Ancient history, Volume XXXIX

Previously, OH GOD, I'M DYING. Otherwise known as "Don't eat ice or sour cream in Latin America".

The following day, I was still sick, but not to the about-to-pass-out point, which was a vast improvement. Arizona Boy, Waterproof Trousers and Irish were heading off for the wilds of Honduras that morning, so I dragged myself out of bed and out to the lobby to say goodbye to them. A couple of hours after that, I had to dope myself up on Imodium, bid a very miserable farewell to my BFF Sara and board a minibus heading to Guatemala City. Once at the airport, I braved the first food I'd had in about 40 hours - McDonald's chips (that's fries to you, America).

Source

My logic in eating McDonald's chips was as follows:
1. Said chips are deep fried, and therefore very unlikely to result in a repeat upchucking performance;
2. Said chips are covered in salt, and salt is important when you're dehydrated;
3. Said chips would provide a large number of calories without me needing to eat very much.

Genius plan, no??

Anyway, the flight to Mexico City was relatively uneventful. Well, besides the fact that the flight contained the  Guatemalan under 10 soccer team, and that whichever member of the team was sitting behind me felt the need to kick the back of my seat for the ENTIRE flight. But once we landed in Mexico City? Things got...somewhat more interesting. We landed in the pouring rain, only to be told - after sitting on the runway for 20 minutes - that there were no air bridges available and that we'd need to disembark onto the runway and take buses to the terminal. Which would have been fine, except that half the plane - including myself - got stuck behind an old man who managed to walk down one step around every minute. So we were all rather drenched by the time we got to the terminal.

Upon arrival at the terminal, it seemed that around a millionty planes had arrived at once, and Mexico City only had about four staff working the immigration gates. The queue to get through immigration took over TWO HOURS, and by the end of that time, I was about to sit down on the floor and cry. About half way through the insanely long wait, there was a bit of a kerfuffle behind me, and a familiar figure ducked under the barriers. That figure?

Source

Okay, so it was Michael Richards and not Cosmo Kramer, but whatevs. Apparently he decided that being a celebrity(-ish. Seinfeld was more than a little passe by 2008!) should entitle him to queue jump. The Mexican authorities took great delight in giving him death stares and pointing to the back of the line.

Anyway, I eventually made it through the queue, claimed my luggage, and headed for the pick-up area. Only to find that two hours was apparently far too long for my $96 transfer driver to bother waiting. I attempted to find a phone number for the company to insist that they send the driver back, but the only number listed was in Peru. NOT particularly helpful. So I headed for the taxi rank, only to have half a dozen taxi drivers refuse to take me to my hotel because parts of the city were flooded. Thankfully, the concierge guy stepped in, and insisted that one of them take me.

So I eventually arrived at my hotel, arranged a tour to Teotihuacan, and collapsed into bed. Only to wake up the following morning with approximately a thousand mosquito bites on my back, thanks to a particularly bloodthirsty and unwelcome roommate.

I dragged myself out of bed and onto a tour bus. The tour consisted of me and three slightly mad Argentinian women who spent all day calling me Chris. I'm going to go ahead and just show you a bunch of pictures of Teotihuacan because I don't really remember that much about it on account of I hadn't eaten since the chips the previous day...

On the way back into Mexico City, we stopped off at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I found rather hilarious. Why?
1. Because it looks like a football stadium from the outside.
2. It houses the original icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in order to pray before her, you stand on a series of travelators. One goes left to right, the one behind that goes right to left, the one behind that goes left to right and so on. This ensured that everyone got a chance to pray without causing a traffic jam.

3. You could get yourself blessed with holy water outside the Basilica. Except that the holy water was housed in huge plastic rubbish bins, which just made it seem kind of gross.
4. There was a GIANT statue of Pope John Paul II and one of his Pope-mobiles outside.

Who doesn't love an unexpected statue of a dead Pope?!

Up next, the most enormous flag of ever, some weird happenings at the National Anthropology Museum, and I fly to Las Vegas.

K xx

Ancient history, Volume XXXVIII

Previously, crazy trousers, beer pong, and inappropriate snack foods.

The last proper day of our tour dawned bright and sunny. We were up bright and early again, and on yet ANOTHER several-hour-long-stupidly-boring bus trip. We stopped on the way out of Panajachel for group photos and marvelling at the pretty:

From there, it was on to Antigua with a stop at the markets of Chichicastenango. The market crowd was completely insane and somewhat overwhelming. Sara and I briefly considered buying our very own statues of St. Anthony to put on his head in the freezer if he didn't deliver us husbands in a suitable length of time. But ultimately, neither of us could be arsed with the idea of carrying a statue of St. Anthony home again, and we decided on smaller and less confiscatible-by-customs-staff-at-the-airport souvenirs. I bought one of the two rings I own, and the only one I ever wear:

It's silver and moonstone, and cost me about 60 quetzales, or a whopping $8.50. I strongly suspect it's the best $8.50 I've ever spent!

