Beans means chocolate

Fernando, the man himself

The local markets are famous for embroidery, handicrafts and Jade.  We were struggling to find any embroidery to buy because they were a bit too heavy to carry and the colours a bit loud for modern furnishings in the UK, and then by chance, we came across a lady selling magnets.  Safe was instantly mesmerised and swapped a couple for some pretzels.  We were amused to find around the corner that every male tourist had also bought the same magnets and hadn’t managed to purchase any local embroidery either.  It was a male magnetic bonding moment!  We did manage to purchase a jade necklace after some heavy bartering.  The seller’s wife wore an “antique Mayan artifact” jade necklace for which he wanted 800 US Dollars (you know you’re in trouble when a price is quoted in US Dollars)!  We decided to go for a more recently manufactured article for a fraction of the price (quoted in Guatemalan Pretzels).  You can see the ancient relic around the vendor’s neck in the photo.

Jade seller

Camera Experiment (continued …)

Willy (who was definitely not drunk)

Factoid:  Antigua is an old colonial town with cobbled streets surrounded by active volcanoes.  It has a plethora of cafe’s and restaurants serving fantastic coffee and chocolate.

This afternoon’s excursion was a hike up Volcan Pacaya to see rivers of molten rock, to roast bananas on molten rock, and to melt the soles of our shoes on molten rock.  Unfortunately our bus on the way to the volcano had a blow out.  We initially thought that banditos were shooting at us, however the hour’s stop to change a tyre was a giveaway.  After a total delay of two hours we finally arrived at the volcano and reached the lava flows just as the sun was setting.  It was great to see the bright red lava at night under the stars, but walking downhill on the cooled pumice lava flows whilst dodging the fire pits in the pitch black was … urm … entertaining.

By the way, here are some further items lent to us by Jodie:

• Mexican Pesos
• American Dollars
• Paw-paw cream for Annie’s finger
• A torch to light our way down the volcano

Factoid: Kevin Island (more usually known as Catamaran Island) is a small lump of rock in the middle of the lake containing one hotel bought and run by an American called Kevin. The island has its own currency called Kevin Dollars which is the only currency accepted when buying drinks at the bar.

Kevin Island

A group of us hired the services of Hidalgo to take us on a tour of the beautiful Rio Dulce down to the isolated Caribbean town of Livingston.  We had already set a precendent for drinking rum and coke on boat trips so we picked up some 8 year old aged Guatemalan rum (and some American Coke) from the supermercado on the way to Rio Dulce.  As it happens, we found a few other interesting products for sale at the supermercado:

This supermarket will home deliver your placenta

The trip to Livingston was as interesting as Livingston itself, a one hour trip through mostly uninhabited rainforest with a few wooden huts at the river’s edge where the only mode of transport was a dugout canoe.  We passed plenty of wildlife on the small islets en route.  (We’re still not sure how the iguanas got onto these islets and whether they’ll ever leave).  It was idyllic and would be an amazing tourist destination if marketed properly.  Livingston has a good fish restaurant which, like the inhabitants of the town, has a mix of Latino and Black Caribbean cultures.

Girl in a boat on the way to Livingston

Pelicans at Livingston

Kevin Dollar

Factoid: The Guatemalan currency is called the Quetzal, which is named after the national bird, a tiny creature with unfeasibly long green tail feathers. Quetzals were shamelessly slaughtered in their thousands to make Moctezuma’s famous head-dress as worn by Safe in the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City. The Guatemalan Quetzal is affectionately and childishly known as the Guatemalan Pretzel … by us alone!

Our bags were loaded onto the roof of our van after which some dodgy character smiled at us as he took pictures of the bags with his mobile phone. Evil stares from us just encouraged him to take more pictures and smile even more. We presume he was trying to find the highest price for our belongings at the standard tourist ambush spot down the road. Thankfully, we’ve not been ambushed yet. Perhaps he has yet to be offered enough pretzels.

The pile of old rocks at Tikal was our next port of call. Our guide for the day was Miguel Antonio Marin Constanza (you’re nobody if you have less than four names in Central America). After about an hour, we managed to stop giggling and tickling each other every time he said the word “Tikal”, and it turned out he was an ornithologist / monkey caller / all-round animal enthusiast. We saw where the Ewoks used to live.  Return of the Jedi was filmed here (the scenes in the jungle rather than on the Death Star … recognise it?).

Ewoks live here

Then Migual got over-excited and made us stalk every little rustle in the bushes.  The animal shots look stolen, but we did take them … we used a particularly long zoom for the crocodile …

Some jungle creatures of Guatemala

Some more jungle creatures of Guatemala

We learnt several interesting factoids from our guide:

Factoid: According to the Mayan calendar, on 21st December 2012 (Lizzy’s Birthday) we will be entering “The 6th Cycle of the Sun” a galactic event that occurs every 5,125 years.  There have have been predictions of huge changes in global climate and even the end of the world.  These predictions inspired the film “2012” which we’re told is complete rubbish and not to be watched.

Factoid: It is believed that indigenous Meso-Americans came from the Far East via a land bridge over the Bering Strait around the time of the last ice age around 13,000 BC.  They share a genetically common heritage and are phenotypically similar to Far Easter populations.  They also share the “Mongolian Spot“.

As if we hadn’t travelled enough today, we took an hour’s journey to the star-island Flores where we ate freshly caught lake fish in the monsoon rain.

Flores

By the way, here’s another animal we saw at Tikal, this time a moth climbing up a tree.  We really liked the picture so here it is:

Moth