Although we just arrived at dusk last night, we were up and out early this morning. Today is market day in Sololá, a larger town up the mountain. The road to Sololá is the other route into Panajachel, our friends Kathe and Colleen had advised us not to come in that way and we were glad. It is not that much steeper but you have to drive through the town and it is a much more crowded than Panajachel. There are many more washouts along the road as well and some of them have only "make do" repairs that are a bit scary. We've decided to go out the way we came in and not take the rigs out that way.

The center of town was jammed, impossible to get near so we parked the jeep up the hill and got in a TukTuk for the ride into the centro. It's a pretty big market, mainly for the locals although we did see other foreigners occasionally. Once spotted by mobile vendors, it can be impossible to get rid of them. I don't care, they can follow me forever if they want and sometimes it pays off. If they are really buggin me, I tell them if they don't leave me alone I am going to take their picture. This woman held the piece of embroidery up to hide her face. This works fairly well, most mayans don't like having their picture taken and they especially don't like it if you aren't paying for it. I am usually overly cautious not to take pictures of them but I feel if I warn them and they persist they are fair game for a free snap.

I actually ended up buying this piece of embroidery in this picture, it is as tall as she was.

She started at some ridiculous amount like $600 Quetzales and I kept telling her I didn't want it. She left after I took her picture but found me again later and started again.

This time I let her show me some other stuff she had and ended up telling her my "best price" was $300 Quetzales for both of them. I walked away and she found me again later and we agreed on $350 Quetzales for both pieces. That's $23 US each.

As you can see in this picture from the square near the market, most women wear the same clothes.

These women are all from Sololá and these are their colors and design.

Mayan women are adept at carrying large uneven loads on their heads, they have a scarf that is wrapped around and used as a base as well as traditional hair decoration.









Another street corner picture showing some buses.







A picture of the wedding cake tower on the Sololá church.







The last picture is Bobby being pursued down the street by some determined vendors. Also it shows a few more of the justly famous Guatemalan decorated buses. These buses are gorgeously painted and lovingly polished at every stop.

Yesterday we picked our laundry up at the agreed time of 11am. It was still really wet, as in almost driping. It's dusty here and the park was full of people enjoying a Sunday out. It appeared to be a large church group but we couldn't really tell. Buses started delivering people at 8:30AM and the truckloads and bus loads continued for hours. We didn't want to hang our laundry outside so we rigged a line inside the rig. It took it a full 24 hours to dry and we felt we were living inside a laundromat. Nice to know we can do it although I hope we don't have to again.

This morning we went down into Antigua and Bobby had no problem getting a cash advance from the bank on his credit card. They are hoping to get a new ATM card sent to his mother in Washington and then she would send it on to our place in Akumal. Moral of the story besides not putting your card near a magnet is to always have several. Unfortunately, Patti's expired after they crossed the border so they were down to one card. So, the Bank of Jonna is closed and I have lots of repay Quetzales to spend at Lake Atitlán.

We left Florencia park around 2pm, a little late but it is not a long distance just a steep and curvy road. It was good highway most of the way and when we turned off the highway to head down towards Godinez we were over 8500' in elevation. Almost immediately we came up behind many stopped buses and trucks. Apparently a truck had gone over the side and all traffic was stopped as they hauled it back up to the road. They used 2 trucks with winches to bring it up hundreds of feet and from the looks of the flatbed truck, the driver did not make it.

The road down into the old crater where Lake Atitlán is was very steep and had lots of tight curves. This area was devastated last fall from the enormous rainfall dropped by hurricane Stan. There were numerous places where the mountain had slid off and taken the road with it, a new road was carved into the slide but the evidence of dramatic loss was everywhere. Sometimes the slide missed a house by inches, sometimes only the yard was left. Across the lake there were entire villages that just disappeared under a wall of mud.

We're veteran Guatemala mountain drivers now and the only slightly difficult part was negotiating through the village of Panajachel. It was not that difficult though and we are now parked about 20' from the lake on a flat area next to the Hotel Tzanjuyu. It's a beautiful spot.

There was another Lazy Daze here when we arrived, only the 2nd time we've seen a rig like ours south of the US border. Nice people, of course, traveling with their brother and his wife in a Born Free RV. They are on the return leg of a trip to Panama.

(Church ruins in Antigua)

We all slept in today, it is quiet here and we were exhausted. Around 10am we did some shopping in this small town and found a laundry to drop off our dirty clothes. We headed back down the hill into Antigua and spent the day walking and shopping.


I thought I was a marathon shopper but Patti left me in the dust. I hit the wall and had to get out of the market and away from the sales pitches.

Mimi and I took a Tuk Tuk back to our jeep and found the road up to an overlook called Cerro del Cruz. It has a great view of one of the 3 volcanos that surround Antigua, Volcan de Agua, and down to the city as well. There were a lot of clouds and it was rather overcast so the pictures are not as clear as I would have liked. Still, it was an impressive site as this is a really huge volcano and the city is right at its feet.

(Main cathedral)

The city of Antigua is truly gorgeous. I can't begin to describe the huge old doors and the thick walls and the beautiful antiques we saw inside houses turned into hotels and B&B's. Occasionally there would be a glimpse into a private home that was mind boggling, huge walls right on the street conceal enormous gardens and houses inside. More than anywhere I've been, it reminds me of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. I'd have to say that Antigua is in a much more beautiful and stunning location with 3 huge volcanos surrounding it.