From there, it was back on the bus and heading to Antigua. We arrived not long after lunch, and spent most of the afternoon camped out in the square, using the internet and eating cake at Cafe Condesa. Seriously, if you're ever in Antigua, go eat cake at Cafe Condesa. Hell, just go eat there full stop. They do good breakfasts too!

ANYWAY. That night, we went out for our farewell dinner. And the place we went for dinner had two for one drinks. So obviously, this happened:

Because we're classy like that.

After dinner, we went out for MORE drinks, and Sara and I discovered that when you order Malibu and pineapple juice in Antigua, the bartender will reply "Oh, you mean a Panty Ripper?", which will promptly turn you off your drink, because EW, NO. After visits to a couple of other bars, we headed back to the hotel with grand plans to go shopping and buy lavender jade the following morning.

But then the following morning dawned, and with it came Montezuma's Revenge. And the downside to getting Montezuma's Revenge when you're a history nerd? Your first thought is "Oh God, I have cholera/typhoid/amoebic dysentery/yellow fever/PLEASE KILL ME". In reality, it was probably just food poisoning from the sour cream on my dinner. Or the ice in my cocktails...

The plus side to bathrooms in Guatemala being minuscule? You can puke your guts out into the shower while you're sitting on the loo.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That was quite the extreme overshare. But it's true.

The day got worse from there. I nearly passed out while taking a shower. Then Sara (who was also not well)    and I had to change hotel rooms. Then we needed to go into the town centre to buy Gatorade and get money from the ATM. And for some bizarre reason, every single taxi and tuktuk driver in the whole of Antigua decided to go on a break at the same time. ALL OF THEM.

ALL.

OF.

THEM.

Do you know what's not fun? Walking like ten blocks through a strange city when you feel like you might pass out at any minute. Do you know what's double not fun? Walking the ten blocks to find that you have to stand in a long queue to use the ATM. Triple not fun is when you're standing in the queue and everything starts spinning and you're about to pass out, and the bank's security guard comes up to you and starts to raise his gun because CLEARLY you're planning to rob the bank.

Pretty much like this. Except with less trolls in the dungeon, and more guns.

Eventually, I got my money without actually losing consciousness (only because I leaned against the wall while I used the ATM), and we made our very slow and miserable way back to the hotel. I drank two bottles of Gatorade and half a bottle of Pepto Bismol, and slept for twelve hours.

Next up, I don't die from cholera (SPOILER ALERT!), I fly to Mexico City, and have to stand in the longest queue of EVER.

K xx

PS. I promise I won't talk about puking or sitting on the toilet ever again. PROMISE.

Ancient history, Volume XXXVII

Previously, ZOMG THE WORST BUS TRIP EVER.

Our first day in Panajachel, we did pretty much nothing. After the insanely long and complicated bus trip getting there, we just couldn't be arsed any more. So we wandered around the shops and had waffles for breakfast and played a nice game called Spot the Biggest Hippy You Can. Sara and I won with a dreadlocked hippy couple, both dressed in fisherman's pants, and the woman was breastfeeding their THREE YEAR OLD while walking down the street.

We also finally discovered something we'd been searching for throughout Central America. The holy grail of inappropriate snack foods:

Yeah. That's a thing. In case you're curious, it's like a chocolate eclair filled with chocolate custard. It was gross as well as racist. Although in all honesty, what else would you expect from a company with a name like this:

That night, we had a barbeque at the hotel. We hooked up Arizona Boy's computer so that we had music, which turned out to be a rather hilarious idea. The evening resulted in Waterproof Trousers and Irish getting more than a little drunk and singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" at the top of their lungs. There's a video, which has not gotten less funny with time. But I'm not going to include it for the sake of the innocent.

We also played Beer Pong, which didn't work out so well for anyone playing with me, because I don't drink beer, so they'd end up drinking twice as much as they otherwise would have. But eventually, we managed to lose the ping pong balls in the shrubs, so that idea got abandoned.

At one point during the evening, Sara went back to our room to get something. And in doing so, she managed to break off the key in the door. So when we went to bed that night, we couldn't shut the door properly because we wouldn't be able to get out again. So instead, we barricaded it with a table and our packs.

