First Days in Central America

      We made it to Guatemala yesterday and already it seems we are acquainted to the Latin American style of travel, dealing with hostel and bus negotiations and hoping that my understanding of Spanish is correct. After landing in Guatemala City we took the advice of everyone, including the local Fransisco who we sat next to on the plane, and got the hell out of the city. There wasn't much bargaining for taxi's as I had expected and we needed up paying 80 quetzals (a whole 10 US dollars) for the ride to Antigua. We made the hour or so ride  and searched the small colonial style town for a place to stay. After attempts to find the hostel we originally wanted, we ended up in a private room at the Banana Azul hostel. Paying around 20 US dollars for the room wasn't bad but it seemed we could maybe have found something nicer. Maybe it was a good thing to start with a bad hostel so everything else can only get better. Alex complained of the smell..I said, "welcome to Guatemala".  We walked around Antigua that evening for a bit but decided to turn in early so we could wake up and catch the bus to Lake Atitlan, about 2.5 hours away. 

   This morning our alarm went off at 6 and we got ready for the trip. We tried to make breakfast in the hostel kitchen but were met with dirty dishes, no clean spoons and the old drunk Russian named Vladmir, who had preached to us about god knows what the night before. We decided to pack our granola and not worry about the milk we had bought. After grabbing some coffee we found the bus stop where we met a man telling us the bus wasn't going to stop there but he would take is there. We were cautious because we had just turned down a person offering the same courteous escort  but we decided to trust this rather round man. We followed our newly found guide to where the bus was and without a doubt our bus was one of the "chicken busses" we had both read about and had been warned about. Trusting that everything would be fine we handed over our bags to be tied to the roof and found our spot among the locals for our ride to Atitlan. The ride, although longer than two hours, went off without incident and we made it to a town called Panajachetal on Lake Atitlan around lunch time. We walked around for an hour or so then hoped a boat to the town of San Pedro across the lake. The boat ride was less than an hour and we found ourselves at home quickly, getting a great hostel with views if the lake and surrounding volcanoes. 

    Right now, Alex is asleep, dreaming about the countless dogs and puppies she's seen and petted on the streets and luckily she says the ones in this town seem very happy. Tonight we plan on grabbing some Cheila's (beer) and enjoying this almost beach feeling town that was called by one local a place for the" heppies".