The stores and markets are overflowing with hand embroidered and hand woven and hand carved and hand painted artesania. Beautiful stuff in a riot of colors that starts to just overwhelm your brain after a bit. The sales pitches are strong, it's hard to just look without having it thrust into your hands and the bargaining begin. I'm willing to bargain but I'm afraid I disappointed a lot of them when I just walked away from their prices even after they followed me and accepted my offered price which was usually half of their first request. I still felt they were a little high for the country, perhaps because there are so many tourists here.

(fountain in the main plaza)

Of course, I didn't walk away from all of it. I bought a few things, mainly a couple of king size bedspreads for the condo in Akumal and a couple of small tablecloths. We also got some small bags for things and odds and ends. Part of the reluctance is that we know we are going to Lake Atitlan next and the villages around there are where most of this is made. Still hoping for better prices as usual. I looked long and hard at some huipiles from various villages, gorgeous embroidery and not bad prices. I bargained a bit but then walked away, I would rather buy them at the village that makes them even for the same price if I am closer to paying the woman who produced them.

(closeup of the fountain)

My friend Karen, who is the guru of all things woven and embroidered among other things, told me huipiles were the thing to buy in Guatemala. At first I couldn't decide what I would do with them, it's not like I'm going to wear one. I've now figured out I can open them up and hang them on the walls in the condo. So, I'll buy one or two when I find what I want at the price I want.

We were up and ready to leave by 8:30 this morning. We had several more visitors once they saw we were up. It's nice and it is interesting to talk to them but it is also kind of tiring for me as the one who speaks the most spanish. I spend a lot of time translating and it is hard to break away to do what I need to do.

We had been told that the next 10 km were very bad road and they were not joking. Deeply rutted, hairpin turns, really steep grades both up and down and enormous amounts of dust. Actually, all that didn't stop after 10km, it was just the ruts that were really bad for that first ten.

We spent another 4 or more hours transversing these mountains and the road was steeper than the first day, and the turns were often almost a U turn but with boulders from the cliff sticking out into the road and a huge drop on the other side.

We went down into several valleys and there were beautiful rock filled streams with lots of people out washing themselves and their clothes. We also went through several more small villages, some were friendly but others were from what we called the slack-jaw tribe, no matter whether you smiled, said buenos dias, or whatever all they did was stare at us with their jaws open.

Because the road wound around the mountains so closely, people could see us coming from across the mountain and had time to get to the road before we got there. Some of these isolated families were very polite, smiling and nodding with the whole family out at the road to watch us pass.

We were as weird as if Santa claus and his reindeer decided to drive by. In the spirit of Santa, we would give small cars and dolls we had along to some of the kids, particularly those way out in the country at very small houses perched on the side of the cliff. Actually, we would very politely offer them to the parents telling them it was for their child and they would accept it, thank us and give it to the kids. We try to be careful about this as there are rumors in many rural areas that gringos come here to steal their children and we did not want to arouse any suspicions. It was great to see the smiles on the kids faces in our rear view mirrror when they got the little car or doll.

Many people were climbing trails around the road carrying enormous loads. Most of the men carried them using a head strap like these guys carrying firewood. The women carried most things on their heads, balancing huge bundles perfectly as they climbed steep trails.

When we finally got to a paved road at the town of Montúfar, we were laughing and cheering. What an adventure! We had crossed a mountain range called the Sierra de Chuacús entirely by dirt road, climbing to over 6000' at least 3 times and descending again to small river valleys.

This is looking back at some of the road we crossed. It was exhilerating and not a little scary but we are all glad we did it.

It did do a number on our vehicles though, there are rattles we haven't yet identified and things fell that have never fallen. We have dust everywhere! Inside the bins, inside the rig on every surface, in our eyes and our hair and our clothes. Our jeep which is green looks dirty white from being towed behind the RV most of the way.

We sailed on down and cut across the edge of Guatemala City with few problems, finding the road to Antigua. We were looking for a park in the town of Santa Lucia Milpas Altas which is 11 km outside Antigua. What we didn't know is that it is at the top of a hill and when we didn't see the park we were suddenly on a divided highway dropping several thousand feet with no exits. At the bottom, we were in Antigua.

We pulled off the road to figure out what to do. Antigua is an old colonial city with narrow streets and cobblestones, we knew we didn't want to go blindly into it. A man came up to Patti and Bobby and told them (he spoke english) that he could take us to an RV parking place, he maintained he had taken many RVs bigger than ours on this route. So, he got into their truck and off we went. We had a tour of Antigua in 2 rigs each over 40' long, he didn't get us stuck although we did spend a long time on one street waiting for a string of semi trucks to use the only lane and we did have to pull in our mirrors and hold our breaths a couple of times. It turned out that he was trying to get us to park our rigs on the street and rent hotel rooms. It was a learning experience.

Patti and Bobby dumped him off and we headed back up the long hill to look for the park we originally wanted. This time we spotted it at the top of the hill, turns out it is only accessable from the uphill side of the divided highway and the gps coordinates we had don't match ours. Oh well, we made it and it is a beautiful park. We found a spot we liked, parked and the first thing on our minds were showers! After that, we headed down the hill in Bobby's truck to Antigua to walk around a bit and treat ourselves to an excellent dinner at an Argentine restuarant. I've yet to be disappointed at an Argentine restaurant, I hope the trend continues as I love the chimichurra sauce and the tender beef. This one had a salad bar which was a big treat for all of us as well.

