Guatemala Day 4

Our night in "El Recreo" was uneventful, except for the freezing cold showers! Our white-water rafting tour was to meet at 8:00 this morning and our hotel breakfast (traditional buffet) was at 7:00 so we made it, bags packed and stashed in the office by 7:30. I couldn't eat any of it because of my previous experience with guatemalan breakfast foods...so I snacked on some fruit. Kylee grabbed some cold cereal but then was told that she would have to pay extra for it so she took toast and beans instead. We were slowly but surely running out of Q's (quetzal) and are totally in the back country. It didn't help that when I went to pay for the night it was 440Q! (about $57) Unbelievable. I thought it was going to be 140Q (which is what it should have been) but no. So now we are getting close to being out of money and there are no ATM's anywhere. Anyway...so we were ready to go by 8:00 but no one was there for us until 9:00 - which is typical, but it still makes us worry that we are in the wrong place or wrong day or something. Our tour guide was a Guatemalan who grew up in California so his English was perfect (yeah!) Part of our rafting group was a family of Guatemalans who grew up in the states. The dad was a politician in Guatemala so he kept his family in the US to keep them safe. He eventually got out of politics because of the corruption and his inability to change it, then brought his family back to Guatemala 2 years ago. His sons and their nice, fresh american wives. Lucky girls. :) The youngest is 23 I think. They all spoke great English except for the Dad. Our whole entire group was 14 native guatemalans and then the family of 8 that I just told you about, and me and kylee. We separated into the English speakers (white) and the spanish speakers (dark) We were outnumbered.



I wish I had a better picture of our big group. One group was red and the other group was yellow. We split into 6 boats, me and Kylee with 2 of the family members (a son and his american wife from Boston) and 2 guides, 1 that spoke english.


The guy on the back spoke English. I suspect the girl did too...but she didn't say ONE word the whole trip. She didn't do anything either. In fact, if she wasn't in the picture, I wouldn't have even remembered she was there!

We got along really well and made a great team so our 6 hours on the river was pretty fun. We went down class 2, 3, 4 and 4-plus rapids.







I don't know what that means, but I know that the 4-plus was the most fun. At one point we got stuck between 2 rocks horizontally. It was exciting because my side (right, front) was on the down side of the raft and I was afraid when we jostled loose it would just flip right over me. It didn't help that our guide looked a little nervous. BUT, we jostled loose and then sailed right out of it.

The other scary part was when we got stuck on a rock RIGHT before a huge current that they called "the tornado." Once again we were afraid that we would get loose and then tumble head over heels. Our guide was talking loud and clear telling us we had to back pedal the second we hit the current so that we didn't flip. Once again we sailed right out of it. It made me wonder why he was so worried, it just seemed so smooth. I really wonder what would happen if you just held onto the raft for dear life and didn't paddle at all. Next time I'll try that...I mean, HALF of our orientation speech was about what to do if you fall out of the boat or if it flips. We were so prepared and then NOTHING. :)

Don't get me wrong, we were wet. Totally soaked. Our feet looked like this the whole time:



Especially me and Ricardo because we were in front. You know how when we are skiing and the front of the boat has a wave come over the bow? That's how it was everytime we hit a rapid. Soaked. We had absolutely perfect weather though, it was sunny and warm, but not too hot. We dried pretty quickly and then got soaked again. There were calm parts of the river that we just floated and chit-chatted with our new friends and there was a part where we had to get out so that our guides could machete through a tree that had fallen in the way of the rock-n-roll rapids on the day before. The scenery was out of a postcard and we floated by little houses in the middle of NOWHERE.



There were 3 bridges crossing the river that were rope and boards. We saw 2 guys backpacking rice bags on the edge of the river and when they got to their family on the other side they tossed down their bags and built a raft out of driftwood so they could get across. All the kids and their wives had come down to greet them. It seemed so totally primitive I couldn't believe it.





Kylee and I have these funky sunburns so we were trying to stay covered up...but rafting and sunburns don't mix. Oh well! Our new friends were so nice, they live in Guatemala City and gave us their phone number and said that if Kylee ever needs anything - a chauffer, a friend, a place to stay, whatever...to give them a call. (I don't know what it is with chauffers - EVERY lower-middle class family has one. They couldn't believe WE didn't. Heavens, we wouldn't want our poor children stuck with public transport...did I mention Kylee rides the bus to school, 40 minutes away?) Anyway, they were really nice.



One of the sisters had a daughter when she was 19 and her boyfriend was killed in car accident so her parents have been helping her raise her daughter for the past 13 years. She was very nice and very cute - but she scared me by inviting Kylee to hang out with her and her friends at nightclubs...little drinking, partying...no big. Yep, 13 years old. Anyway, we were glad they were there...6 hours on the river with no food or drink, you kind of want to like who you're stuck with! Yes, we were starving and thirsty by the time we stopped but we all lived. It was kind of a good plan because by the time they served us "lunch" it didn't matter what it was, it was delicious. It was chicken salad sandwiches guat style. (mayo and ketchup mixed in who knows what) served on bread with shredded carrots and sliced tomato. Yum. :) We were too hungry to care that the mayo mixture had been out in the sun all day and was swarming with flies...(we tried not to think about how stupid we were when we woke up that night s-i-c-k!)

We rode the pickup truck over dirt roads (standing up in the back) an hour back to our cabins where we picked up our suitcases, said goodbye to our new friends, exchanged phone numbers, and then caught a ride back to our new lodging - El Retiro. We are hoping and praying we don't share our beds with the spider and bugs tonight but I think it's inevitable. The couple next door killed a huge spider and we trapped a cockroach in our bathroom because both of us were too chicken to smash it. Ugh and Yuck.

For dinner we walked down to Champey Resaurant in town and Kylee had pancakes with bananas and I had Nachos...again. This time they actually resembled Nachos a little bit except instead of giving me a pile of chips they gave me 6 chips laid out in a row with a pile of stuff on each individual one. How is it that everyone has a different idea for Nachos? For dessert we had chocolate covered cinnamon bears melted and smashed together in a big lump. They've been in my backpack for 4 days now. Still going strong.