Vacation!

I'm back! Alive and well, save for the weird bites all over my neck and arms (more on that after i figure out what in the WORLD they are). I got back yesterday night from 7 days in Guatemala, which involved visiting 5 different places, about 24 hours total of travel, and lots of random adventures that I don't even really know WHERE to start with...
so to explain a little first, here is a basic layout of the week:

Friday night, in El Salvador: celebrated halloween 8-year old style with a costume and games party. Dressed up as Pippi Longstocking and got 2nd place in apple bobbing. The best college haloween yet.

Saturday Morning at 5:30: Arrive at Tica Bus Station, 6 hour ride to Guatemala. Bought some sketchy looking pupusas at the border, arrived in a random part of Guatemala and took at taxi to the Rebuli bus station, where we got on a 1960's US school bus and rode for 3 hours (and$25 quetzales, about 3 bucks) to Panajachel, a city on Lake Atitlan. The bus ride may have been the most frightening few hours of my life, since they go about 70 miles an hour on curves that are just a few feet away from HUGE cliffs, but we got there in one piece and for only $3, so i guess i can't really complain.
We were a group of 10, but split off into a group of 6 that went across the lake and a group of 4 of us, who stayed in Panajachel for 2 nights. Pana is kind of crazy and mildly touristy, but really beautiful and right on the lake. Met some interesting international travellers, had a bagel for the first time in 2 months, bought some linen pants, paid $5/night for a decent hotel on the water.

Monday night, me and my friend Katie went from Panajachel by boat to San Marcos, another town on the lake that is a lot smaller and full of hippies. We stayed in Hotel Unicorn for $5 in the "Uranus Room" and enjoyed the company of the very excentric Jessie from Brooklyn while using the communal kitchen to make some dinner. Very randomly, we saw our friends who were staying in San Pedro, a 15 minute boat ride away, and decided to meet up with them the next day to go to Fuentes Georginas, some natural hot springs in the western highlands of guatemala.

Tuesday morning, after enjoying our free self-made breakfast of pancakes at the unicorn hotel, we headed to San Pedro, met up with our 6 friends, and hopped on another crazy 3 hour bus ride to Xela, where we got a 30 minute taxi up the mountain into the clouds to Fuentes Georginas. It was SO bizzarre to actually be COLD for once in 2 months, and the hot springs were like one huge swimming pool sized hot tub...it was amazing. The ony downside was that though our cabins had fire places and cooking fires, they didnt have a store there so we were forced to eat at the fuentes restaurant, which was a little more than we wanted to pay for 3 meals. Since we were staying there, we got to use the hotsprings all night, so i was in the water for a solid 8 hours and when i got out my feet were so pruny that it hurt to walk. defiantely worth it though.

Wednesday morning, we decided that fuentes was fun but a little too expensive for another night, so we headed down the mountian again and got on yet another 3 hour ride (this time in a van) to Chichicastenango, also in the highlands but a little closer to guatemala city. Here we mostly just went to dinner, saw what there was to see of the tiny town, hung out in our $3/night hostel, being very confused by the unprecedented amount of fire works going off for seemingly no reason. we still dont have an answer for that.

Thursday we went to the HUGE HUGE HUGE market the next day, where I attempted to avoid my consumerism but caved and bought a guatemalan shirt. Unlike el salvador, guatemala has a very strong and beautiful indigenous culture, so almost all the women wear the traditional skirt and dress, and it made me want to wear every color all at once. After we were all marketed out, we hopped a 3-hour van ride to Antigua, a little colonial town that is the tourist center of guatemala. That night we found Kafka hostel for $5/night and ordered some pizza and played cards and enjoyed the only dark beer that central america has to offer (unlike the half water that they sell in el salvador)...8 college students staying in a cheap hostel eating pizza drinking beer and playing cards. sometimes it just is fun to be a stereotype i guess : )

Friday morning we got up at 530 am and climbed into a van (after realizing we were locked INTO our hostel and had to wake up the night guard to let us out..) and drove an hour or so up to Pacaya, an active volcano. After one hour in a NW-like hike, we got above the tree line and climbed up and down volcanic rocks for about 30 minutes before we got the the top, which even after a really rough hike, was the MOST AMAZING THING i have EVER seen. I was standing INCHES away from FLOWING LAVA!!! FLOWING LAVA!!! Nothing can even describe what it is like to see lava and roast marshmallows on it and be standing on a rock with LAVA under it. On a volcano in guatemala. It was AMAZING. See pictures for my attempt to show how awesome it was. I think my shoes got a little melted...but it was so worth it. The rest of the day we hung out in Antigua which was all to expensive and American-Europeanized for our taste, but still fun times because traveling with 8 really fun and crazy people is always great. We found a kooky little noodle restaurant run by an english guy and enjoyed some tofu for the first time in a while.

Friday morning we headed out of antigua on our last, and maybe most terrifying, bus ride. I paid $1 to fear for my life to get to guatemala city....i love being cheap (thanks, dad). We got to the tica bus station to buy return tickets then went to pollo campero, the fast food mecca of central america, for an artery-clogging breakfast before a solid 7 hour bus ride home.

SO many more stories, obviously....but all in all, an amazing week. I wish i had a week of REST now, since it was still a pretty busy week. After my first traveling without my parents or a school group, I am madly in love with adventurous, spontaneous, cheap travel--and may have to do it for a while before i figure out what to do with my life. I mean, I may have feared for my life while on a bus, or wondered whether many things i was eating would give me some sort of stomach parasite, or wondered where i was even going to end up in the end of the day, but for a preson who loves to be in control and is a pretty big hypo-chodriac worrier, there is no better therapy than forced care-free adventurous travel.

And now i am back in El Salvador, ready for the second half of this wonderful program, tired from doing a huge load of laundry and hoping that I can eat the rest of the weekends this quarter after my vacation spending...and even if i can't, it was SO WORTH IT. (remember the LAVA?!)

hope all is well up north with the day light savings changes and all. If you are reading this, it's probably safe to assume I miss and love you a lot.

Peace & Love.
::sabine