We are at 6400' so it was another early night for me. What a great adventure, we will be talking about this last two days for a long time.

Some azaeleas blooming in front of our parking spot near the Quetzal Preserve.

Three of us got up at 5:30am to go look for quetzales, one of us slept until 8am and then got on the internet. We put the dish up last night, I needed to check the bank account and wanted to update the blog.

The 3 were gone until after 10am, they heard quetzals but never saw one. When they got back Patti and Bobby used the internet sat phone to call their bank and try to get a new card issued and sent to them in Mexico. Probably won't happen and they will send it to family in the US who will have to send it on.

On the road, we missed one turn and backtracked looking for a road that is on all of our maps but not to be found. We ended up going down the mountain and then across still looking for CA5 which shows as a major road on our maps.

We found it but after about 30km it turned into a dirt road that went up and down the mountains several times.

This is looking back towards the town of Rabinal, where the road turned to dirt.

The biggest haul got us to 6240' elevation on a dirt, rutted, one-lane road. It was quite an adventure with a 27' motorhome towing a jeep and a 27' 5th wheel towed by a big truck. This is a picture from the top of that grade.



The road was very narrow, very steep, very twisty with lots of hairpin curves and rocks that stuck out into the single lane. There wasn't a lot of traffic but it was difficult when there was. We also went through several small towns, right through the middle of them in narrow streets with people staring in amazement as we went by.

This is looking down towards the next valley. Bobby is outside taking a video.

A couple of times we had to wait for someone to move a parked car and once Bobby got out and moved a bicycle himself. In the mountains, families would run up the hill to stand in the road and watch us pass. Coming down was really steep and the hairpin turns unbelievable. We had unhooked the jeep at the second summit so our brakes would hold out. Good thing too!

As it got dark we came into the town of El Chol and found a wide spot in the road we could park in. Exhausted about covers it and exhilerated from the adrenalin.

Several people and kids stopped to talk to us where we were parked. One young man who had gone by several times in a Tuk Tuk truck stopped for awhile to talk. He has a sister in Philadelphia and knows a few words in english. As he was getting ready to leave, he handed me what I thought was a $50 Quetzal bill, signed it and told me it was to remember Guatemala. I was dumbfounded and we found some US one dollars bills and both of us signed the bills. He then produced another $50 Q for Bobby and Patti. Later on when we looked closer at the bills, it turns out they were 50 centavo bills so I didn't feel so bad. Still, it was a nice gesture on his part.

The people in El Chol were incredibly nice, I went to bed early - altitude does that to me - but the others stayed up longer and several more people came by. A young woman with her grandmother came and told us they lived just down the street and we could come there for water or anything we needed. Everyone was not so nice though, Bobby discovered one of his hub caps missing in the morning and is sure it was taken during the night. There were some young teenage boys hanging around that weren't as nice as the older people and young kids that came around. Still, all of us would go back to El Chol, we enjoyed it a lot.

The Great Quetzal Quest


We headed out this morning for the Quetzal sanctuary across the valley we were in and over the mountain. The road was good but lots of up and down and around with spectacular drops. We stopped at one hotel before the sanctuary which had room in their lot for us but the girl at the desk was rather vague about whether we could stay or not. She also had extremely red eyes and looked to have been crying a lot recently.

(entrance to Quetzal sanctuary)

We went on and had to pass right by the sanctuary as there was no way we could pull over or get in their small driveway. The same for the other hotel just past it. We got into the next town where I flagged down some cops and talked to them. They told me about another hotel farther on with a lot of room. I don't know what it is down here but people just don't understand what kind of room we need even when they are looking right at the rigs. We passed that hotel too as there didn't appear to be enough room to even pull into it. At a gas station farther on, they offered us a spot next to the pumps - with 24 hour armed security of course - and we said we might be back.

We returned to the first place and I convinced the desk girl that we should park in front of their hotel and eat at their restaurant. She finally agreed although to tell the truth she had never said we couldn't she was just so vague and indecisive that I couldn't tell if it would be all right or not. I finally kind of outlined what we were going to do and then said something like 'that's OK right?' and she kind of smiled and I stuck my hand out, shook her hand and thanked her. So, tomorrow at 5:15 AM we are going to get up !! and go down the road to look for this elusive bird.

On the way back to the first hotel, we stopped at a pulloff near the entrance to the sanctuary to check on whether they had seen any of the birds lately. Bobby went down and walked up above the nearby restaurant with a young guy who said they had been seeing some very early in the morning. While he was gone, I took this pic of an interesting palm. There are a lot of these here as well as azaelas and rhododendrons. The developed countryside is full of tented fields that the cops told me have ornamental plants inside for export to the US and Canada. Most of them looked like ferns as we drove by but there are also a lot of blooming orchids under cultivation.

I kind of insisted that I needed an internet fix so we set the dish up too here in the parking lot. I'm actually caught up on the blog now and will try and answer some email. It's getting late though and I have an early date with an endangered bird.

Luis showed up right at 9am and we headed for the ruins. There are 2 prices you can pay to get in, one just for the ruins which is $10 US and the other to enter a couple of archeaological tunnels that show some of the substructure and older buildings underneath, that costs $12 US additional. We passed on the tunnels, we'd read that one was semi interesting but the other not worth it. Neither of them are original but were made in order to reconstruct some of the buildings.

