walking on hot coals

walking on hot coals
Current mood: tired
Category: Travel and Places

the dogs still run in mexico, and sleep on top of mountains

I left San Pedro de languna together with David, my spanish friend. We took a shuttle bus out of there heading Antigua. My friend Patrick I met in mexico city had told me to go to the Black cat hostel(because the food was so good...)

la laguna :D

David- :D

On the bus we met 2 more spanish guys, so it soon turned into a spanish castelan speaking party... much harder to understand than south american spanish and sometimes a little fruity, lispy sound. Anyhow, cool dudes.
I hung out with them and David for a few days in antigua, made some more friends and climbed a volcano together with david.
that was freaking awesome, I got to be as close as 2 meters from the burning lava, and form now and then huge chunks of burning coal dropped down the mountain and you had to be seriously careful not to be in their paths... wicked!

David lighted a joint up there, as if he probably did this everytime he went some place special. The sun was setting and the sky was amazing. As we walked back with the group to hike back to the bus (it had been an hour an a half hike up the mountain), we saw the red hot lava on the mountainside!
Two lesbian girls that were in our group shocked our mexican guides as they kissed up that mountain, they're not used to this out here yet. We overlooked Guatemala citynight lights from that mountain. As we got down from the mountain there was a maria de guadelupe procession going on, catholicism sure is colourful out here!

I left Antigua one morning, together with a bunch of Israeli kids I had met. Nice people but when they start speaking hebrew, they're a pretty closed group.
We took a chicken bus to Guatemala city, I had a nice chat on the bus with a local Guatemalan girl that studied philosphy in Guatemala city. She had a kid already and showed me some pictures. She was nice and told us where to get off and she got us a cab. The cab took us to a cheap shuttle place that took us to Coban. We arrived around % and took another shuttle to the small town of lanquin. We got us a bed at the hostel/cabana place.
The town was very small but it had the Semuc champey and bat caves nearby so that was a reason for there to be a hostel.

Apparently Israeli people like guatemala and even in a small city like lanquin you could thell their influence. The small restaurant served typical Jewish food and there were tiendas and hotels called shalom and the such.
My jewish friends explained to me that after their army service (which starts at 18, for both boys and girls), they usually travell a while, and that guatemala is a favourite destination.
I hung out a while at that hostel and I visited Semuc Champey and went for a swimming cave excursion, where we had to swim holding a candle in one hand!! Pretty hard not to get your candle extinguished, and if you did it was hard getting it going again. It was pretty cool and scary though! Me and 2 others kind of wandered off too far as the group was retreating already, we didn't know it was the end of the tour and we weren's supposed to go further... and we only had 2 more candles going among the four of us, scary! so slightly nervous we swam back hoping not to kill our flames. We got back though...

After Lanquin I went to flores and got myself a bed at the los amigos hostel, a nice place run by 2 dutch guys and their wives.. I think. nice people

I went for a sunrise tour to tikal the other morning and had to get up at 3 to take the bus and get to tikal early enough. We climbed temple four that overlooked the jungle surrounding tikal and watched the sunrise.
even though it was misty and cloudy it was still an awesome experience. Everybody in the gorup was quiet and we heard the sounds of the jungle. Holler monkeys, toucans. Visiting tikal was Awesome and we saw a bunch of wildlife. It's still pretty wild out here!

I'll leave it with this for now, I'm feeling tired and slightly uninspired to go into much detail. I haven's had too much sleep lately.
I'll catch up with all of you later... excuse me for not writing better or more.

much love

steven