Ten minutes later, someone started banging on the door. It turned out to be a very drunk Arizona Boy, who wanted to apologise for the fact that he'd tried to scare us by hiding in the cupboard in our room. Except because he was drunk, he managed instead to hide in the empty room next door. And he didn't realise for HALF AN HOUR. Clearly, he's a smart cookie.

The next day, we went on a boat tour of Lake Atitlan. It was completely gorgeous, and included a 45 minute walk between a couple of villages:

Eventually, we reached a small village, and several of the boys took quite a shine to some VERY special local trousers. The trousers were very ornately embroidered with birds from mid-thigh down, and came in either white or mauve fabric with stripes running through it. Sadly, none of them purchased any of the very special trousers, because they were $100, but we DID take some photos so we could laugh hysterically later:

Next up, we head back to Antigua via the markets at Chichicastanango, and I nearly die. Seriously.

K xx

Ancient history, Volume XXXVI

Previously, flaming tequila shots, canyons and putting saints in the freezer.

The day after we learnt that St Anthony is the source of husbands was a travel day. According to our trip notes, we should "Be prepared for anything". And anything is pretty much what we got... 

We left San Cristobal on a local bus and headed towards the border. After a couple of hours, it was off the bus and onto a collectivo, which took us from the closest major town to the closest SMALL town. From there, it was into taxis, which took us to the Mexico-Guatemala border. After walking across the border, we crammed ourselves into tuk tuks (things that are not fun: trying to hold your 20kg pack with one hand while riding in a speeding tuk tuk.).

The tuk tuks dropped us on the side of the road where we waited around for a while before Arizona Boy suddenly announced that we were to board a chicken bus. After throwing our packs up on the roof (EXTRA fun), we crammed ourselves into the limited number of available seats and HOLY HELL, my knees still haven't forgiven me.

From there, it was onto ANOTHER chicken bus, and this one was sliiiiiightly more interesting, in that karma attacked Arizona Boy. The whole way through the trip, he'd been talking about how much he hated children. So of course, he got stuck sitting next to a small child. And said small child sat veeeeeeeeeery quietly for approximately half the bus ride, and then promptly projectile vomited all over himself and all over Arizona Boy's feet. And Arizona Boy was wearing thongs/flip flops/jandals. Said small child then looked enormously guilty, and shortly thereafter, slunk off the bus.

Sara and I, meanwhile, giggled hysterically. Because we're evil like that.

Shortly thereafter, we were off the chicken bus and standing around on the side of the road while Arizona Boy disappeared off into the depths of a small Guatemalan town looking for a hose to wash his feet. The plan had been to take another chicken bus, but the next bus to come along was a first class bus. We briefly got excited, until we realised that said first class bus was completely full, and that we would be standing in the aisle, holding onto the parcel shelves, all while wearing our packs. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

This experience was made even MORE enjoyable by the fact that the very overweight woman sitting next to where I was standing was passing the time on the bus trip by clipping her fingernails. And her fingernails kept HITTING ME IN THE ARM. FOR ABOUT A FREAKING HOUR. How she had any fingernails left to clip by the end of it is completely and utterly beyond me.

Eventually, we were off that bus, and onto yet another chicken bus for the trip down into Panajachel. And, just when we thought we were finished, we had to take tuk tuks from the bus station to the hotel. Thankfully, that wasn't very far.

Understandably, after AN ENTIRE DAY spent on nine (NINE!!!!) different forms of wheeled transport, we went slightly insane. And so, that evening after dinner, we decided that - considering it was pouring with rain and we didn't want to try and work out who would stay behind trying to hail another tuk tuk - we would cram all EIGHT of us into the one tuk tuk. Sara ended up on the parcel shelf, there were three of us in the back, two in the front, and two people sitting on laps. And then the driver. Who thought we were bonkers. It's entirely possible that we were:

Next time, the details of Panajachel. (Also, I promise there's no puking in the next installment.)

Also, happy Thanksgiving, America. And happy Thursday/Friday to everyone else!!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXVII

Previously, I discovered a sad lack of pirates in the Caribbean off the coast of Guatemala. The following day, we were up at the ungodly hour of 5am. After a nutritious breakfast of orange juice and tortillas (seriously), we were on the bus by 6am for the one and a half hour drive to Tikal. Upon arrival, we had half an hour to stretch our legs, which seemed REALLY pointless, considering we were about to spend several hours walking around awesome ruins, but apparently my "OMG MY ARCHAEOLOGY NERD SELF CAN'T COPE CAN WE JUST *GO*?????" pleas were overruled.

