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Well, I am finally winding down on my Guatemala posts. Tomorrow will be the last. For today I am throwing in the last miscellaneous photos and thoughts.
This is a photo of the water heater you will most commonly find in lower end establishments. When you see a hotel that says 'agua caliente' and is in the $5 a night range, this is what you are gonna get. Surprisingly, it works fairly well. It helps if you don't put the water pressure up too high (it can only handle so much flow) and that the weather there is warm anyway.
This plant is called a prayer plant. They open up during the day and close up during the night. It is one of Anna's many business ventures. She grows them at her coffee finca and then ships them to Florida for sale here in the U.S.
The following pictures are from a hike we did to El Brujo, the river and bridge near Acatenango. There are very steep parts to this hike as you go down one mountainside to the river and then up the other mountainside to the village over there. We only went down and back up to Acatenango. That was enough for me. The thing is, the locals often walk back and forth this trail as a daily commute! And often carrying huge loads on their backs or heads!
At the bottom is an Indiana Jones style bridge. A little nerve racking.
There are some beautiful views in this valley.
We were in the wrong part of the country to go to the really big Mayan sites. The most famous in Guatemala is Tikal and that was 12 hours away. The closest we could visit was Iximche, Tecpan. Once again we ran into the extra charge for gringos and that there was NOTHING in English! What could have been a really interesting visit was kinda ho-hum because we couldn't read anything. And there were plenty of signs of information, just all in Spanish and the local Mayan dialect.
So tomorrow we will say 'adios' to Guatemala.
This is a photo of the water heater you will most commonly find in lower end establishments. When you see a hotel that says 'agua caliente' and is in the $5 a night range, this is what you are gonna get. Surprisingly, it works fairly well. It helps if you don't put the water pressure up too high (it can only handle so much flow) and that the weather there is warm anyway.
This plant is called a prayer plant. They open up during the day and close up during the night. It is one of Anna's many business ventures. She grows them at her coffee finca and then ships them to Florida for sale here in the U.S.
The following pictures are from a hike we did to El Brujo, the river and bridge near Acatenango. There are very steep parts to this hike as you go down one mountainside to the river and then up the other mountainside to the village over there. We only went down and back up to Acatenango. That was enough for me. The thing is, the locals often walk back and forth this trail as a daily commute! And often carrying huge loads on their backs or heads!
At the bottom is an Indiana Jones style bridge. A little nerve racking.
There are some beautiful views in this valley.
We were in the wrong part of the country to go to the really big Mayan sites. The most famous in Guatemala is Tikal and that was 12 hours away. The closest we could visit was Iximche, Tecpan. Once again we ran into the extra charge for gringos and that there was NOTHING in English! What could have been a really interesting visit was kinda ho-hum because we couldn't read anything. And there were plenty of signs of information, just all in Spanish and the local Mayan dialect.
So tomorrow we will say 'adios' to Guatemala.
