Guatemalan Adventures

Well we are off again on another adventure. There are a few changes to this vacation. The biggest one is that we have our son Alex with us. He is finally old enough were we feel comfortable taking him along. And after day one he has proven to be a great traveler. The second big change is that we are traveling in Central America this time. Our previous adventures have all been in Europe. And while we love Europe, Guatemala has the benefit of Spanish language schools. We have settled on one and will be studying here for three weeks, which we hope will help deep our whole families grasp of Spanish.

We arrived at LAX around 10pm to massive lines of people. For some reason Michelle thought that if our tickets were for a 1:45 am flight that we would experience the joys of a nearly empty LAX. Boy was she wrong! LAX was busy on. Saturday night and there were long lines to our airline.  While in line, we were behind a very friendly couple who were originally from Honduras. The husband had lived in the US since the 90s and the wife was in school in the US to learn English. Tim had a great time chatting with the husband on all manner of things, and his wife enjoyed talking to Alex and Michelle about her classes. It made the two hours in line go by much faster. Given the long lines at baggage checkin and security, were very glad that we arrived four hours before our flight.

Though Alex has been on a plane before he was only seven months old, and so everything about  checking, security and the airport was new. He had tons of questions about why we have the security process we do and was fascinated by all of the shops and decorations once we were inside. We made our way to the gate and prepared to wait for a while.

It was late at night, we were all tired and there were three total flights leaving from gates right next to each other. We found seats away from the gate and were listening carefully to announcements as we  wanted to make sure we didn’t miss our boarding. Unfortunately they never announced our boarding over the speakers. With 20 min before the flight was to depart Tim walked over to check and noticed the boarding room was now empty. Everyone was on the plane! Tim ran over and we dragged a very sleepy Alex to the gate. Nothing like being the last ones on to get your heart pumping! One side benefit of walking in last was that the isles were full of people arranging their luggage, so to pass the time the flight attendant at the entrance let Alex meet the pilots and walk into the cockpit.

The flight was short and we tried to grab sleep where we could. Alex was able to contort himself into a sleeping position and catch a few winks. Tim and Michelle were less successful. On the way in we caught a glimpse of theVolcán del Fuego and the smoke still rising from the top. We made it though customs just fine and found our ride to the town. The man who picked us up was named Miguel and he was great. He was so patient with us as we asked lots of questions about the subtle differences between different words, phrases and cultural sights along the road. We took part of the Pan American highway to get to Lake Atitlan. The road conditions were interesting, some of the potholes  were big enough to swallow a whole tire. We alternated between driving quickly and at slow speeds so as not to hurt the car. The mountainous country is very lush, we even had a couple sprinkles on us as we drove. With a stop for a traditional Guatemalan meal, it took a total of 4.5 hours to get from the airport to the town. It ended up being a great time for Alex and Michelle to catch up on a little bit of sleep.

In San Pedro we were dropped off at the home of Rosa and Jesus. They have four kids, two older girls and two younger boys. The youngest boy is Alex’s age, and they spent the next four hours running around as thick as thieves. Rosa seems very sweet and corrects our Spanish lovingly when we make mistakes. She speaks no English, but between our collective experience we are able to communicate well.  We modified our original plan of two separate rooms, andmoveAlexin with us as he would have been downstairs otherwise. The room has communal covered patio with an amazing view of the lake. While Alex and Keith played Tim and Michelle rested in the room and the hammocks on the patio. The afternoon rain was a nice sound to doze off to.

Our meals are provided for us except on Sundays, so around 6 we were off to find food. Unfortunately the rain decided it wanted to continue for a few extra hours, so we were soaked by the time we made it though town. We settled on a lake side restaurant with al fresco dining. The food was amazing and very reasonable under 12 dollars total for the three of us. We each had a plateful of “Mexican” street tacos,  which seems weird to eat when in Guatemala,  but were very tasty. Alex loved it with the lime drink he had. Tim tried the local beer, Gallo. And, Michelle went for “Agua pura.” We ran our way home in the rain and had time for a quick FaceTime chat between Alex and a friend and then to an early bed time.

Our first day of class is tomorrow and we are all excited to see what the day brings!