Chichicastenango & Antigua

The van, leaving Lago de Atitlan
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Callum, Dylan, and Dan, three Australian boys, have been travelling from Vancouver, heading towards Panama.  Dylan worked in Santa Cruz with me for 2 weeks, and when the boys were leaving they invited Kim and I to come along to El Savadore with them because we are both interested in learning to surf.  Being from Australia, all 3 boys do a lot of surfing and each have several surf boards in their gigantic Chevrolet van.  A ride to El Salvadore in a private van, as opposed to numerous crammed, noisy, and unreliable chicken busses was pretty appealing, so we decided to join the boys on the journey.

The gigantic Chervrolet van, in Chichicatenango
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After leaving Santa Cruz we spent one night in Chichicastenango and had quite a difficult time navigating the narrow streets with our gigantic van, but we finally found a place to park in front of our hotel.  We had a very hard time leaving Santa Cruz.  For some reason the boys were unable to pay their bills using pay pal - it wouldn't accept their cards.  They spent close to 2 hours or more trying to get it to work.  Once we were finally allowed to leave, we took the lancha to Panajachel and spent close to half an hour driving around Pana trying to figure out a way out of town, but kept running into one way streets that went the opposite direction that we wanted to go in.  We were pretty exhausted and happy to just relax, get a bite to eat, and go to bed very early that night.  The next morning we were rudely awaken at 5am by some fireworks which in our groggy minds sounded very much like gunfire very near us.  After getting back to sleep, and sleeping a good 12 hours, we finally awoke, had some breakfast, and explored the busy, very crowded market.

Market chaos in front of the church in Chichicastenango
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After wandering around the market for a couple hours we decided we were ready to leave Chichi to head to Antigua.  The drive took us a couple hours and there were very few signs to Antigua, so we pretty much had to stop at every intersection to make sure we were still heading in the right direction.  Once in Antigua we had the same problem navigating the narrow streets, many of which were one way, in the wrong direction.  However, we finally found a parking spot near the Sushi restaurant we had been drooling over for the entire drive from Chichi.  The sushi was far from cheap, but Callum was nice enough to treat the rest of us - 'Visa es muy bien aqui????'  'Si, si, senor.'  After our huge, delicious sushi feast Kim and I went to grab us some coffee's and the boys went to take out more cash (Dylan must have been pick-pocketed at the market in Chichi, because he lost almost 1000 Q), and to check their emails.  When we finally re-grouped at the van, we were shocked to see a tire clamp on our van with a 250 Q ticket for parking across some red line on the curb.  Fortunately the office was nearby and it only took a few minutes and 250 Q to get the clamp off.  Then we got back in the van to try find the 'Earth Lodge,' situated about a 20 minute drive from Antigua, with very minimal directions:  'Follow that road straight up, it will start to climb....then I think you take a right somewhere.'  Well we stopped several people along the road to ask for better directions, but nobody seemed to know where Earth Lodge was, or they happily gave us some directions but we were sure they were incorrect.  We ended up in some village and found a phone booth to call the Earth Lodge for directions (we had tried before but only gotten an answering machine).  Fortunately someone answered and told us we had missed the turn off about 10 minutes ago, so we back-tracked and finally reached our destination.  Finally, after a grueling, frustrating ride along a pretty frighteningly narrow and steep road we arrived at the secluded and peaceful "retreat" with amazingly beautiful views of the volcanoes, avocado fields, and villages.

Just taking a stroll through the market, Chichi
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We slept close to another 12 hours last night...possibly due to the elevation.  Lake Atitlan is at 1562 meters, and we are about 1700 meters here.  We went for a small hike today, not realizing what elevation we were at here, but realized quite quickly that we must be higher than we had been because we were all out of breath very quickly.  In fact, Kim and I were both shocked and a little alarmed at how out of breath we were just from walking to the washroom in the morning, which is very close to our cabin.

Market in Chichi
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After a couple days at the "Earth Lodge" we returned to the city of Antigua, primarily to hear a member of the "Buena Vista Social Club" play in one of the bars on Wednesday night.  The music was incredible and we all had a wonderful time salsa dancing.  We had met up with many people who had stayed in Santa Cruz at the same time as us, so it felt a lot like being back home with some old friends.  We spent the next day relaxing and enjoying all that Antigua has to offer.  Antigua is a very pretty colonial city that is over-run by gringos.  However, this makes it very tourist friendly and pretty easy to feel at home in.  Kim and I had the impression that we would be heading to El Salvadore Friday morning, but the boys decided they needed a couple extra days in Antigua, so we booked a shuttle bus to Copan Ruinas (where I began my trip), along with 2 other Canadian girls we had met in Santa Cruz.