The last hoorah!

Ok. I know it’s been a bit too long, but time has again escaped me. It’s been another busy month or so and Guatemala seems like it was months ago, but the impression Guatemala left on us is one that won’t soon be forgotten.
After arriving back to the boat after our trip to Tikal, we began getting ready to head away again for a couple of weeks inland. We wiped the boat down with diluted bleach to keep mould at a minimum, covered any holes with netting so no bugs could get in, made sure our lines were secure and she wouldn’t rub the dock in a NE wind, covered her as best we could to protect her from the sun, and with all this done we were ready to get underway.We took the launcha (water taxi) to Fronteras, where we caught the early morning bus to Guatemala city which would carry on to Antigua, a beautiful colonial city just 1 ½ hours from Guat city. On the way we met a young Aussie cruising couple who were also heading inland with their 2 gorgeous little girls and who had been cruising as a family for 3 years. It always amazes us to see couples cruising with their children and I always marvel at the experiences the kids must be having. Anyway…we also met a backpacker travelling alone who happened to be from Toronto, but who spent quite a bit of time in the Huntsville area just north of Thornbury.
Before we knew it, we were beginning to see signs of colonial architecture and soon were approaching the beautiful main square situated in the middle of Antigua. Beautifully placed in the highlands and surrounded by Agua, Acatenango and Fuego volcanoes, Antigua feels like you’ve stepped out of Central America and into Europe.
The city has a wonderful feel to it, surrounded by little shops selling mayan treasures and restaurants tucked away in every corner, with elegant squares and beautiful churches surrounding the main square. You can walk for days around the streets and not see it all and never get bored. Mike and I developed a quick friendship with our new Canadian friend Yasmine and together we walked the streets in search of a posada to spend our nights in Antigua. We came across “Casa Amarillas” which is more of a hostel type accommodation, but for $17.00/night we got a large room with a TV, shared bathroom and huge breakfast…now how can you beat that? Being in the highlands, when the sun goes down for the day, we were met with cold temperatures. Our first cold temperatures since the mountains in Venezuela, and once we dressed properly, it was soooo nice to be cool. Our first night the 3 of us enjoyed the ambiance of a beautiful restaurant that was host to an Andean flute band, which was very lovely to listen to.
The next day we decided to do a hike to an active volcano. Unfortunately you have to have a guide to do the hike which we are unaccustomed to, having done all our hiking on our own. A group of backpackers from all over the world and us 3 Canadians packed into a van and headed up to Pacaya volcano. We decided to do the afternoon hike so we could watch the sunset on the volcano and the other reason was that there is live lava flowing and we thought it would be cool to see the lava at dusk. We hiked about 3 miles up up up, but was strange for us hiking with a group at different athletic levels. We had to stop a lot, and to our surprise we met quite a few other groups on the trail. We finally arrived at the top of the volcano where you start to walk on the hardened lava. We were shocked at the amount of people on the volcano.There had to have been 100+ people wandering around…people heading off the trail and walking on untouched sections of the hardened lava, people everywhere. Now this…we are very unaccustomed to. To us this sort of thing is a sacred area and shouldn’t be treated like an attraction, but it clearly is. And, unfortunately unbeknownst to us, the lava wasn’t running this particular week, so all we saw was a little tiny stream of lava running deep in the crevices. It was still a cool thing to see, but the amount of people that were there was a bit shocking and took away from the experience.
The next day we had decided to carry on to Lago Atitlan as we had much to see so we wanted to get a move on. I woke up feeling not right and by the afternoon was committed to the toilet, garbage can and bed. Originally I thought I had a bit of food issues, but must have picked up a bug as I had aches, pains and chills accompanied by the other fun stuff that comes along with being sick. By the next day I was feeling better and we decided to continue on.
We arrived in Panajachel, the main town at the north end of Lago Atitlan and checked in to a room, and by that night I was feeling more like myself. Ol’ iron guts Mike continued to put hot sauce on everything he ate and didn’t get sick, this…must have been the key! Panajachel is a unique sort of town, a large amount of foreigners have decided to call this village home dating back to the 60’s. It was a prime hippy hang out in the 60’s and 70’s, but back then received a bad reputation as the gringo’s had introduced drugs into the otherwise quiet mayan village.
There is still a large gringo community, but the locals and gringo’s have developed a relationship that works and the village has a nice, relaxed, hippy type feel. Pana was probably the best place to shop with the streets being lined with mayan treasures and local shops with weavings, huipiles (mayan blouse), leather goods, hammocks, hand woven blankets and pillow, bags and on and on and on. A bit pushy but a “No gracias”, is usually sufficient and you are usually left alone, however I have never said “No gracias” so much in my life!
As I said, Pana is the entrance for most people to explore Lago Atitlan. Lago Atitlan is said to be the most beautiful lake in the world, as it is surrounded by volcanoes and deep valleys and is host to some of the most traditional Maya villages in all Guatemala. When you first set eyes on the beauty that surrounds you it indeed takes your breath away. You can’t believe how beautiful and peaceful the Lake is. Now as for the most beautiful in the world…they obviously haven’t been to Canada!!!
