeks of Spanish courses ($990 CAD), and all our diving courses in Utila (total cost = $2970 CAD) 1 open water course for me, 2 advanced open water courses, 2 rescue diver courses, 2 divemaster courses, 2 deep diver specialties, 2 wreck specialties, and 2 nitrox specialties). If you exclude these “big ticket costs,” but still include all the other excursions like swimming with whale sharks, snorkeling, ziplining, etc., our spending to date totals $6682.48, or $36.32 per day.

We now believe that a $100/day average for the entire journey is far too high. Because we don’t know how long we plan to spend in each country, it is nearly impossible to calculate a reasonable trip budget average, but we will try to use $100/day as a cap for the most expensive countries.

Changes To Our Packing List

Let’s be honest… this is a post in itself.  So look for it soon.  I will say, however, that I am currently typing this on our brand new, Boxing Day special, netbook.  After six months of sharing a single laptop, we realized we really wanted another one.  While we could keep getting by with one, we just didn’t want to any more.

Changes To Our “Rough Itinerary”

Six months into our trip, and we are already five months behind our “rough itinerary.”  Honduras, our home for the last two and a half months, wasn’t even included on it. Not too shabby, eh? We knew before we left that we weren’t going to stick to a schedule and we were true to our word.

Our immediate plan is to finish our divemaster course here in Utila by the end of January, head to Nicaragua at the start of February to meet up with my mom (can’t wait to see her!!!), and then maybe follow her into Costa Rica or head back up to see the parts of Honduaras and El Salvador that we missed out on.  In general, we are heading south… we keep saying we would like to catch a boat from Panama to Colombia when we finally get there, but we know better than to lay out a specific plan for ourselves.

We are definitely still planning to check out more of the world than Central and South America… but when?  Your guess is as good as ours.

All too often, preparing for Christmas is synonymous with accumulating stuff... buying presents, wrapping presents, putting up decorations, buying special foods and treats, and so on and so forth.

Now don’t get me wrong… I love Christmas and a lot of the “stuff” that comes with it.  Every time I see a decorated Christmas tree or colourful Christmas lights I get a warm, fuzzy feeling as I remember past Christmases – which were, I believe, some of the happiest moments of my childhood.  I don’t remember many of the presents I received, but I do remember hanging out with my family, eating good food, and simply just being happy.

The older I get, however, the less I seem to enjoy the gift-giving portion of Christmas.  This is largely because I’ve come to the realization that I don’t need more stuff.  In fact, I really don’t even want more stuff.  Stuff doesn’t make you happy.  It actually makes you feel more confined and tied down.  Getting rid of all the stuff I’d accumulated before this journey was one of the most freeing experiences I’ve ever had… and I will never be the same again.

The act of gift giving at Christmas is well ingrained in our culture and is riddled with stresses each step of the way.  First, you have to decide who you need to buy presents for.  This typically requires the careful evaluation of a list of everyone you know – friends, family members, and coworkers.  You don’t want the embarrassment of leaving someone out, especially if they’re planning to give you a gift.  Then, you need to decide how much to spend on each person.  Again, this is a stressful decision because you don’t want to come off as “cheap,” yet you don’t want to spend money you don’t have.  Once a budget is set, you need to figure out what each person would want, but doesn’t already own.  This can be difficult, even with people you have close relationships with.  Finally, you need to deal with all the other stressed out Christmas shoppers in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Personally, I like the idea of doing away with Christmas presents.  For the past few years, I have made arrangements with family members to forego the presents.  Instead of spending scads of money on stuff that people probably don’t really need (because if they did, they would have already purchased it themselves) and instead of receiving piles of stuff that I didn’t really want and would have to find somewhere to store, we have started using the money we would normally spend on “stuff” and donating it to a good cause.  We still get together, share some great food and drinks, and have some great conversations.  We just don’t open presents.  Because, to me,  Christmas is not about the presents… it’s about the people in your life.

This year, my mom used the money she would have spent on my present to buy hot chocolate, marshmallows, and cookies for all of the students at a local community school that don’t really get much for treats this time of year.  Knowing that those kids will have a special treat makes me so much happier than anything she could mail me here.  Last year we got together and  donated money to the charity of my homeroom students’ choice… buying a cow for a family in Africa.

So this holiday season, I encourage you to do the same (or next holiday season, as you have probably finished your Christmas shopping already).   Not buy a cow, I mean, but choose a cause that is meaningful to you or your parents/brother/sister/friend/spouse/boss/teacher/coworker (just make sure you’ve discussed the plan with the intended recipient so everyone’s on board… some people will prefer the “stuff” and that’s just fine too).  You were going to spend the money anyways, so why not spend it making a difference?