Eventually, the tour started and we were less than thrilled to discover that Tikal is basically overrun with enormous and very bitey mosquitoes. (Public service announcement: never Google "giant mosquito". You will give yourself the heebiejeebies) Suit Pants, a tour leader in training (who dressed almost exclusively in cheap suit pants bought from op shops/thrift stores for $5 and cut off at the knee) who was travelling with us for half of the trip, decided that it would be an awesome idea to swat the mosquitoes with his metal water bottle. That lasted right up until around the time he swung vigorously, missed his leg, and whacked himself in the groin instead.

ANYWAY. We started out with a visit to Group G, which - according to Wikipedia - dates to the late Classic period and consists of palace structures. Mostly, I thought it was SUPER AWESOME SAUCE.

After a mosey around there, it was off to Temple V, which you can climb. The view from the top was pretty spectacular, but the seven flights of fifteen stairs that were so steep you had to climb them like a ladder was less than enjoyable!

Temple V

Wheeeeeee, stairs.

The view from the top

From there, we headed to the main plaza. On the way, I became intrigued by the restoration technique being implemented by a work crew - hack apart bits of rock with a machete until they were roughly the shape you wanted, then throw they to the next bloke in line, who would add mortar and apply it to the building. Bizarre!! We stopped off at Temple IV on the way to the plaza, which had a pretty nifty view too:

Somewhere in there is an entire ruined city

Then it was on to the plaza for badly taken group photos (I got cut off the edge in all of mine) and a quick wander around on our own. I basically ran around like a lunatic, taking photos of anything and everything I could find:

Main plaza and Jaguar Temple

I have no idea what this is. But it's cool.

Stela in the main plaza

Temple II

View of the main plaza and temples

From there, it was back to the bus and, after a quick bite of lunch, the two hour drive to the border with Belize. Hey Australia and New Zealand? Did you know that in South and Central America, it's perfectly normal to WALK ACROSS AN INTERNATIONAL BORDER????

I did not, and it blew my mind. I guess when you can't get to another country without crossing hours and hours of water, these things just don't occur to you! Anyway, we walked across the border into Belize, because the bus was only licenced in Guatemala, and then had a 45 minute car trip to San Ignacio.

Aaaaaaaaand once there, it took approximately five minutes in (English speaking) Belize for me to forget all the Spanish I'd managed to learn in the previous four weeks. Well done, me. Well done.

Next up, spelunking with skeletons and snorkelling with manta rays and manatees!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXVI

In the last installment, I saw a fountain with boobs and climbed a volcano but didn't toast marshmallows in the accompanying lava river because I'm a wuss.

The morning after the whole volcano climbing expedition thing, we were up at 5.45am and downstairs at 6.45am, as requested by Arizona Boy. However, it turned out that Arizona Boy had his watch set about four minutes fast, and would get cranky if we weren't there on "Arizona Boy Time"... We piled into minivans, and headed off. After an hour or so, we hit Guatemala City. And Guatemala City delivered us our first dead body of the trip - some poor bastard who'd been run over by a chicken bus. O.o

From there, it was five or so hours in a minibus with broken air conditioning to the docks of Rio Dulce, where we caught boats across to our hotel for the night. The hotel was...interesting. It became known to our group as "The Kevin Place", because a) it was run by a weird American guy named Kevin, and b) in order to buy drinks at the bar, you had to buy a stack of "Kevin dollars" from the front desk, and use those. Conveniently, I nicked one and shoved it in my travel diary, so I can show you exactly what I mean:

Like I said. Interesting. I spent most of the afternoon sitting at the bar by the pool. A decent chunk of it was with (my now BFF) Sara. We spent a chunk of it making fun of this dude:

Yes, that's a pith helmet. Because apparently he's an archaeologist from the 1930s. I also went crazy from the insane heat and decided that I needed a beer. That decision lasted all of 3 sips before I'd gagged repeatedly, given my crappy Guatemalan beer away to one of the boys and was downing handfuls of popcorn to get rid of the taste.

The following day, we were up stupidly early again, this time for a boat trip to Livingston. We started off with a wee jaunt around Lago Izabel, the largest lake in Guatemala. There were a couple of protected bird colonies:

And Castillo de San Felipe, which was built in the sixteenth century, then destroyed, then rebuilt in the 1950s to ward off pirates. BUT OF COURSE:

It had cannons.

