Adventure! Excitement! Antigua!

I made it to Antigua. I'm going to be here until I attempt to leave on the 11th, so I've got time to relax/sit in the park/watch movies/whatever. It's nice. Antigua is filled with gringos and rich folks, but that's because it's BEAUTIFUL. I'm spending way too much money. Everything here is about 4 times as expensive as it is in Xela (so like half as expensive as it would be in the states.. I'm cheap).

I went back to Semuc Champey for a second time. Still just as beautiful. That time I got a tour of the caves nearby. This involved swimming one handed through water deeper than I am tall in deep dark caverns with only the candle in my other hand for light. Factor in my fear of things that live in the water, and know that I'm a badass. The Indiana Jones factor was high. Mom and Dad should be proud. Highlights- Climbing up a waterfall one-handed in the dark. Slippery, hard, dangerous, good. Diving off a cave wall into the creepy black water below. Que scary.

I found a Canadian brother-sister team who was headed in the same direction as I was, so we decided to try to hitch a ride to Rio Dulce. So glad I waited until I found other people to go with. Everyone assured us that we wouldn't have any trouble getting there in a day. All lies. So we find ourselves trapped in the middle of nowhere (literally, our guidebooks didn't even list the last town we had been through two hours away) at sundown. There's people around, but they're mainly Mayan women who don't speak spanish. We start to freak right out. Lauri of the brother-sister team sees a group of women over buy some houses and has the idea that if we hang around them long enough one might take pity on us and help us. Luckily, one of them spoke spanish, unluckily she told us that only one pickup passes through town everyday, and it comes at 5am. Hmm... She also lets us know that there's no rooms for rent in town. We must have looked worried because she chatted with the other women for a while and they decided that we could stay in their house with them for the night. I couldn't believe it. I would never invite some dirty looking travelers into my home in the states. They didn't even think twice about it. They even offered us their beds. So we spent the night in Nuevo Concepcion - a farm community of about 70 Mam speaking families. We spent a few hours talking to some kids who were learning spanish in school. Practiced counting in English and spanish. Learned some words in Mam. Pretty amazing night.

We got the one pickup out of town the next day and rode two hours in the dark with mostly Mayan men going to work on the Fincas. We finally made it to Rio Dulce and spent the night outside of town on the lake. Visited some hot springs on the side of the lake and relaxed. My life here is really hard. I met some retired folks from Florida who are taking their sailboat around the world. They plan on being gone 7-10 years. I decided that's what I want to do when I grow up.

I spent the next day in Livingston. It was nice to be on the beach. Livingston is the hub of Garifuna (displaced Caribbean) culture in Guatemala. It was so strange after being so used to the Maya. I didn't really know what to do with it. Lots of silly Americans walking around with braided hair. It was a nice break, but I'm glad to be back in the highlands. Although I don't think Antigua is very representative of the rest of the highlands. At any rate, I'm off to drink a latte. Later y'all.