The first thing we saw as we got to the gate were about a dozen scarlet macaws hanging out at the ticket counter. They were free and there were several up in the trees but most of them were sitting on the kiosk or the chain link fence next to it or waddling around on the ground where there were food and water bowls for them. They come down and go into pens at night, probably mostly for their protection. They are very endangered in the wild and they are the bottom of the food chain as well. These were pretty tame and unafraid of people. It was nice to see them flying around and I understand the need to protect them from both human and wild predators. Mimi and I spent quite a while sitting around with them and getting our macaw fix. It's amazing how much they act and sound like our birds, particularly the sounds they make when they are comfortable and just hanging out - which from watching these and a few other wild macaws seems to be the main thing they do. I guess searching for food takes up a lot of time but other than that they just sit around alot and squabble with each other.

Copan is famous for a couple of things and one is the stelae which are in pretty good condition and with some of the original paint still on them.

Interesting info about this huge city state is that they settled in a rich river valley but as the city grew they built more and more temples and housing for the elite and eventually used up all the rich bottom land. Their food had to be grown on terraces on the hillsides and their health suffered from lack of nutrition. From examining bones they can tell that by the end the people suffered from malnutrition, even the elite. The guess is that this is one of the main reasons the city was abandoned.

In the ensuing years, the forest returned and it is once again a fertile valley. This is a picture from the top of one of the residential palaces looking across the valley. Maps show that there are the remains of buildings and roads across this whole area and up the opposite hills. It remains to be seen if the past will repeat itself and slash and burn farming will again wipe out this fertile land.

The other thing this site is famous for is a giant staircase in which the face of every step has carved writing on it. Unfortunately, when it was reconstructed they didn't know how to read mayan glyphs and they just put it together however it would fit. Now they have deciphered their written language, know that it is a true phonetic language, but only the first 15 steps were still standing and are in their original order - the rest is now gibberish.

Below is one of the elite residential areas, basically huge family compounds and temples.

Unfortunately the museum was closed and they appeared to be working on the roof. Inside is a famous reproduction of one of the temples as it would have appeared when the city was thriving. It is painted bright red with green and blue embellishment. I was really looking forward to seeing it, I did get a picture on a postcard. I'll scan it and put it up soon.

Once we were through with the ruins, we took one of the ever present Tuk Tuk's back to the town of Copan Ruinas. These little 3 wheeled taxi's are everywhere in Guatemala and here in Honduras. We looked around town some more, had lunch and then caught a collectivo van back to the border.


None of us wanted to spend another night in the dirt lot at the border so at 5pm we headed back towards the main highway. As it was getting dark we stopped at a large Texaco station we had seen on the way in and pulled down the street a bit to a large lot that seemed to have once been another gas station. There were some guys loading a truck there and they told me that the lot, the huge house in back of it and the Texaco station across the street all belonged to the same man and that I should ask at the house if we could park there.

I used the intercom at the gate and spoke with a woman who told me her husband was not home but that I should ask his employees at the station across the street. I first talked to a guy pumping gas, he said there was no security over there and it wasn't safe. He showed me another dirt lot with a high fence around it and said we were welcome to park in there with some gas trucks and that they had 24 hour security. I was sceptical and didn't want to stay in another dirt lot. He told me to go inside and talk to the cashiers. I went in and talked to one of the girls and she also said it wasn't safe across the street as there was no security. As I was telling her that we really liked it over there and didn't want to move into the dirt lot, the other cashier came over and got into the conversation also saying it is dangerous across the street, there is no security and you should come over here and park inside the fence. OK! OK!

I translated all this for Patti who was with me and we decided we had to take them seriously. As we walked back Patti told me that she had walked around inside the hotel next to where we were when we stopped here for gas on the way in. She said it was big and if we could fit through the arches there was a lot of room. So, in we went and it was much nicer than a dirt lot, had multiple swimming pools, restaurant, grass, and an armed guard. I went in the office and they said we could spend the night for $75 Quetzales which is $10 US. Yeah Baby! We're moving in!

We got through the arch, settled and level and we all jumped in one of the huge pools to wash off the dust of the truck lot and the dirt from the ruins. As we were floating around drinking beer we all agreed that this was our first time swimming with an armed guard. Señor Guard was standing a discreet 25 ft away with his shotgun slung over his shoulder. Outside of the one night we spent near the Tikal ruins, we've had armed guards wherever we have stayed in Guatemala. In the truck lot at the border, the border guards were armed and had told us they would watch us and our vehicles. In Rio Dulce the marina had several armed guards, a high fence and a gate boy. Here we had a guy with a shotgun making sure we were safe while swimming. I decided that I need to perfect a way to get them to also go get beer and walk the dogs.

We left the Marina and went to a nearby gas station, I asked them if there was anywhere we could dump our black tanks and the guy said sure and showed me a ditch in the corner of the lot. I made sure he understood it was black water I was talking about and he pointed out that the bathrooms drained into the ditch and still said it was all good so we dumped our tanks, a little difficult for us but we did it.

We were heading west across Guatemala now near the southern border. The area was still gorgeous, really clean and good roads and incredibly lush and green. It was like driving through a park, I can't get over the difference between this part of Guatemala and most of Mexico - no trash anywhere and the sides of the roads were trimmed and looked like someone had manicured them. About an hour later we went over some hills and the land became really dry and the vegetation sparse. There were small brown hills backed by larger mountains and it started looking a lot like the hills in southern California where I grew up. Low brown hills and rolling foothills with dry grass and occasional scrub trees. We lost the rain and cloud cover too and it began to get warmer.

