Sunday, June 1, 2008

Comprende si!

Lots of things have happened since my last post, but I don't know where to begin. This easy life of traveling has taken over and has become my life so trasitioning from place to place and events that have happened have become a blur. The best part about the past few weeks is that I have friends. Friends that are so much different than those of my previous time traveling where I lived in one place, but now friends that I meet in every town I go to. Sometimes this is hard as you are always saying goodbye to good people, but I seem to run into the good ones time and time again in different places.
After our time at Trippy's we found it too hard to leave. We made so many amazing friends there that we spent 5 nights in Antigua doing Spanish classes....which were really hard to do and then headed back. The Spanish teachers were amazing and I really really liked learning at the pace which they taught. If I had the right frame of mind, Guatemala and its Spanish classes is the place to learn. Antigua was great a very cute colonial town and we made lots of friends their too. We met up with our friend Erik from Sweden and all of his friends here (and yes Devin there is a story here for you). Plus everyone that needs a break from Lake Atitlan stays at the same hostel we stayed at in Antigua and made tons of friends through that.

We just couldn't stay away though and headed directly to San Pedro the second school got out on Friday. The second weekend was amazing. I have some great pictures, some of the best of the trip yet which I know I know I need to upload but have again forgotten my camera on my trip to the internet cafe today. I started a love affair with a drink called Quezalteca. It is the local "hooch" (I guess that is what you would call it). We carved cups out of mangos, used the mango to mix with the delicious liquor which did I mention costs 8 Q ($1) a flask. Naming our mangos was also a good time as well as our walkie talkie radio station 98.7 which I DJ on. There is a return bottle policy and found myself at one point returning 40 bottles to get us more Quezal you get one Q back for every bottel. Don't worry there were a bunch of us drinking it. Every night was a blast and I can not recommend a place more for any one to go visit. Sunday we hiked to the Nose. A very tall point around the lake which we were told was do able in flip flops...very very false information. I fell a total of 4 times and two being near death. At one point I was hanging off a cliff with my legs dangling grasping onto vines. The next near death resulted in a very gaping wound on my shin which is still in the process of healing 2 weeks later. Monday though we had to say goodbyye. Tears were actually shed when leaving our great friends there. Luckily a few came with us to Antigua for the next few days which made it a bit easier on us.

Antigua the next week was good. It was sort of an interesting stay because we were a bit sad about leaving Trippy's and knowing we had to leave Guatemala. Days were spent exploring the market and not doing much as the city was pretty rainy. The Man United Chelsea match was a really fun day as many of our European friends supported their teams. We were also able to run into more friends from many towns ago at the bar we watched the game at.

After a pretty long travel and a chance in Copan Honduras to actually see some ruins even though we were so near so many...we are here in Utila. This island is amazing. Very Carribean. We are diving at a place called Underwater Visions. The staff there is amazing and I have a very cool dive instructor who teaches so well. I just got my advanced cert today and am starting a rescue course tomorrow. By Thursday I will be a DMT (Dive Master in Training) the best part about that is dive masters are always needed at dive shops. It is very expensive to get PADI certified this far, but once you have a job you can make the money back very easily. Hopefully I can go some where eventually where I can dive master. In the mean time I hope to waitress here two days a week to make some money even though I will make here only about 20 dollars a shift. Lily and Jenna are meeting us here to room with us in our house. It is going to be interesting living with 5 girls and one boy. I can't explain though how nice it is to have a house to come back to when you are so tired from diving all day. Plus we have to be at the boat by 6AM so you stay out of the distraction of new hostel people coming to party.

Well this was just a breif overview of things going on. I can't even begin to discribe how lucky I am to be doing this. I miss everyone at home so very much. I became so overwhelmed by it yesterday. I do have a cell phone now so send me texts. Pictures to come! Love

B

2 comments:

Rachael said...

My brave, courageous, and adventurous Bethy...I love reading about your awesome adventures. Keep up the blogging!!!!

Devin said...

thanks for the shout-out!