4th of July and Antigua
So I'm a little behind in writing, so this might be a long one... The fourth of July was hilarious in Xela. A gringo holiday where only gringos are out celebrating. We ended up hanging out on the roof of the school for a long time before heading out to join other schools at a bar. The hilarious part was that when we got to the door, the place was closed so we knocked. The guy answered that the place was closed but we told him our friends were in there and they just let us in! We stayed pretty late before taking cab rides home. (I actually crowd surfed! Well, it was all my friends and I was the 4th person to do it, so it's not really crowd surfing as it is being held up by all your friends... in Guatemala haha.) The clinic on Wednesday was mostly routine patients with ovarian infections and new pregnancies. Wednesday night was Jon and Alex's going away party at their place... very chill. Thursday night was another chill night of wine to celebrate Krista's birthday.
Friday, I moved my class to the morning so that I could take off early for Antigua. 13 of us headed there for the weekend. We got their around 3pm and immediately started off to look at some cathedrals and ruins. Unfortunately it started pouring bfore we could see a lot of the city that day. We called it a very early night (930!) because of our early wakeup call in the morning. At 6am, 12 of us were picked up to go climb PACAYA! Pacaya is an active volcano about 1.5 hours from Antigua. The hike up the volcano wasn't too terrible... just the first 20 minutes was straight off and then it pretty much was a stroll through the jungle. When we finally reached the top, we could see the summit smoking above us. Below us was lava.... running lava, orange and red and black. We climbed down and was actually standing on the lava!! My pants had been rolled up for the hike and when I stepped onto the lava, my calves starting burning! I jumped off and looked down and my skin looked like it had been sunburnt, but really it had been cooking under the heat of the lava! SOOO HOT. I rolled down my pants and jumped back on to snap some pictures and really examine the lava. The cool thing was that you could hear it moving and see the waves of hot molten lava go by you. Sometimes the lava ran over some grass and would start a small fire. I didn't last too long on the lava before I decided I was hot enough and needed to go back up to the top. At the top, you could get on the lava in another area where the molten hot lava wasn't as close to you and you could stand on it for a long time. As we climbed higher, we found out that we could technically see El Salvador from where we were. Some people started up to the summit but then a guard wouldn't let them pass telling them the smoke coming out of the top was actually noxious fumes that would kill us. After many pictures, we headed back down for the bus ride home.
We got back to Antigua in time to see the 3rd place game of Germany vs Portugal. I was upset that my favorite player (the goalie for Germany, Lehman) wasn't in but I was very happy with the ending. After the game, we saw more churches and walked around more of Antigua visiting jewelery shops and what not. Jake and Ryan then called saying they were back and we were able to meet up with them and chat for a bit. ´Dave, Maggie, and I met up with Jake, Aileen, Luke, and Ryan for dinner, but there were so many of us that we were unable to eat together! It sucked, but at least we got to all catch up for a bit. After we got dinner, we met up with all the Xela kids at Gaia but then moved the group to Brian´s girlfriend´s friend´s boyfriend´s bar in Antigua (confusing yes but since Abby was there it all makes sense).
Sunday dawned much, much earlier than we would have liked because at 8am a girl started singing karaoke next door trying to entice people to come eat at their restaurant. Everyone but Dave, Maggie, and I left for home or ChiChi so the three of us visited some awesome ruins for the morning (that earthquake of 1773 really sucked... I have pics to demonstrate}. We then went to the Children´s hospital which is an interesting experience because it has a glassed in courtyard where all the abandoned children with disabilities are and people walk around staring at them. I felt like they were being treated like animals at a zoo (complete with a sign that says ´do no feed the children´). After getting trapped in the ajoining church, we escaped to shop for more jade. We went to a jade store that had a workshop and museum as a part of the store. They gave us a really cool tour of the place, so OF COURSE, we had to buy something. Dave convinced both Maggie and I into buying necklaces for ourselves... I think it was a good deal =P. We headed over to Reds to meet up with the Antigua Columbian kids to watch the World Cup final. Sigh... Zidane made me really upset with his actions and I was also upset that the game was won with penalty kicks. Oh well.
The bus rides back were uhh an experience. On the first bus, the three of us were crammed into one seat and then Dave would get pushed and I would go behind Maggie as she leaned forward in her seat next to the window. The second bus was absolutely packed and we got on late. We were ´standíng´in the aisles for awhile... and by standing I mean my legs were wedged between sleeping people while the top of my body was being flailed about by the crazy driving. We finally got seats together for the last two most harrowing hours. The driver was freaking crazy. There are many dangerous curves going up and down the mountain to get in and out of the valleys. On one side of the road is a cliff and the other is a sheer dropoff. The driver was taking these turns at a million miles per hour. A couple of time we actually went up onto two wheels... Dave decided to remind me then of the movie Speed when they have to take a sharp turn at a high speed and everyone sits on one side of the bus to keep it from flipping... thanks for that image Dave. I think Maggie had a couple of heart attacks during the ride, but we made it. After dropping Maggie off at her house, Dave and I were walking and some punks drove by in a car and threw an egg at us... and missed. It was funny because they missed... we would not have been laughing if they had hit us, but they didn't so it's all good.
Friday, I moved my class to the morning so that I could take off early for Antigua. 13 of us headed there for the weekend. We got their around 3pm and immediately started off to look at some cathedrals and ruins. Unfortunately it started pouring bfore we could see a lot of the city that day. We called it a very early night (930!) because of our early wakeup call in the morning. At 6am, 12 of us were picked up to go climb PACAYA! Pacaya is an active volcano about 1.5 hours from Antigua. The hike up the volcano wasn't too terrible... just the first 20 minutes was straight off and then it pretty much was a stroll through the jungle. When we finally reached the top, we could see the summit smoking above us. Below us was lava.... running lava, orange and red and black. We climbed down and was actually standing on the lava!! My pants had been rolled up for the hike and when I stepped onto the lava, my calves starting burning! I jumped off and looked down and my skin looked like it had been sunburnt, but really it had been cooking under the heat of the lava! SOOO HOT. I rolled down my pants and jumped back on to snap some pictures and really examine the lava. The cool thing was that you could hear it moving and see the waves of hot molten lava go by you. Sometimes the lava ran over some grass and would start a small fire. I didn't last too long on the lava before I decided I was hot enough and needed to go back up to the top. At the top, you could get on the lava in another area where the molten hot lava wasn't as close to you and you could stand on it for a long time. As we climbed higher, we found out that we could technically see El Salvador from where we were. Some people started up to the summit but then a guard wouldn't let them pass telling them the smoke coming out of the top was actually noxious fumes that would kill us. After many pictures, we headed back down for the bus ride home.
We got back to Antigua in time to see the 3rd place game of Germany vs Portugal. I was upset that my favorite player (the goalie for Germany, Lehman) wasn't in but I was very happy with the ending. After the game, we saw more churches and walked around more of Antigua visiting jewelery shops and what not. Jake and Ryan then called saying they were back and we were able to meet up with them and chat for a bit. ´Dave, Maggie, and I met up with Jake, Aileen, Luke, and Ryan for dinner, but there were so many of us that we were unable to eat together! It sucked, but at least we got to all catch up for a bit. After we got dinner, we met up with all the Xela kids at Gaia but then moved the group to Brian´s girlfriend´s friend´s boyfriend´s bar in Antigua (confusing yes but since Abby was there it all makes sense).
Sunday dawned much, much earlier than we would have liked because at 8am a girl started singing karaoke next door trying to entice people to come eat at their restaurant. Everyone but Dave, Maggie, and I left for home or ChiChi so the three of us visited some awesome ruins for the morning (that earthquake of 1773 really sucked... I have pics to demonstrate}. We then went to the Children´s hospital which is an interesting experience because it has a glassed in courtyard where all the abandoned children with disabilities are and people walk around staring at them. I felt like they were being treated like animals at a zoo (complete with a sign that says ´do no feed the children´). After getting trapped in the ajoining church, we escaped to shop for more jade. We went to a jade store that had a workshop and museum as a part of the store. They gave us a really cool tour of the place, so OF COURSE, we had to buy something. Dave convinced both Maggie and I into buying necklaces for ourselves... I think it was a good deal =P. We headed over to Reds to meet up with the Antigua Columbian kids to watch the World Cup final. Sigh... Zidane made me really upset with his actions and I was also upset that the game was won with penalty kicks. Oh well.
The bus rides back were uhh an experience. On the first bus, the three of us were crammed into one seat and then Dave would get pushed and I would go behind Maggie as she leaned forward in her seat next to the window. The second bus was absolutely packed and we got on late. We were ´standíng´in the aisles for awhile... and by standing I mean my legs were wedged between sleeping people while the top of my body was being flailed about by the crazy driving. We finally got seats together for the last two most harrowing hours. The driver was freaking crazy. There are many dangerous curves going up and down the mountain to get in and out of the valleys. On one side of the road is a cliff and the other is a sheer dropoff. The driver was taking these turns at a million miles per hour. A couple of time we actually went up onto two wheels... Dave decided to remind me then of the movie Speed when they have to take a sharp turn at a high speed and everyone sits on one side of the bus to keep it from flipping... thanks for that image Dave. I think Maggie had a couple of heart attacks during the ride, but we made it. After dropping Maggie off at her house, Dave and I were walking and some punks drove by in a car and threw an egg at us... and missed. It was funny because they missed... we would not have been laughing if they had hit us, but they didn't so it's all good.
posted by Sarah at 7:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home