San Marcos

We have now been in San Marcos for three days. It is a little town across the lake from San Pedro and it is much cleaner and relaxed here. The hotel we are staying at is called La Paz and we are living in a dormitory like house with 2 Germans and two Montrealeans, luckily for us they all speak English. San Marcos is known for being a center of holistic healing so there are massages and yoga and meditation going on all the time everywhere. We have been doing yoga every morning at our hotel and then going in the traditional Mayan sauna at 6 every night, it is very relaxing. It is definitely a nice change of pace from San Pedro which is mostly a party town. There are also very clean beaches to swim at here. We have basically been spending our days reading, swimming, yogaing, saunaing, eating, and chilling. We are thinking we will stay for a week and then move on to someplace new, maybe scuba diving! The massages here are around 20 dollars US for an hour so we are definitely going to get one of those sometime this week as well. The whole area is full of amazing gardens and huge avocado trees which sustain a very friendly and entertaining population of dogs. We are having a really good time here and are plotting our next move, we miss all of you guys, see you soon!

Here is a link to a map of where we have been

San Pedro

We are now in San Pedro. We coincdentally arrived at the dock at the same moment that a float with a little girl was being driven down the street, so our intial reaction was a little out of whack. Within three minutes of being in town we were in our room and had paid for the night. San Pedro is definitely the oddest town we have been to yet. There are 18 different schools here to choose from so now we are attempting to choose one of them. We got a private room with a private bath for 60 Quetzales which is about 4 dollars each a night. I havent quite figured out how to get the pictures up here yet but it will be soon. We are still just exploring around here checking things out but it seems like a cool place and we will probably stay for a while. Talk to you all soon.

The bags are back in town!

The past few days were full of stressing about our bags and walking around the town, orienting ourselves. We called the airline the next day, and they said they still didn't have our bags... we were starting to get worried, but they said the bags were in cali and would be there within 6 days. the next day we called and we basically learned that they were there at the airport but they were waiting to send them to us for some reason, so we just went back to the airport. our bags were among a lot of other bags in a big dark room, so we finally got them. we also asked them for some money for having to pay to get back there which worked out well.

we have befriended the manager of one of the biggest tourist bars in town, although i chose not to be shot girl! ha! but he has shown us some cool bars, restaurants and told us about some of the good places to visit and how to save money and not get scammed.

we left ashanti's place in search of a cheaper place (and one who didn't have cats and kids waking us up early in the morning!) and tonight we are just taking it easy and staying at a dorm style hostel where joel and i will share a bunk bed... then at seven Am we leave for panajachel, a town on the lake, and from there we will go to san pedro, where we will sign up for a spanish school. san pedro is supposed to be pretty fun and has some of the cheapest and best schools and lodging. we've heard of so many places to see, it's pretty exciting to learn about how affordable they are.... we will keep everyone posted... and will post some pictures soon now that joel has his camera back...

oh, the food here is really good. its simple and the best of it is really just beans and rice and queso fresco, we eat that probably every meal. the tortillas are also really good, they are made to order thick corn tortillas, yum! oh, and avocados grow all over the place here, so we've been eating lots of avocados and guac. we'll write again in a couple of days!!

Our First Days.....

We bagan our first day in Guatemala walking around the airport expecting some sort of official 'stamping of the passport' which never ocurred. Then at the baggage claim we could not find our bags so we went to ask one of the workers if they could help us. They said that 'the bags are not here, but this happens a lot and they will send them to your hotel tommorow' and they gave us 50 dollars for our troubles. So we caught a shuttle that took us about 45km to Antigua. We spent a lot of our first day walking around and napping. Our hotel is called "Ashanti's Place" We went out that night to an Irish pub and met some interesting people. Claire was offered a job being the 'shot girl' at a bar called Mono Loco for Friday. She hasn't decided whether or not to do it yet. The people are very nice for the most part and our Spanish is improving. Today being our second day we had Karen at the hotel call the airport for us and they told her that it could take up to six days to get our bags. So, we went out and bought some essentials to hold us over. Im not looking forward to the phone call into the airport tommorow morning but it is a crash course in Spanish I guess..... We are having a really good time and are excited to move around to some other places. My camera charger is in my bag so I dont have any pictures yet but we will soon be posting some. Here is a link to some pictures of our hotel/house:

http://antigua-ashantisplace.tripod.com/id5.html