As we told you in our last post, we came to Utila, Honduras to get my Open Water certification in scuba diving.  That, and a few fun dives for the both of us.  That was supposed to be it.

The second I descended in open water that all changed… I was instantly drawn in by the new world that exists under the surface of the ocean.  Each dive found me more and more comfortable moving and breathing underwater and I discovered more and more cool things to see.

Before Mike had even dipped his toe in the water (okay, he had actually done some snorkelling at this point), I had him almost convinced that we should stay and do our Advanced Open Water certifications so we could dive deeper, try a night dive, and check out a wreck.

He whole-heartedly agreed with this plan after only his first fun dive… it seems we were both equally enamoured with the underwater world and weren’t ready to leave it behind as we travelled inland.  We pushed our cheapskate tendencies aside and forked out another $250 a person for our Advanced course.

We had such a great time with Captain Morgan’s Dive Centre and our instructor Talon (from 1dad1kid.com) that we decided to stick with them for the second course.  The course fee included 5 course dives, 2 free fun dives, and 3 nights accommodation.  Of the five course dives (termed adventure dives) we were required to do a deep dive (to 30 m) and a navigation dive.  After that we had our choice of the next three from about a dozen options.  We chose to do a wreck dive, a night dive, and a peak performance buoyancy dive.

The deep dive blew our mind as we looked at the colour and pressure changes to a Coke bottle at 30 m (100 ft).

The wreck dive was spectacular… the wreck is found between 18 and 30 m.  Even with exceptionally clear water, you can’t quite see it from the surface.  It’s just too deep.  As you descend, it slowly starts to materialize beneath you… really cool.

The night dive allowed us to experience yet another new world underwater, as everything we were used to seeing changed.  You get to see totally different critters out and about from what you see during the day, and the water has something called bio-luminescence which lights up and glows like hundreds of green stars as you swim through it.

The navigation and peak performance buoyancy dives allowed us to improve our diving skills…

… which was important to us because we were toying with the crazy idea of sticking around Utila to take our rescue diver and divemaster courses.

Ultimately, after a week of heavy decision making, we decided to become divemasters (more on this later).

Which is why, almost seven weeks later, we are still in Utila.  And still loving diving and loving life.

Some of our favourite underwater sightings have included:  Hawksbill turtles (my favourite!), common octopus, eagle rays, southern stingrays, roughtail stingrays, yellow stingray, longsnout seahorses, moon jellyfish, free swimming green moray eels, scrawled filefish, lionfish, leopard flatworm, reef squid, juvenile spotted drums, parrotfish (Mike’s favourite!), and yellowtail damselfish.

Note:  If you’ve been following our Facebook fan page, you know that we’ve been out of Belize and in Utila, Honduras for the past month.  We’ve fallen in love with scuba diving and are currently still in Utila feeding our addiction.  Our next posts will catch you up with the last month of our lives and the new twist in our travel plans… so stay tuned.

Our trip to Belize started out as a visa run to renew our visas for the C4 Region (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua), but lasted two weeks.  We embraced the “Go Slow” motto of our first stop, Caye Caulker, and spent a lot of time just relaxing at the beaches.

View from our balcony in Caye Caulker

Belize Statistics:

Length of Stay: 14 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $42.44 CAD
Cities/Towns Visited: 4
Distance Traveled: 940 km in 6 automobiles and 2 boats
Days Sick: 0 for Ashley, 0 for Mike (yay!)
Number of Items Lost: 0
Biggest Tourist Traps:  Orange Walk
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = $2 BZ

For more great travel statistics, check out our stats page!

Our Route:

Punta Gorda –  Caye Caulker – Orange Walk – Dangriga – Placencia – Dangriga

Highlights:

• Swimming with nurse sharks and stingrays in Caye Caulker
• Cinnamon bread and ham & cheese turnovers at the bakery in Caye Caulker
• Lounging on the beach in Placencia
• Happy Cow cheese and crackers
• Fairly cheap fresh seafood

Fresh snook in Placencia

Lowlights:

• Orange Walk
• Happy Cow cheese and crackers
• Expensive restaurant food

Surprises:

• It was more affordable than we had heard.  Granted, we stuck to the cheapest hostels and cheapest eats (thank you stewed chicken, rice & beans!) that we could find.
• How much younger the Queen looks on their bills compared to Canada’s.
• How many young pregnant women there were everywhere we went.

Caye Caulker

Lessons Learned:

• It’s not always a good idea to go to a city just because Lonely Planet declares they have the best street food in the country… especially during the rainy season when the street vendors aren’t even out.
• If you’re not enjoying a place, there’s no reason to keep staying there.
• Even if you have a rough idea how long you plan to stay in a country, lie and say it’s the maximum stay so you don’t lose out on days on your visa.

