Visit from my dad, Semana Santa, Chilascó & Miami

I owe you still quite some stories.. I'm afraid that over time they have become a little shorter in my head, but I'll give it a try:

My last update was about our trip to the beach in March. Soon after that my father came to visit me. It was very nice to be together with him again and we spent quite some time together. His first day I joined him on his organised trip to Antigua. The weekend after that I met him in Chichicastenango, where I had been before as well.

The weekend after was completely new for me, we went to Petén in the north of Guatemala. Or at least, I took the plane to Flores from Guatemala (I almost missed it because I went to the wrong terminal, which was 10 minutes by car from the right terminal) and there I met my father. He and the guide picked me up from the airport, from which we left right away for Tikal. Tikal is the largest archeological Maya site of the world (or of Central America, that's the same in case of the Mayas), so we could do quite some walking through and climbing on the pyramids. Or guide told a lot about the history behind everything we saw, which makes it a lot interesting. It was the first time that I visited something in Guatemala with a guide, but at times it's worth the money I guess. Actually Tikal had been my number 1 place to still visit in Guatemala and it really met my expectations. It was great to see the huge structures built by men's hands and to look over the jungle from the top of them. In the night we walked into Flores, a village in the neighbourhood, had some dinner, some Gallos (the national beer) and returned to the hotel. The next day we went to a similar archeological site, Yax'ha. It is not as famous as Tikal, but also very nice. Especially the walk over a deserted island and seeing some special birds made it a different experience form the one in the touristic Tikal. That evening we flew back to Guatemala in the same plane that I came with, a small 24-person propellor plane that flew so low that we even still had reception on our cell phones during the flight (and so small that they didn't even ask us to turn them off, but there was no stewardess to tell us that anyway).

The next day we went to Antigua again, because it was the first day of Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter), the biggest festival of Latin America and Antigua is kind of the center of it. We went by chicken bus (wasn't sure if my father would like it, but the next day he voluntarily returned by chicken bus again) and once arrived we found out that the famous processions would start only on Wednesday (the day I'd have to work again), so that was a little disappointing, but fortunately we managed to find a procession anyway and actually it was not so bad. The next day we went to Cerro de la Cruz, from where we could look over Antigua and afterwards ta coffee plantation in the neighbourhood. Then we returned to Guatemala by chicken bus. There Alberto had invited some colleagues for dinner, which in the end turned into a kind of party and lasted until quite late.

The next day I went to work and at 2 o'clock my father came to the office, from we left with Roland, my team leader, to climb the active Pacaya volcano. We took another route than the last two times I climbed the volcano and it was a lot heavier, I even ripped my ear in two parts when I fell for which I went to the hospital the next day (ok, a little exaggerated, but it didn't look nice). And on the way back we had to share the light on my cell phone to climb over hills of loose rocks, so that was not really easy either. But in the end it was the best climb on the Pacaya I've had so far, we came really close to the lava and we had a view over a complete river of lava over the whole mountain.

The day after that I worked again and at night unfortunately I had to attend the funeral of the father of one of my colleagues. Still, we finished the night good when I went out for dinner with some colleagues. The next day, it's Friday now, I had a day off and we went to Zone 1 in Guatemala City, where there should be some Semana Santa processions as well. And indeed, we found some and they were quite big, really what we expected them to be. That night we returned to Zone 10, had some drinks in a bar in the middle of a deserted city (everybody is on the beach during Semana Santa).

On Saturday we went to Antigua again, this time with Alberto and Silvana. We went for a really good brunch in Casa Santo Domingo and then saw some more processions, but still the ones in Zone 1 on Friday were the best. On Sunday, my father's last day here, we just relaxed in the swimming pool of the Camino Real.

The weekend after that nothing worth mentioning happened, but the weekend afterwards, we made a trip to Chilascó. Anybody who has seen a movie about the Middle Ages can imagine how Chilascó looks like. Wooden houses, no cars, just horses, people walking around with lots of wood on their shoulders etc. The first we didn't do much, we just slept (to get through the rainy afternoon) and then we had some medieval dinner. But on the second day we went on a hike to the tallest waterfall of Central America. We had to walk through some tough terrain (we were happy to have borrowed some good boots there), saw some exotic animals on the way (a snake, some special bugs etc.). We were a little disappointed by the waterfall, it was quite tall, but quite slim as well, so it was not really really impressive. I took an ice cold dip in another waterfall and then we returned back to the village and from there back to Guatemala. The next day I woke up pretty sick, so I stayed home and later that day I found out that everybody who joined the trip was sick and stayed home or left work early. We still don't know for sure what caused it, but it is clear that also the hygienic circumstances in Chilascó were medieval. Fortunately the next day I was ok again..

The following Thursday we went to a very different place in this world: Miami. We left early from work to catch the plane at 3pm from Guatemala and around 7pm we arrived in Miami, picked up our rental car (VW Beatle) and arrived at our hostel, a friendly backpacker's place at South Beach, the place where it all happens. We had some dinner and slept early the first night. The next day we left for Key West. It was quite strange to drive on a road without seeing people in the back of a pick up, cars that nearly fall apart and people not caring about the maximum speed (except for us, resulting in a $256 speeding ticket). After a 4 hour drive on a highway through the ocean (really strange) we arrived in Key West, "the most southern point of the continental USA". There we stayed no the beach a while, had some lunch and then went on a 2 hour jetski tour, quite exciting to go over the water with 100km/h. In the evening we went back to Miami, it was good to drive back "home" at night without seeing dead bodies next to the road, which has become quite usual by now. That night we went out for dinner at South Beach and went out to Mango's, a latino bar with salsa music and half naked men and women dancing on the bar (pretty big difference from the conservative culture in Guatemala).

The next day we explored Miami, we went to some shopping malls, but we didn't do much else because we were quite tired from the trip of the day before. That evening we went out to Mango's again, it turned out to be exactly the same programme as the night before.

The day after was nice, we went to a crocodile farm in the everglades. The farm had about 3000 crocodiles and we could get pretty close, look at the feeding of the crocodiles and visit a snake show in which we could hold some snakes. We also made a small trip over the swamps with an air boat. At night we went out to another place (forgot the name), quite different from Mango's, with good music, but less entertaining, so we went back to the hotel pretty early.

Oaur last day in Miami it rained a lot, because of the storms/tornadoes that affected the south of the US, so the weather was horrible and we couldn't do anything but to visit some more shopping malls and go to the airport early to return to Guatemala. Actually we didn't know what we could do anyway, Miami is not much more that shopping malls and night clubs. For that reason I couldn't really fall in love with the city, like so many Guatemalans have, although it was very nice to be in the civilised world for a few days.

I still owe you the rest of my adventures after Miami, but I'm gonna write those in the coming day. Unfortunately I have to leave now (towards the Mexican border), but I'll try to continue writing on my iPhone and upload whenever I can. Just as a quick update: we've had some crazy days here with the volcano eruption and hurricane, but for me they were just some minor inconveniences. Now I'm heading for Mexico and next week Saturday I'll take the plan from Cancun to Panama and from there I'll go back to Guatemala by bus through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize.