12/26/10-1/2/11

Sunday, December 26, 2010

After church, we prepared to go on our trip.  We weren't really sure what we wanted to do, or where we wanted to go but we knew that Chris had a week vacation and it will probably be the last time that we could go do something here that takes more than a day.

Monday, December 27, 2010 

We left this morning for the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.  We drove towards Guatemala City.  On the way, there were kids everywhere waving at the cars.  When the kids aren't in school, they hang out on the side of the highway for entertainment.  It was shocking how little some of the kids were that were unsupervised next to all of the cars.  I would be freaking out if my kids were out there!

One group of kids.

We grabbed some lunch in Guatemala City and then continued for a couple more hours to a town called Zacapa.  We found a hotel with a room with three beds that we could all fit in.  They also had a pool and some waterslides.  Too bad it was so cold that the kids couldn't fully enjoy it.  

I ordered a bean soup for dinner at the restaurant and was shocked at how good it was.  All of the kids liked it also and kept eating my food!  

The hotel also had a couple of playgrounds, and some turtles.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The second day of our cross country road trip began with Laina running out of the bathroom yelling, "Everything is ruining my life!  EVERYTHING!"  I still don't know what brought that on but I was glad that we wouldn't be in the car for as long today!  The other kids were doing great together.  To try to stay quiet and not wake Laina, Chris, and I up, they all went in the bathroom and played "go fish".  They continued to play it in the car.  Yes, we can survive a roadtrip without a DVD player!!

We didn't drive for very long before our first stop at some ruins in Quirigua.  I have to admit that everybody seemed more interested in the trees than the statues!!

The archeological site was right next to a big banana plantation.  As we walked around in the forest, we came to one edge of the plantation.  The girls wanted their picture taken with the bananas but you can't really see the bananas in the picture!

The view from the entrance to the ruins.

After we got our fill of climbing on trees, we got back in the car and continued on to Rio Dulce.  Our friends, the Thomas's, lived in Rio Dulce before they moved to Xela and raved about it so we thought we'd give it a shot.

Our first impression was a little restaurant that had a monkey on a leash.  The kids had a blast watching the monkey.  We still need to find some in the wild for Alysa, Cole, and Laina to see.   Chris and Cole shared a seafood dish.  It had a big huge bowl of soup with an entire crab in it!  Cole is really getting into trying seafood and I worry that it might cause a problem when he tries to eat my shrimp!!

We found the turn off to go to our hotel and followed a one lane dirt road forever until we came to a parking area.   From there, we had to get our backpacks and go across a really long suspension bridge through the jungle.  It was crazy.  I am so glad that we got there when it was still light!

There weren't any cabins available that were large enough for our entire family so Cole, Morgan, and Chris stayed in the Garza cabin while Alysa, Laina, and I stayed in the Flamenco cabin.

 The cabins consisted of a little bathroom and a room with a twin bed and a larger bed.  All came complete with bug nets.  Alysa and Laina thought they were princess beds!

 Once again the kids couldn't resist a swimming pool even though it was freezing!

The Princess Bed

After wandering around a little, eating dinner, and reading, everybody was ready for bed.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

This morning we left on a boat tour down the Rio Dulce to the Caribbean Sea.  We got to see lots of cool birds, and wonderful scenery.

 We went under the Rio Dulce bridge and headed up to Lake Izabal where we got to see an old fort where they fought the pirates trying to come up the river.

The pirate fighting fort

There is a bird on the right but if you look on top of the branch on the left, you can see a big iguana.  We saw a couple of them on a little island in the middle of the river.

I don't know that I have ever seen real lily pads before.  They were really cool to see up close.  

These birds were all over the place.

There were locals out fishing in their tiny boats.  How did this thing not sink??

At one part of the river, we got swarmed by a bunch of little kids in their boats trying to sell seashells and starfish.  I couldn't believe how little these kids were out on the river by themselves.  It was worse than the kids waving by the side of the highway!!

As we neared the Caribbean Sea, there were a bunch of pelicans.  You can see a couple between Morgan and Alysa.

The Caribbean Sea

There is a town on the coast called Livingston.  It is populated with descendants of a slave ship that crashed there.  It felt like we were in Jamaica or something.  They even had Bob Marley music playing.  As soon as we got off of the boat, we had a couple of ladies trying to get us to pay them to braid our hair.  It was so weird seeing all of the really dark people speaking Spanish.   

The beaches were pretty gross but it was nice to see a different place.  We were surprised by how hot it was especially since it is the cold season!  

At the restaurant that we went to for lunch, a group of boys came to play music.  It was cool to see them playing a turtle shell like a drum!

After a few hours in Livingston, we returned to the boat for our return trip to our hotel.  It was definitely a warmer trip since the sun was out.  Very nice.

I know that I shouldn't be saying this but, parts of the boat ride were actually prettier than Alaska!!


The rocks look like they've been painted white but it is limestone!!



Back to the hotel!  This is the main entrance since most people come in by boat taxi.

After a busy day, we spent some time relaxing before heading into town to enjoy a wonderful pizza!  We ate at a restaurant right on the water in the main part of town.  It was so strange to see all of the boat taxis taking people back and forth.  There was even a dock area at the town grocery store!
By the time we got back to the parking lot, it was pitch black.  There were no lights anywhere but a bazillion stars.  The sky was amazing.  We luckily had a couple of flashlights in the van so that we could find our way to and over the suspension bridges.   It wasn't the funnest thing to do after reading Harry Potter, since our imaginations were getting the better of us!
Everybody was tired, sunburned, and ready for bed.  The girls and I went to our cabin to go to bed but Morgan, Cole, and Chris stayed up for a while in the hotels restaurant/sitting area using the internet and reading.