Palm trees in Placencia

Belize Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Caye Caulker – 6 nights
What we did here:  Very little actually… lots of lounging and swimming, snorkelling with sharks & rays

Orange Walk – 1 night
What we did here: Hid in our hostel from the rain and the pushy vendors selling tours to Lamanai ruins

Dangriga – 3 nights
What we did here: Nothing… mostly waited for the post office to open so we could mail a parcel home

Placencia – 4 nights
What we did here: Relaxing & swimming on the beach

Go Slow sign in Caye Caulker

If you want to check out some of our Belize photos, check out our photo gallery.

Our trip to Belize was only going to be a visa run. We needed to reset our C4 visa before moving on from Guatemala to Honduras, and Belize seemed like a good (albeit pricey) place to do it. We thought we would go up to Caye Caulker, and then work our way back to Placencia to catch the Friday ferry to Puerto Cortes, Honduras. The ferry would only take about 4 hours. Simple enough, right? Wrong.

Problem #1: The Friday ferry from Placencia was busted.

After being less than enamoured with Orange Walk and Dangriga, we arrived in Placencia about 10 days into our stay in Belize. This was a Tuesday. The boat left on Friday and we were told by the lady selling lunch on the dock that advance tickets were unnecessary.

Always ones to double check facts, on Wednesday we decided to check that we wouldn’t need advance tickets. A quick stop at the tourist centre taught us that the ferry was being repaired and would not be running on Friday.

Problem #2: Our visas were about to expire

We actually quite liked Placencia and figured we could just stay there another week, which would also give us the opportunity to check out the nearby Cockscomb Wildlife Reserve. Alas, our visas expired on Saturday due to a fairly rookie mistake on our part… when we entered Belize, we told the immigration official we were planning to stay about 2 weeks. So he only gave us 14 days on our visas, instead of the usual 30 days tourists get. As a result, extending our stay in the country would cost us $50 BZ ($25 CAD) per person for visa extensions. We tried calling immigration to see if they would waive the extension fee since they would only be extending within the time frame of a normal visa, but they clearly told us that wouldn’t be possible. So we needed to leave the country on Friday.

Problem #3: Chartering a boat from a “boat guy” that really doesn’t want to go is a bad idea

On Thursday, we ran into a couple of European ladies we had met on the bus to Placencia. They had managed to find a guy that would charter a direct boat to Utila for $300 BZ/$150 CAD per person (our first Honduras destination) that would bypass the need to take a bus, a water taxi, a land taxi, another bus, spend a night in La Ceiba, and a morning ferry to Utila.  Skipping all that would cost $50 more per person than not, and the chartered boat was going to leave on Friday.

Since everyone else in the group had much stricter schedules than us (as in, they had a schedule), their preference was the charter boat. Since we kind of like checking out the countryside via bus, and don’t mind spending a night in a gateway city, we wanted to save the $50 CAD per person and take the extra bus, water taxi, land taxi, bus… etc.

Unfortunately, we were the deciding factor for whether the tour operator was willing to take his boat out on the water (without us, there weren’t enough people).  Feeling kind of bad for everyone else, we negotiated a lower price for just the two of us, so we could be happy taking the charter boat, the tour operator could make a little money, and everyone else would get to save at least one transportation day.

I know what you’re thinking… how is that fair that we got a lower price than everyone else for the same trip? The socialists in us hated the idea too, but the cheapskates in us allowed it to happen. After all, we were totally happy taking extra buses and boats and for everyone else, they were paying the same price they had agreed on earlier.

The plan was to meet up Thursday afternoon, so we could go to the mainland to get our exit stamps in our passports. After meeting up twice and being sent away twice with different excuses, along the lines of  “one of my captains is out fishing so we can’t go right now”, we were finally told to meet again at 8 am on Friday.  We’d do the passport stuff in the morning, on our way out to Utila.

This set off flashing warning lights: If we met the tour operator at 8 AM and he had yet another excuse, we would have missed the 7 am bus to Dangriga and lost our only chance to catch a boat out of the country. This objection didn’t seem to bother him though. He promised he would work everything out with his captains and would come to our hostel to confirm all the details that evening.

At about 8:00 PM Thursday, there was still no word. So we borrowed our hotel owner’s phone and called. That’s when we found out he wasn’t willing to go for the price he had already agreed on. So the charter boat was cancelled.