We followed the map and turned south towards the Honduras border arriving at the border town of El Florido around 4pm.

It wasn't really much of a town, about a block's worth. There was a police station and I asked the cop standing there if there was a safe place to park on this side of the border. He told me to go down and pull in across from the border, that it was very safe. So, we pulled into a big truck parking lot at the border and parked.

Several money changers came up immediately and I liked one of them named Luis and got out to talk to him some more. In the end, we arranged for him to return for us with a car and take us into Honduras to the town of Copan Ruinas that night so we could look around and have dinner, bring us back and come back the next morning and take us over to the ruins. He showed up an hour later with a nice car and we had a good time with him in town. He didn't speak english but he was knowledgeable about the area and interesting to talk to. He had dinner with us but bought his own dinner and turned down the beer we offered him. His fee for all this was $300 Quetzales, about $40 US. Probably more than we could have paid taking a cab or bus on our own but it was easy and we enjoyed him.

Here we are heading across the Honduran border. It's about 12 km to the town of Copan Ruinas over a pretty steep grade. When you drop down the other side you are in a river valley with a lot more greenery and cultivated fields. Luis said that they grow tomatos and bell peppers mainly for export.

The town of Copan Ruinas is a total tourist town. Prices are high and we were low on money. Bobby and Patti's ATM card had gotten demagnetized because Bobby didn't realize his new money clip had a magnet in it and he was carrying the card in it. They can't get to their money and I can only draw a small amount out at the banks in Guatemala so we are pretty short on cash. We walked through all the shops and some of the stuff was nice but all of it was overpriced and most of it is from somewhere else. It was interesting people watching though and the restaurant we went to had a great view out over the valley. The tourist trick there was that the waitresses carried your food or beer in on their heads. It is common to see mayan women carrying great loads on their heads and they all seem to have good posture.

We got back to our dirt lot with the trucks about 9pm. Mimi and I slept well but the trucks coming and going kept Bobby and Patti awake.

Trip to Livingston continued -

The best part for us was the incredible scenery on the trip down. At first we were crossing a large lake with islands and bayous.

We went into some of the bayous and along one of the waterways some boys came up in dug out canoes and gave us flowers, of course they knew they would get a tip. Still, the flowers were gorgeous and smelled wonderful and they were cute.

None of the houses had road access, only water. It was almost like being in the swamps of Louisiana except that the jungle was higher and included tropical trees and birds.

We saw a lot of birds and once I told the boatman we were interested in birds, he took us to several small islands that were teeming with comorants and egrets. We also stopped at one house that sold cold sodas where I took this picture of a heron on the dock. They had incredibly cute kids, dressed to the nines, and a couple of semi-tame raccoons that came up into the open house for tortillas.



Unfortunately, the weather was not good the whole time we were in Rio Dulce, raining hard at night and most afternoons. The morning of our boat trip it was misting which became hard rain for awhile, it was also pretty cold. The boatman gave us pieces of plastic and we covered up to stay dry and it kept me pretty warm. Mimi had hurt her ribs the night before and didn't come on this trip, it was a good thing as she would have been freezing and shivering which isn't good with sore ribs.

About half way down, it dried up but stayed overcast and cool. We stopped at a spot where a hot spring comes up along the edge of the river but none of us were interested in getting wetter so we went on. At spots along the way there were some incredible mansions with covered docks holding boats worth more than the house. This is a spot where the really rich live near the very poor and where the number of rich boaters causes the prices to be very high.

We got back to Rio Dulce around 3pm and went to town for a bit. We were looking to use the ATM there but one didn't work and the other one ate the card of some backpackers ahead of us. Patti and Bobby were there and said that a guy immediately told them they could use his cell phone to call the number listed. Patti and Bobby had heard the story from some friends of ours that had a similar scam run on them in Guatemala, when they used the helpful person's cell phone, he dialed it and it sounded like the bank and asked for the pin number. I saw a warning about this on the screen at a couple of ATM's here as well. Anyway, they told this young couple about it and when we saw them later they said they had not used the cell phone but had to wait until Monday to try and get their card back from the bank.

(Our marina as we are leaving on the launch)

Today we rented a launch for the trip 35 miles down to the mouth of the river and the town of Livingston Guatemala.

It's only reachable by boat or ferry and is supposedly a Garifuna town, black slaves that escaped from sugar plantations in the Caribbean and ended up on the coast either harvesting hardwoods or fishing in the colonial times.



It's a quaint town, full of tourists and backpackers with a lot of restaurants and souvenir shops. It was raining most of the time we were there.

This is a look at the street from the restaurant, we had a great shrimp lunch.

Our waitress was Garifuna, one of the few we saw. We saw a lot more Maya than Garifunas working and walking around the town.

While we were walking up to the restaurant, we passed the town laundry. Just another reason that I'm glad I was born in the US, women work really hard down here.

Heavy rain during the night last night, it was fairly clear this morning so we went out driving around. We went to a fort up the lake in a narrow section. It was built by the spanish along with a chain they laid across the water from one side to the other to stop english pirates. The galleons were loaded up in this lake before heading for spain and those english guys were always trying to take them. The fort is cool, many small inside patios, big fireplaces and stone walls in the living areas and lots of towers and cannons.

From there, we went looking for a hot springs that comes over a waterfall into a cold creek. It is a long ways up a very bad road and it took us hours to drive there. Usually people go by boat and then walk about a mile to the hot waterfall, we arrived a half hour before they were closing and decided to skip going in. Interesting ride though and we even made it back to town and a gas station on reserve, it was a little nerveracking when the reserve light came on in the jeep.