We boarded a launcha to take us across the lake to the village of San Pedro La Laguna, where we would spend almost a week. A cross between bohemian, mayan and hippy, this little village was a great place to stop and settle down to stage ourselves for day trips around the lake and to the surrounding villages.
The village is mellow and very chilled out, with an abundance of cheap yet classy restaurants, backpackers filling the hostels and posada’s, travellers living with local families while enrolled in Spanish classes, coffee beans drying along the trails that surround the village, local mayan markets and local cayuca’s fishing in the surrounding waters. It was a very peaceful and lovely place to spend our time. We found a little posada just off the main area and down a quiet street for $10 a night. Yes…let me say that again, $10 a night, for the both of us, not each. It was large, very clean, nice pillows (a good find in Guatemala), a private bathroom with hot water (another good find in Guatemala) with a nice view of the volcano and lake from our balcony that we could admire while we swung in the hammocks hung outside our room. $10.00 A NIGHT!!!! So, this inevitable made up our minds to stay there.
San Pedro was very cheap.We had some of the best meals we’ve had our whole time out and that would give restaurants in North America a run for their money for so cheap you can’t even believe it. It was just what we were looking for.
One day we hired horses and a guide to ride part way up the volcano which offered great views of the surrounding volcanoes and the lake. We visited the other villages that border the lake and went to many local mayan markets. But our favorite day was when we hired a motorbike to ride to Chichicastenango. “Chichi” has what is considered the largest mayan market in Guatemala and the quiet day to day life falls apart come market day. The market attracts commercial traders and mayan weavers from all around the central highlands, and was one market that I didn’t want to miss, so why not hire a motorbike to get there.
We began our day around 8am which would give us lots of time to get to Chichi and give us lots of time to wander the market as we didn’t have to have the bike back until 5 or 6. Having a proper road map may have helped things, but there was a map in our guide book that was from 1999 and we figured that it was good enough. It looked like there was a road that extended from San Marcos, one of the villages on the NW corner on the lake that would “T” into the main highway and would save us time to get to Chichi. The beginning of our ride was beautiful as we wove our way along the road making our way to San Marcos. We got lost in the second village we came to and rode back and forth along the streets trying to find the way out while little mayan women giggled at us as we did so. Finally we were forced to stop and ask how to get back on the main road. Once again our ride was beautiful, however just short of San Marcos the road turned to gravel/sand with huge ruts in it. Oh well, we were almost in San Marcos, so we continued on and the road became somewhat paved again and we stopped at a little stand and got a drink while asking where the road to the main highway was. We got our directions and were on our way. The road became not paved again and as we headed towards the little bridge we saw a local look at us and kind of laugh and shake his head. We didn’t think anything of it at the time, and carried on. We crossed the bridge and were back to the gravel/sand rutted road except it was more like small boulder/sand rutted road that began to climb. The road got progressively worse and we started to really climb to the point where we were doing switch backs every 100 yards, like full on Baja style.
We got to the point where I got off the bike and began hiking up while Mike tried to get the bike to stay out of the 1 foot ruts while trying to get the bike to climb. We were now well above the small village below and we still had a long way to go up, and we couldn’t see the end. I finally saw 2 young boys coming down on a bike a little smaller than ours and asked them how much further to the main road. They said it was about 20 minutes more, but that the road got worse, with huge boulders everywhere and steeper with deep sand. They got to Mike and just shook their head at him. Basically they told us that you can’t go up…only down! We were on a mountain access road that was not traversed by vehicles or bikes only by foot. However Mike was the determined guy we all know and took 3 runs at the same corner that was obviously too steep to traverse. By this point it was 10am and we were only about 10 miles from San Pedro. Now we had to get the bike turned around and get it back down. Mike did a pretty good job of manoeuvring the bike in the ruts, dodging the boulders and not going over the 1000 foot drop. Finally we got on less steep ground and were both able to get back on the bike. We crossed the bridge again and the same man laughed at us and shook his head at us again. We stopped at the same little stand and got another drink while the school children all gathered around the bike giggling at us as we drank our cokes. So we asked the little stand man where the real road was, and he said we had to back track back to the first little village where we had got lost. So off we went back tracking through the little village we had got lost in and made it through without problem and ended up on a nice paved road. The road was filled with switch backs that took you up up up, but was such a beautiful ride. The higher we got the more beautiful the view got. Finally we were on the main road to the highway that would take us to Chichi. We only got lost one more time on our way, but didn’t get to Chichi until 1:30pm.
The market was outstanding. I realized we should have been there hours before as it would be impossible to fit it all in, but we tried. Unfortunately I didn’t get nearly enough time to wander, but it was still successful. We didn’t want to be on the road when it was dark, so at 3:30 we had to pack it in and head home.