Problem #4: I think all of Belize runs on “island time”

Come Friday morning, we woke up early, caught the 7 am bus to Dangriga and arrived hours before the ferry departed. It was indeed running and it was a beautiful, sunny, calm day. We bought our tickets ($120 BZ or $60 CAD per person) and were told that immigration would be there in about an hour.  We left our stuff with the boat and got some breakfast. An hour later, we went back to the ferry and waited for immigration. And waited. And waited. One hour became two, but finally, immigration showed up, took everyone’s cash, and stamped our passports. We were finally on the boat.

The snazzy looking ferry building in Dangriga

Problem #5: You know it’s not a good thing when someone has to get out of the boat and push

As we were leaving the Dangriga harbour, the boat got caught on a sand patch. It took a few attempts to remedy this situation.

Attempt #1: The captain attempted to manoeuvre the boat back and forth to get free.  This didn’t work.

Attempt #2: They sent this poor guy out into the water to push. He made several attempts and was aided by the shouted instructions of the many bystanders on the shore.

Sometimes the boat just needs little push…

Attempt #3: Everyone was sent to the front of the boat. This didn’t work either.

Crowded in the front of the boat with Emma, one of our travelling companions

Attempt #4: Once the guy gave up pushing, he walked the anchor waaayy out into the surf.

Walking the anchor out…

They rounded up “all the strong guys” to stand on the front of the boat and pull on the anchor rope. All this accomplished was pulling the anchor back in.

A little tug for the stuck boat

Attempt #5: I’m not sure exactly what combination of pushing, pulling, and engine manoeuvres did it, but we were finally free of the sand. Success! A cheer rose up from the crowd on the boat.

Problem #6: Guess the engine didn’t like the sand much

Our boat had to stop mid-ocean twice due to engine problems. At one point, they changed out the propeller. I don’t even know what happened the second time… the rolling waves and my stomach were too busy battling it out to look up and see what was going on. I did master my new zen approach to avoiding seasickness. Mike doesn’t understand it, but for some reason if I close my eyes and just let my body move with the boat I don’t get sick. Oh, and Oreos help too. Mike tells me that we started with three engines, and when we got to Puerto Cortes, Honduras, we were down to just one.

I may be feeling a little queasy, but I still managed a smile(ish)!

But we got there! We finally spotted Puerto Cortes.  The trip ended with us setting foot on land. Hello Honduras!!!

Note:  After all of that, we still hadn’t made it out to the island of Utila.  We managed to get ourselves stuck in La Ceiba for two nights waiting for the ferry start running again due to bad weather.  Aaaahh, the joys of travelling during rainy season…

Our first view of Puerto Cortes

The truth is, somewhere along our travels, we’ve become serious cheapskates.  So as we hung out in Caye Caulker, Belize, eating stewed chicken with rice and beans for every meal (pretty much the cheapest eats on the island if you’re looking for a full meal, and luckily for us, it just happened to be super delicious) we debated long and hard if we should spend the money on a snorkelling excursion.

Hanging out at “The Split” in Caye Caulker

A half-day snorkelling trip from Caye Caulker cost $50 BZ (about $25 CAD) per person.  So we weren’t really talking about breaking the bank.  Our plan, however, was to head to Utila, Honduras to try our hand at scuba diving after our short stint in Belize.  So we thought… why spend money on snorkelling now when we’re about to spend a lot of money to do a lot of diving (and probably snorkelling) in Honduras?

Ultimately, though, we silenced our inner cheapskates and decided to snorkel.  Am I ever happy that we did!

The trip involved a five minute boat ride out to the reef, with three snorkelling excursions in three different locations.

Boat ride to the reef

The guide led us in the first trip out, and we saw some really cool stuff.  He coaxed some eels to swim up out of the reef, and we saw some barracudas and a manatee.  At least Mike saw the manatee.  Unfortunately, my mask had a major leaking issue and I missed out on the manatee while I was clearing the water out of it.  Oh well… hopefully I’ll see one later.

Next up was Shark and Ray Alley.  Which is exactly what it sounds like.  Our guide tossed some chum in the water and instantly we were surrounded by nurse sharks.

The sharks we swam with

Several Southern stingrays joined in the party too.  I was a little nervous jumping into the water (“Make sure you don’t land on top of a stingray – they don’t like that much”), but my anxiety was quickly replaced with excitement and astonishment as the creatures swam around us.  We were told not to touch the sharks, but the rays were fair game.  In fact, the rays actually seek out human interaction.  They rubbed up against our legs just like our cat used to when she wanted attention.  We could “pet” them too… as Mike says, they kind of feel like the white part of those gummy frog candies (you know, the green and white ones) – soft, slippery, and smooth.

Southern stingray

At the third stop, we did some independent snorkelling along the reef, seeing tons of colourful fish.

