Nos llegamos en Guatemala!

After a busy and rainy week in Florida, finally the day of departure came. We arrived in Guatemala City on Tuesday afternoon--the flight in was beautiful, over incredibly green plains and tons of mountains. We hightailed it out of the city and came to Antigua, our destination for the last few days.

Antigua is the old colonial capital and is a clean, quaint town with a big central park and pretty colorful houses. The city has been rocked by 4 or 5 major earthquakes in the last two hundred years, the result of which was the government getting tired of rebuilding and so eventually moving the capital to Guatemala City. There are awesome ruins all over town of churches that have been destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries. Pictures will come later when I find a faster internet connection.

Antigua is surrounded by a bunch of volcanoes. Yesterday we hiked up Volcan Pakaya, an active volcanoe about an hour from the city. Pakaya is a plant that used to be all over the volcanoe and had some kind of medicinal property. It´s pretty much gone now. The hike was straight up hill for a mile or so, and the last part was over lava rock from an eruption five years ago. As we kept hiking, suddenly it became extremely hot under my feet. Arturo, our guide, cheerfully announced that was the hot lava flowing! Thanks to the lack of regulations in the Guatemalan tourist industry, as we reached the top we got to stand directly next to hot, flowing lava. Awesome. Some Israelis had purchased bags of marshmallows from kids at the bottom of the volcanoe and roasted them over the lava. The sunset and then we hiked back down in the dark. One guy from our group wandered onto the wrong path and came down on a different side of the volcanoe. But don´t worry, he´s in the Army and boasted that he has excellent night vision.Today we wandered through the ruins of the Church of San Francisco, much of which is dedicated to Brother Pedro Betancourt, a Franciscan monk who opened a school and hospital for the poor. People still pray to him and leave offerings to ask or give thanks for better health.

It feels great to be somewhere new and surrounded by Spanish. Tomorrow we leave for Lake Atitlan for some days of beach and then a week of Spanish classes. Hasta luego!