Everything is pretty expensive in this area, it is a big resort for the very rich from Guatemala City and there are a lot of ex-pats on big expensive yachts around as well. We walked through some of the shops and were kind of appalled at the prices as well as the fact that many things were quoted in US dollars not Guatemalan Quetzales. Along with the rich, there are a lot of international backpackers around too, it's an interesting mix.

On our way to the fort we had stopped at the restaurant next door where there were several launches tied up and asked about a boat to go to Livingston. A guy came over and agreed to take us the next day at 9am, we were hoping for better weather.

We all took endless hot showers and spent several hours playing dominoes. Our never ending game is a lot of fun, we have kept score since New Years and the lead keeps moving around although Patti and I are still ahead.

The drive to Rio Dulce was beautiful. As you come into the town, the road narrows and is full of double parked trucks and produce stands that stick out into the street leaving about a lane and a half. This lasts for a couple blocks until you get on the bridge, the largest in Guatemala I was told, that spans the narrows between 2 large lakes. From the top of the bridge water, greenery and small islands stretch in both directions with many marinas full of expensive large boats.

When we first arrived, we went to a marina recommended by friends, Planeta Rio, but they wanted $24 US to boondock in a field! They quoted the price in dollars too. We left and parked the rigs at a gas station while Patti and I drove the jeep around looking for a spot to camp. The other place recommended, Bruno's, was really small and tight to get into and once in there we would be just inches from other parked cars. Plus, it would mean a U turn in the incredibly crowded area at the foot of the bridge over the river and we knew Bobby and Mimi would not like that.

We drove in and out of several other places and then spotted a huge space near the water while driving over and looking down from the bridge. It was inside a gated marina with good access and security. We went into the office to see if we could stay and there was a guy from Texas checking out. I was talking to them in spanish and he came over and asked me to intervene for him as they had told him his electric bill was over $800 US for 3 weeks. I talked to the employee and he agreed it was probably wrong, I translated the Texan's words that he would pay them $100 US and no more. It worked out and the Texan was very grateful and offered to buy us a drink or dinner.

We said we'd meet him later as we still had to figure out where we were going to stay. They gave us a price of $16 US a night and we took it, there weren't any other deals in town and we liked the security. Bobby and Mimi were pleased with it when we took them in, we had been gone over an hour and they were starting to get worried when we went back for them. Our new friend came by and we went over to his very nice, very big boat for drinks and walked down the road for dinner. The Marina turned out to be a really nice place, we were close to the water and near some nice bathrooms with showers and unlimited hot water. For an RV'er, unlimited hot water showers are a little bit of heaven! They even had a TV room with cable and some english channels.

Tick Count:

Mimi = 4
Jonna = 0
Hombre = 0
Chica = 0


There is peace and serenity in Casa Tortuga again. All is clean and tick free.

We're taking the dish down in a few minutes and heading south. Next update when we can.

RANT

I've always thought that exercise and sports are the refuge of the stupid. It's something they can do that makes them feel good after all those hours in school of not quite getting it. I have realized over the years that some people actually enjoy exercise, it is inconcieveable to me but then so are a lot of other things that people seem to enjoy. So, live and let live, they can go on and on about how far they ran or how fast or whatever and I can let my eyes glaze over and wait for them to talk about something interesting. I would really prefer though that they spare me all the bloody details as I am beyond unimpressed. I'm impressed when someone tells me they speak another language, or they know a computer language, or can write programs, or can read Mayan glyphs - I am not impressed when they tell me they can climb some freezing mountain using only ropes and an ax, I just think they are stupid. I mean, when you are on that proverbial deathbed will you really look back on your life and say "boy, I'm really glad that I spend 40% of my life on a stairmaster"?

I do understand that a certain amount of exercise is necessary for good health and to do some otherwise fairly interesting things. I've not managed to get myself to do it when I'm not being paid for it but maybe one of these days... I look at it completely as work, and like a good civil servant, I only did it when I was getting paid and preferable overtime. I think it should be like taking a shit; do it regularly, as quickly as possible, and don't talk about it in polite company.

So, yesterday when Patti, Bobby and Mimi decided it would be fun (???) to climb this muddy mountain near here I was dumbfounded but told them to have fun. I mean, there is a fast internet connection here that will be going away in a day - leaving it to go scramble through bushes and mud is beyond my understanding.

They came back raving about how it was straight up, slippery mud, not much view from the top and that they had to hold onto bushes and slide down it backwards. Gee! What a great time!

My attitude changed though when Mimi got up this morning and told me before I even had any coffee that she had found 4 ticks on herself. I was pissed, really really pissed. I'm sleeping with ticks because she wanted to kill herself on a muddy mountain? I yelled and ranted and pulled all the sheets and blankets off the bed and demanded that she take them to the laundry and then come back and vacuum the whole rig. I was not polite, not even close. I insulted all 3 of them and stomped around. Not one of my better performances and I do feel a little bad about it now. I'm still pissed about the ticks though and I keep feeling small things crawling on me. This will take some time to go away.

/RANT

By the way, here is my opinion on rants. You can write me and tell me how wrong I am if you want. I may answer you if I think you have anything intelligent to say, I may just hit delete. I don't really care what any of you think about it, this is my blog and I'm writing whatever I want, get your own blog if you feel differently about it, I won't read it. Maybe I'll be out hiking through ticks and mud instead. Maybe not.