From there, we headed down the Rio Dulce towards Livingston. Shortly thereafter, it started POURING with rain. And almost no one had rain gear with them. So we ended up cowering under tarps that did absolutely nothing to keep the rain out. There's nothing quite like sitting on a boat that's driving INTO the wind when it's pouring with train... Upon arrival in Livingston, we drowned-ratted our way to a cafe, where half the group decided that 10.30am was the PERFECT time for Coco Locos - a coconut with the top cut off and rum poured in.

By the time we'd finished our drinks, the sun had come out and it was stinking hot again, so a bunch of us headed down to the Caribbean just for the hell of it. Sadly, it was less pirate filled than I had been led to believe:

No Captain Jack Sparrow to be seen! *sigh*

After wandering around Livingston a little more, it was back to the mainland and onto a bus for the three and a half hour trip to Flores. Sara and I were sharing a room with a delightful bitchy bonkers girl from Ireland who was constantly convinced that the food was going to kill her or that the rooms would give her the plague. Not even the room in Flores - which REEKED of bleach - was clean enough for her. (It will become increasingly apparent that she was Not My Favourite Person)

We didn't get to see much of Flores, because we left first thing the next morning. But what we DID see? Included a pretty spectacular sunset:

Next up, things get FAR more exciting when we visit the first of the Mesoamerican city ruins: Tikal!!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXV

In the last installment, I spent an entire freaking day flying from Ecuador to Guatemala solely to avoid flying through Columbia. Don't be me...

The following morning, I realised that I was starving (due to skipping dinner when I arrived) and had no Guatemalan money to my name. So I set off for the Antigua town square in search of breakfast and quetzales. Which was about the time I found out that there were seven quetzales to the dollar, which is REALLY hard to work out in your head... I wandered around Antigua for about half the day - it's really pretty and the entire town is heritage listed - it was hit by an earthquake in 1776 and largely abandoned, so all the really old (and slightly ruined) buildings are still there.

In the middle of the afternoon, I headed back to the hotel and sat outside reading my book until I was suddenly accosted by a bunch of Australian voices. It turned out they were part of the group that had just finished the tour I was about to start, and the group was heading on to Honduras. Their tour leader was running an orientation walking tour of the city for the people joining in Antigua, so I tagged along.

THE FOUNTAIN HAS BOOBS, YOU GUYS

Check out the decoration on this church facade! 

They invited me to tag along to their farewell dinner that night, which I did, and the following day I was up at stupid o'clock (like 5.30am) and heading out with the group to climb an active volcano. The first few hundred metres of the climb were absolute torture - like walking the trail to Dead Woman's Pass all over again. After that, it alternated between reasonably flat and crazy steep. As me and a couple of others started to fall further behind the group, locals would come up behind us asking if we wanted to get a 'taxi' (aka a horse) to the top. So I was constantly finding horses behind me. And I'm TERRIFIED of horses. So I was freaking the fuck out, and attempting to convey that no, I really REALLY didn't want to ride a horse to the top. Eventually, I managed to convey to one of the guides that me + horses = no bueno, and he persuaded the touts to leave me alone. THANK GOD.

Finally, we reached the lava field, I became increasingly paranoid that the pumice was going to give way under me and that I would fall into molten lava and die a horrible flamey death. OH HAI, OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION!!!

Thanks a lot, brain... Also, source.

Needless to say, I didn't die a horrible flamey lava death - SURPRISE!!. At the summit, we got to see lava bubbling away, and a little further down the slope was a river of lava. (How many more times do you think I can use the word  lava in this post? LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA)

Climbing Mount Doom Volcan Pacaya

GLOOPY LAVA

LAVA RIVER

OOZY LAVA

After not very long at the top, one of the guys in the group (who'd gone close enough to the lava river to try and toast marshmallows) discovered that the soles on his shoes were melted. Between that and the overpowering smell of sulphur, we decided that it was probably time to start heading back down. After an hour's bus ride, we were back in Antigua where I discovered that I couldn't get into my room because my roommate had arrived and had taken the key with her when she left the hotel. AWESOME. (This was pretty much the way our relationship would go for the rest of the trip...)

So I whinged to one of the girls on the other tour, and we went out to have a look at some of the ruins:

That night, there was a pre-tour briefing which was to change my life forever. Because that's where I met my BFF, Sara. And also our tour leader, Arizona Boy, who was...more than a little odd.

But Arizona Boy and his special snowflake behaviour (and his Evil Twin, who appeared when tequila was present) are stories for another time...................................

Have you climbed a volcano? Did you get paranoid that you were going to fall through the stone and die in a river of lava?? (Please say yes so I feel like less of a weirdo...)

K xx