Definitely a great trip and an unforgettable experience!

What can I say… we loved Guatemala and had a hard time leaving.  Here’s a summary of our time there and a few random Guatemalan pictures that we haven’t yet had the chance to share.

Guatemala Statistics:

Length of Stay: 71 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $43.04 CAD
Average Cost per Day for Two People (excluding Spanish lessons & replacing our stolen camera): $24.97 CAD
Cities/Towns Visited: 8
Distance Traveled: 1938 km in 18 automobiles and 3 boats
Days Sick: 3 for Ashley, 0 for Mike
Number of Items Lost: 2 (Camp Soap, Ashley’s t-shirt)
Number of Items Stolen: 1 (camera)
Biggest Tourist Traps: The unofficial Garifuna tour of Livingston.
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = 8 Quetzales

For more great travel statistics, check out our stats page!

Our Route:

Flores (Tikal) – San Pedro La Laguna – Quetzaltenango/Xela (San Andrés Xecul) – Coban – Semuc Champey – Lanquin – Rio Dulce – Livingston

Highlights:

• 6 weeks of Spanish lessons in San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan
• The turquoise pools and water caves at Semuc Champey
• Channelling our inner “Batman” at Lanquin bat caves
• Climbing Volcan Santa Maria
• Xocomil water park

Lowlights:

• Having our camera pickpocketed at the fair in Xela and then having to cough up the cash to replace it
• Losing our Nalgene water bottle in Xela – somehow we took this harder than the camera being stolen a few days earlier (happy note: we found the water bottle sitting on an ATM machine in the grocery store the next day!)
• 3 days of being sick in Xela for Ashley (like really, really sick)
• Finding out right after Ashley got healthy that she could have been paid $100 USD to be treated as part of a university research study on traveler’s sicknesses
• Having to eat out way too much, as there were no kitchens in our hostels for two weeks between Xela and Livingston

Beauty in unexpected places… flowers in the Walmart parking lot in Xela

Surprises:

• Xocomil water park.  The last thing we were expecting in the middle of Guatemala was this epic water park!  We had a blast there!
• Feeling like giants.  After Mexico, we were used to feeling tall… but in the smaller Mayan communities of Guatemala (like San Pedro La Laguna) we felt freakishly tall.
• Seeing women in traditional dress pulling a cellphone out of their bras. Despite the extreme poverty levels, cell phones are everywhere.
• It takes a looooong time to cook dry beans.
• Six weeks of private classes is not enough to become fluent in a language.  This probably shouldn’t have been such a surprise, but it was.
• Guatemala seems to have a love affair with marching bands and fried chicken.  Maybe it was just the time of year (leading up to the national election and Independence Day), but we saw impromptu parades and marching bands daily.  Restaurants selling fried chicken can be found on every block and in the evening the number doubles with a mobile fryer set up on every corner as well.

Parque Centro in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala

Lessons Learned:

• If you know there are likely to be pickpockets about, leave everything you don’t need safely in your hostel. This includes cameras… it’s pretty hard to download photos off of a stolen camera.
• We don’t need lots of stuff and a big house.  I think we were pretty much in this mindset before we left home, but our time in Guatemala has taken the belief to the next level.

Sunset in Flores

Guatemalan Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Flores – 2 nights + 1 spent on a bus between Flores and Guatemala City
What we did here: Not much… went swimming in the lake and got a great view of the area from the roof of the church
Day trips: Tikal

San Pedro La Laguna – 43 nights
What we did here: 6 weeks of Spanish courses
Day trips: Chuira-X-amolo (zip-lining), Indian Nose, Volcan San Pedro, Santa Clara, kayaking Lake Atitlan

Quetzaltenango (Xela) – 14 nights
What we did here: Independence Day celebrations & parades, Independence Fair, Railway Museum
Day trips: Volcan Santa Maria, Fuentes Georginas, San Andrés Xecul, Xocomil

Coban – 1 night
What we did here: Not much… this was just a rest stop before continuing the rest of the way to Semuc Champey

Semuc Champey  – 2 nights
What we did here: hiking, swimming in stepped pools over a river, river tubing, jumped off a bridge, water caving

Lanquin – 1 night
What we did here: bat caves

Rio Dulce – 4 nights
What we did here: mostly rest, relaxation, and catching up the blog – it pretty much poured rain our whole stay
Day trips: El Paraiso (a hot waterfall)

Livingston  – 3 nights
What we did here: we spent a lot of time strolling through town
Day trips: Las Siete Altares waterfalls

Mmmm… street meat!

If you want to check out some of our Guatemala photos, check out our photo gallery.