I didn't get to post some pictures I took right before we left Akumal. Remember the little dog we rescued in Palenque? She has a new name, Maya, and a new family. Our friends who own the condo downstairs from us decided to adopt her after all. She is so smart and so cute that they couldn't resist her. So, she is heading for Ottowa Canada in a few weeks and seems really happy with David and Tandy. I think she was thrilled to be the only dog and seems to be thriving with the love and attention. It's a happy ending. They promised to send me a picture of her in the snow, they also promised she will have a little sweater and maybe booties.

This is another of my purchases during our trip to Chiapas over New Years. I got this at the same village I got the jaguar, the pot is about 18" high with several jaguars on it in relief. Really beautiful.

Wow! This part of Guatemala is just gorgeous! We drove about 100 km today, south through the Peten to a backpacker resort near the town of Poptun. The drive was incredible, it was like driving through a well kept park. The road was excellent, there was no trash to be seen anywhere, even the poorest houses had flowering bushes and trees planted around them and everything is in bloom. I was very impressed. This is my first time farther into Guatemala than Tikal and so far I am loving it. We've had excellent weather, cool and dry. It is what my friend Henning calls "good sleeping weather" as it gets quite cool at night but warms up into the mid 70's in the daytime.

The place we are staying, Finca Ixabel, is on a large tract of land covered in pine forest and grass with natural springs and ponds. There are horses to ride and a couple of scarlet macaws and lots of tours offered. The place has a dining room, several shady spots to hang out, lots of hammocks under the trees and a bar down by the swimming pond. It is on a kind of honor system, you write down what you eat or drink and settle up when you leave. They serve a buffet every night and have cooks available during the day. we are in the camping section, well away from the main buildings. It's a large grassy area under tall pines with a few cabins on stilts scattered around. If it weren't for the philodendron climbing the pine trees and the small parrots flying around I would think we were somewhere near Lake Tahoe in California.

Bobby and Patti and I drove into the nearby town to look around. Went to the market which had really beautiful produce and stopped at a woodworking shop to drool over the carved furniture. If we only had a way to get some of these gorgeous doors and cabinets made of Rosewood, Caoba and Ceder back to Akumal... sigh. They are very hard woods with beautiful grain but extremely heavy. We saw a round table, about 4 feet diameter, that was made from a single slab of Caoba highly polished. The base was carved into a wolf and cub, there were 4 chairs that matched and the whole set was a little over $300 US. A huge door had been carved, cut out and stained in subtle colors into a branching tree. The openings could be filled with glass for an interior door or wood for an exterior. Beautiful work and all made from Rosewood. Probably weighed a ton, cost around $165 US.

Tonight we went to the buffet for dinner, it was very good and it was interesting to talk to some of the other guests. Came home and started catching up on email, Mimi got the sat easily here and we are online for the several days we plan to stay here.

It's my 60th birthday! Since I never expected to live to be 30, I'm thrilled! We headed up to Tikal this morning, a perfect day for it as it was only 65° when we got up and never got over the low 70's all day. When we got to the park entrance, many miles before the ruins, Chica started barking at the guys who walked up to the RV and they informed us we were not allowed into the park with dogs. We've been rewarding her for barking at men who walk near the rig so it was our karmic reward. They wouldn't let us in so we parked the rig right at the entrance and unhooked the jeep to drive in.

This is Patti on one of the trails in the park. Also check out the size of the people in front of the opening on the first picture, these temples are huge!

We spent the whole day walking around the ruins and looking for birds as much as at the mayan ruins. Mimi and I were here 3 years ago but didn't get to all the areas that we did this time. There are several reasons why I put this site at the top of the list of Mayan sites. First,the location is spectacular. The ruins are in the center of a huge national park with beautiful high canopy jungle and an incredible number of plants, trees, orchids and ferns. Second, the amount of wildlife in the park is also incredible, more so than any other area I've visited. Third, it was a huge and powerful city for many centuries and the buildings that have been restored are well done and many that have not been are still in good shape. The number of huge temples, the elaborate palace residences with many levels like a modern apartment building and the still functioning system of canals and resevoirs are impressive.

This tree root coming out of an unrestored temple in a group they are currently working on caught my eye. It's one of 6 small temples flanking a larger one all of which are on one side of a huge square that has large, impressive buildings on all sides. Since they are working on this group, they had a mock up of what it would have looked like a thousand years ago, everything painted red and all of the buildings complete.

We saw some great birds, toucans, amazon parrots, oropendulas, trogans, many flycatchers, and some others I've forgotten the names of. We also saw spider monkeys, howler monkeys, coatimundi (see picture), and what we call a topo (looks like a huge rat). The howler monkeys were roaring the whole time we were there, they sound like a huge cat growling, and roared for hours in the evening where we were camped. We got back to the entrance about 4pm, the dogs were fine, and we returned to our spot in El Remate.



Walked down the street to a restaurant on the lake with Bobby and Patti for my birthday dinner and spent hours playing dominoes afterwards. I raised a drink in the general direction of our friends gathered near Patagonia Arizona, Salud! It was a great day!

(Here we are camped on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá in El Remate. Some of the local guys are playing soccer on the small field between us and the lake.)

