My recent journey to Central America

A painting at Museo Ixchel by Carmen de Pettersen.


A Mayan ball player. They could only use their elbows and feet.


Santo Domingo Hotel.


One street in Antigua.


Antigua village square.

Interesting, c.i.!

Welcome back!

Always wanted to go to central America, but haven't made it there yet!

More, please!

Volcano Agua from our hotel in Antigua.

On the following day, we bussed to Lake Atitlan for a cruise on the lake and to visit a couple of villages in the vicinity. At times the color of the lake's water looked green, and at other times a deep blue.

Lake Atitlan.

Lakeside village.


Women doing their laundry.


Casablanca Restaurant for lunch.


A public bus in Guatemala.

Fantastic ci

good to see you back on a2k

great pictures...more por favor

Que Bonito! Gracias por las fotos.

<marcador>

c.i. , welcome back ! glad to read you had a wonderful trip . great travelogue and pix !
we'll be flying out to santiago de chile on friday , march 17 and will be leaving valparaiso on march 20 for a 31 day cruise around the horn bound for lisbon .
camera is loaded with 1 GB memory stick and battery charged .
take care ! hbg

After spending three nights in Antigua, we took our bus back to Guatemala City airport for our flight to Flores to visit Yaxha and Tikal. What makes a visit to Yaxha unique is the simple fact that excavation/restoration has only begun - buried under dirt and vegetation. Yaxha is believed to be the third largest Mayan site in Guatemala, and located some 20 miles from Tikal. We had the opportunity to visit both sites.

Yaxha: Antonio, our tour director in Guatemala.


View of Yaxha Lake.


A excavated temple in Yaxha.


A temple in Tikal.


A sunset in El Peten.

Great stuff, c.i.

Good to see you back.

A note about Antonio. Antonio is Mayan. He comes from a poor farming family, but has successfully gotten a good education, and now works as a freelance tour guide. He speaks six languages is one of the foremost expert on Mayan culture and history, and lectures in the US and Europe. We were very lucky to have him as our tour director.

Costa Rica is different world from Guatemala, and much wealthier than their Central American cousin to the north. Costa Rica has much going for it including a 95 percent literacy rate and universal health insurance (with no army). Tourism is catching up as the fastest growing money-maker, and it doesn't take much imagination to understand why. Costa Rica offers a diverse and well integrated mutli-cultural population except for the Nicaraguans who make up 23 percent of the country. The country is beautiful and diverse from the rain forests to the dry lands, volcanoes, rivers, flora and fauna.

After meeting the three couples that joined our tour (now 13 in our group) in San Jose at the Marriott Courtyard, some of us went to the adjacent strip mall and had dinner at a Italian restaurant.

Our tour director in Costa Rica was Karla Taylor, a brilliant naturalist and people guru. She not only knew the history and culture of her country, but identified 99.9 percent of the fauna and flora.

We started our city tour of San Jose after breakfast that took us to the downtown section to see the National Theater, Grand Hotel, archaeological museum, and a short walk to the park before proceeding up north to the Sarapiqui Region.

To make a rather long and active itinerary short, our activities included (not in any order) white water rafting, walking on suspension bridges, nature walks most mornings to view the fauna and flora, cruises, horseback riding, mud bath, visitng a school and lunch hosted at a private home, visiting a pineapple and coffee plantation, visiting many small villages and market places, mixing with the people, visiting a educational farm for children, seeing active vclcanoes, and seeing a greater part of Costa Rica. It was awesome!

National Theater.


One of many suspension bridges.


One of many early monring nature walk.


Can you name that bird?


Looks like a protea to me!

A visit to a village school.

A home hosted lunch.


Butterflies are hard to picture.


A visit to a teaching farm. That's yuca - that was served for our lunch.

NOTE on the first picture of the girl dancing. She's gonna be a charmer and prolly heart-breaker for some young men when she grows up.

Cruise on the Rio Freo. We crossed the border into Nicaragua, but only a few yards. This is the border point where we had lunch.


The world's biggest insect.


A peek through Karla's telescope.


Another sunset.


Giddiyup to the spa and mud bath.

Fabulous Ci. Particularly liked the sunsets.

(and welcome back).

Cruise from Ponteranus to Punta Coral, a private island reserve where we spent the day.


Cultural dinner/show.


A biggie grasshopper on our table.


A "village square" at our hotel. The view is through the church door towards the garden.


Some crocs by the river.

This is some journey, CI!

The world's biggest insect looks pretty ****ed off about things

On our last day before returning to San Jose for our farewell dinner, we visited another small village famous for surfing called Jaco (pronounced "hako.") Unfortunately, we only had one hour there, and some of us opted to spend the time visiting the village rather than having lunch. On our trip back to San Jose, we stopped at the bridge where the river is home for huge crocs. (See above picture.)

The bus picked us up at 5:30 PM for our trip to a restaurant in the "American Section" of San Jose. You know, a whole lot of American fast food restaurants like McDonalds, KFC, TGIF, Tony Romas, Pizza Hut, etc., etc. Our van climbed the hill to a very high level where our view from our restaurant window of San Jose was spectacular!

Jim read a poem he composed that day - he claims while half asleep - about our journey that was close to concluding, and everybody felt it was super. After our return to the hotel, we had our group pictures taken, and we slowly said our goodbyes, since some of us were being transported to the airport at 3:30 AM.

Needless to say, our group was one of the best I have ever traveled with.

the nite scene of San Jose from the restaurant.


Jim's poem.


Our group.