We didn’t get lost once on the way home and it only took us 1 ½ hours to get back to San Pedro. The whole thing was very comical and we had a good laugh about our mountain/motor biking over a beautiful cheap dinner that night.So we met some great people while in Lago Atitlan and had some very memorable times. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there. I had originally wanted to get to Todos Santos which is quite a bit further to the west, but we just couldn’t fit it all in with the time we had and if we had of tried we would have spent half the time travelling on a bus. So I concluded that we will have to return! We headed back to Antigua for another couple of days before returning to Meggie. We were getting anxious to get back to Megs and make sure everything was all right and of course it was. We spent the rest of our time in the Rio Dulce hanging out with a couple of cruisers, checking out Fronteras and the surrounding areas and getting the boat ready to head back to sea. We spent Mike’s birthday with 2 other couples from the marina and we headed to a really cool restaurant that we took Greg’s launcha through a narrow waterway to get to the restaurant that was lit up by candles in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. It was pretty cool and we enjoyed a wonderful Swiss meal (believe it or not).
So Mike celebrated in style including a winnie the pooh birthday cake (not much choice in Fronteras…it was either Pooh or a ballerina).
Meggie was anxious to get back to the sea, so we left the Rio Dulce after spending 1 month in this amazing country with the most beautiful and kind people.
We had a hard beat from Livingston (Guatemala) to Tres Punta where we would stage to head to Placencia, Belize the next day. We had a hard beat the next day to Placencia, but only the first part of the trip was uncomfortable as we were soon tucked behind the barrier reef. We moved quickly through Belize, but enjoyed anchoring on our own at some beautiful islands in behind the reef, and enjoyed eating the big Mackerel we caught along the way.It was a bit surreal to be close reaching along at 6 knots in 6-10 feet of water with no waves and lots of wind….very fun sailing! Pretty soon we were at the north end of Belize and ready to make the jump north to Mexico. We left San Pedro cut and headed for Hut Point just 40 miles south of Isla Mujeres. We did an overnighter that was our fastest sail to date. We did 180 nautical miles in 25 hours. That is averaging 7.3 knots!!! For those of you who don’t know what that means….it’s fast. The current was ripping between the mainland and Banco Chinchorro giving us our fastest sail. It was great.
We waited out a cold front in Hut Point, which is just an anchorage behind a reef, but it was a nice place to hang out for a couple of days before heading to Isla Mujeres. We had another hard beat to Isla and were really really glad when we arrived. We checked the weather as soon as we got here to see if we could move to Florida straight away or if we would have to check in and wait a bit. The weather held consistently NE and we knew we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere for at least a week, so my mom came to visit. She had her flight booked in a day! I think she was ready for a vacation. We had a great time and got to explore the island together which was lots of fun. We took her out for a sail which she loved and she steered Meggie most of the time, until we had to tack.

She got a taste of dealing with a cold front and stayed aboard during the windy cold conditions. We were sad to see her go, but not too sad as we’ll see her in a few months. In the meantime we were checking weather and realized we still couldn’t go anywhere so Mike’s dad and step mom came to visit! They too, had a great time. We again got to explore the island with them and enjoyed walking the entire length of Isla. We took them for a sail as well on Tony’s birthday, which was great. We really enjoyed our time with them and I’m pretty sure they will be back on their own someday.

The day they left a window opened up. We figured we could leave on Friday, but it was Friday 13th and sailors have a funny superstition about setting sail on a Friday let alone Friday 13th. So we figured we would leave on Saturday. We rushed around Thursday and rushed on Friday and then we stopped and said “Why are we rushing?” We didn’t feel quite ready to leave. It had been a busy couple of weeks and the boat wasn’t ready and to be honest I don’t think we’re ready to get to Florida and the mainland just yet.
Life as we have known it will be over once we get to the mainland, so what’s the rush? Anyway…we’re still anchored in beautiful Isla Mujeres, Mexico and will take the next weather window. We just want to linger in the Carib for just a bit longer! Can you blame us??
So….in a nutshell this is what has been happening. I tried to keep it short, and left out quite a bit, but I think you get the picture.
Pretty soon now, we’ll be back in North America and on our way north….yikes! I’ve just clued in to what a big adjustment it will be to be on land again and honestly am not sure I’m ready. But this was the inevitable and there is not much we can do about it. It will be a new chapter in our lives, but it might take a bit to readjust. More than anything, I can’t believe Meggie will be out of the water and still for 6 months…this makes me sad. However I believe more now than ever that we will head out again. I just read an article by a cruiser that has been all over the world and that we both really enjoy reading. In his article he talks about how devastating the financial crisis is, but it is essential that we don’t give up on our dreams. You might have to adjust your dream accordingly, but never give up on them. One quote in the article stuck with me and it is a very simple motto for life “Live while you’re alive”. Pretty simple. If you want to read the whole article, check it out in the February 2009 issue of Cruising World (also check out the article on p.84 by yours truly!).
Anyway, blah blah blah. Enough already.
I will write about Mexico next time, but for now….
Hasta Luego amigos
Kylie and Mike