Left for Guatemala today. We were only 11 miles from the border so got there around 10am. It took an hour and a half to clear both borders, pretty good actually. We changed some money with the money changers at the border and bought some gas as soon as we were in Guatemala. Gas is over $5US in Belize and about $3 US in Guatemala. We were pleasantly surprised that the famous 14 miles of really, really bad road just over the border was much better than the last time we came through. In fact, it was no where near the worst road we've been on. We got to El Remate on Lake Petén Itzá early in the afternoon. Found a place to park right on the lake and in front of a guy's shop who made really gorgeous wood carvings. So, we bought some stuff and he was happy for us to stay as long as we wanted.

Hombre was down by the lake doing his business when one of the horses there decided he didn't want any dogs around. The horse was coming at Hombre with his head down and poor Hombre was trying to finish up and get out of there. We figured out today that our dogs have been in 5 countries in their short lives, such international travelers!



Here's a view the other direction on the lake, looking towards Tikal which is about 30km away.

Patti, Bobby and Mimi went to the Belize zoo today while I stayed home and cleaned up the rig and made some banana bread.

This is one of the black Jaguar's from the zoo, you can see that he does have the spots under his coat.

Sue, who owns Amigos, had told us she would have her manager call the Mennonite meat delivery truck and ask them to stop by. They arrived around 9:30 and we bought a lot of meat from them. Good steaks, ground beef, roasts, bacon and some other stuff. We froze it and will take it into Guatamala with us. We'll probably hide it as we don't want to give it up if someone decides to look. I filled our freezer for about $20 US.

This is a Kinkajou, a nocturnal animal so they were sleeping.

After everyone came back from the zoo, we drove on to the Cayo district near the Guatemala border. The twin towns of Santa Elena and San Ignacio are a few miles down the road from the Inglewood RV park where we are staying. It was good to see Greg the owner as we pulled in. We went into San Ignacio this afternoon, stopped at Eva's where we got to talk to our friend Bob the owner. He remembered us as well and we spent some time chatting. We hit the bank, the grocery store and the liquor store. I've got to tell one story about Belizean rum. I loved a drink here called just rum and lime and I had tried to duplicate it everywhere. I thought the hint of graham cracker taste was due to the limes, I tried a lot of different types of limes trying to find the one. I also tried using sugar or sugar syrup and a bunch of other stuff. I could never duplicate it. Today I bought a bottle of One Barrel rum, made in Belize, and found the taste! It is in the rum, I thought it was in the limes. I'm buying some more of this rum tomorrow.

We left Akumal and drove to Chetumal for the night. Got in early in the afternoon and Mimi and I went off to get the tire fixed on the jeep. It had a nail in it and a slow leak. Got that fixed for $4 US and found the gas plant and filled the RV with propane. We were parked in a huge mall parking lot and we went to the grocery store and to Office Depot and got copies of all of our vehicle paperwork. About 9pm, the security guard came around and told us we couldn't stay there overnight. He was pretty nice and full of ideas of where we could park outside his jurisdiction. A real cop came by and said he would show us a safe spot to spend the night. He took us over into a neighborhood next to a square with basketball courts and playgrounds. There were a lot of kids hanging out but the cop told me that he wouldn't bring us somewhere that wasn't safe and that the police would be patrolling all night. When I looked a little dubious he repeated that it was a good neighborhood and they never had any problems there. I said OK and we parked. We sat outside on a low wall for a couple hours, drinking beer and talking to some teenagers that came over. It did seem like a good area and we slept easily that night.

In the morning we stopped to get gas and while we were there Kathe and Colleen showed up. We had left them a phone message that we were at the mall but they figured we had to move and came looking for us. We got to pick their brains a little more for info on Guatemala, take an envelope with some money for their family there, and spend a few minutes chatting and laughing. The guys at the Pemex had tried to rip off both Mimi and Bobby, they took his picture and we had gone over and made a complaint. The guy who was in charge turned out to be Kathe and Colleen's friend and he is the one who got another guy fired a few weeks before who had tried to rip them off. Heh!


The border took over an hour but wasn't a huge hassle. The dog's papers weren't there as they had promised, just like last time. This time we figured out that for about $10 bucks more we could skip the whole hassle, pay the fine and get the papers issued right there. OK. That works for me. We had worried about the search as we read the blog of a birding group that had crossed a week or so before us. They had a lot of stuff taken from them so we were careful and hid the meat and did our best to hide the satellite dish. No problems, they asked us about booze and fruit and didn't really look much.

We stopped for lunch in Corozol and then drove straight through to Amigos restaurant outside Belmopan, one of our favorite spots. We had dinner and played dominoes at one of their tables, chatted with a lot of Belizeans and spent the night.

This is a picture of a Jabiru Stork taken at the Belize zoo. This stork stands over 4.5 feet tall! We actually saw one in the wild as we were driving towards Chetumal from Escarcega, it was out among the reeds in a wetlands area. More pictures from the Belize zoo coming soon.

We watched the superbowl with RV friends Bevin and Janelle. We met them in San Miguel last year, it's so nice to keep seeing people you like all over the continent. I love that. With Patti and Bobby, that made 6 of us rooting for the Seahawks. It seemed like the referees were playing for the Steelers though, bummer.

Time has been flying by, we had lots to do to get ready for this trip. Mainly stuff about the condo, chairs recovered, curtains made and hung, etc. Now we are loading the rig and trying to figure out how the stuff that came out of it expanded so much. Especially since we are leaving a lot of stuff here that we won't need in the south.

I woke up before dawn the other day - very strange for me - went out on the deck and took a lot of pictures as the sun came up. It was incredible how the light changed the look of everything.