Thursday, December 30, 2010
As we prepared for the next part of our trip, the kids had a blast running back and forth over the bridge to take all the bags back to the van.  Here are a couple of pictures along the side of the bridge.

The kids also wanted to take a bunch of pictures to remember their trip by.

Alysa and Cole liked the roots from this tree in front of our cabin.

Cole took this picture to show the crazy roots on this tree.

Alysa chose the sailboats.

Alysa and Laina on the Rio Dulce bridge.

We left Hacienda Tijax in Rio Dulce this morning.  The kids were all sad to go.  I don't know if it was because they were leaving Tijax or because they had to get back in the car for another long day!!

We had about a 5 hour drive over a dirt road.  We were so far away from the modern world!  

Along the drive, we saw several churches that were in another language than Spanish!  

We had to drive over this bridge.  It had two pieces of wood down the middle that you were supposed to keep the tires on!  Scary!!

So, who said a Honda Odyssey isn't an off road vehicle?

After a very bumpy, jiggly, long, dusty day, we arrived in Coban.  It is a town with some German influence.  It was so different from the rest of Guatemala.  It was actually somewhat clean and the architecture was a lot different.  

We found an information place that recommended a hotel to us.  We drove for a while before we found the hotel which was out of town and up in a mountain.  It was very secluded and overlooked the entire town.  They wanted to charge us $50 for a stone cabin that had two levels, 5 queen beds, 2 twin beds, and two bathrooms!!  Unfortunately, Chris feared that we'd spend more money to get rid of bugs than it was worth!   So, we headed back into town and found a much nicer hotel.  Once again after driving all day, everybody just wanted to sit down, eat dinner, and watch t.v.  (Oh, did I mention that there was no t.v. at the last place!!)  

Friday, December 31, 2010
The kids are ready to just be regular Americans again rather than tourists, and since we were in a town that actually has a McDonalds, we let them go there for breakfast.  After breakfast, we looked around briefly and then headed for the Quetzal Forest.  The quetzal is the national bird and supposedly they live in this area.
Our first goal was to find a hotel to stay at.  The first hotel didn't have a room big enough for everybody, and nobody was overly excited about it.  It didn't help that the guy helping us acted like he didn't want to have anything to do with us.  So, we headed down the road and found a second hotel.   The staff was definitely more friendly, but we (the kids and I) were won over when we saw the "room".  It was actually it's own building, with a big living room complete with a wood burning stove and two bedrooms with three beds each.  The kids were excited to not have to share a bed!!  We were all excited about having a fireplace.  Then we saw the foosball and ping pong tables, the playground, and the pools and it was a done deal.  Granted the hotel wasn't the nicest or cleanest but it was probably one of the most fun and they only charged us $70!  
The room wasn't quite ready for us so we headed to a couple of little villages in search of a place for lunch and for marshmallows to roast in the fireplace.  We finally found a stand that had heart shaped marshmallows.  I think we made the ladies day when we bought a ton of them.  We also found a nice little restaurant that had pretty good food.  We have learned over the past week that we only need to order about 4 meals and we'll have plenty of food.  We also bought some typical sweets to try later.
We returned to the hotel with enough time to go on a little hike before it got too dark.  From the hotel, it was a 1/2 hour hike to a waterfall.  The kids were ecstatic to be out of the car and climbing around in the forest again!  Alysa has definitely proved to be our little hiker!  She and Cole were loving life!

Crossing the little stream.

The waterfall

Morgan is getting way too big!

The hikers!

During the hike, the kids collected sticks that they thought would be good for roasting marshmallows.  I don't know that the kids have ever used wood roasting sticks!  Cole got a pocket knife for Christmas, so he got to whittle sticks for everybody.  This was probably the closest to scout camp that he's gotten!!

The crazy playground had everything made out of wood!

Yep, some logs and sticks for this teeter totter!

After Cole finished the sticks, we got all the bags in went to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.  The food definitely has not been the highlight of the trip!  We did have an interesting moment when I ordered hot chocolate and they brought me an empty cup.  Chris asked where the drink was and they said they were making it.  A while later, they brought me the cutest little teapot with my hot chocolate.  We got a few good laughs out of it and everybody sang, "I'm a Little Teapot".
We returned to the room to start our fire, and then we got to roast our heart shaped marshmallows.  The hotel even provided us with a pile of wood and matches!   Morgan said that if there was a kitchen, she could live there!

After the marshmallow roasting was completed, Alysa and Laina went to bed while the rest of us sat up in front of the fire and read.  It was a very nice and relaxing almost end to our trip.

Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy New Year!
Everybody was excited to be going home today.  We knew it was going to be a long day of driving, so we all got up early and ready to go by 7:30 even though we'd been up with the fireworks.  Too bad the office didn't open until 8:00, so we couldn't check out!!  UGH!!
After the 5 hour day on dirt roads the other day, we opted to go a little further out of our way so we could go on paved roads.
There are certain songs or types of music that make Chris and I think of our parents and road trips.  Well, when our kids are grown they are going to think that Metallica is road trip music.  I have no idea why but Cole, Alysa and Laina love Metallica.  Poor Morgan doesn't, but she got to listen to country as well.

We drove through the Cloud Forest

So, we're driving along the road when all of a sudden a guy comes running down the hill of a side street waving a red flag with a big herd of cattle running after him.  Chris stopped and turned around so that we could watch all of the cattle run onto the main road.  If we had been about 15 seconds slower we would have been blocked by all the cows!  At the end of the line were a bunch of other cowboys, as well as a bunch of little boys that looked like cowboys in training.

Since we opted for the longer road, we had to drive through Guatemala City.  We got there by about 10:00 so we told the kids we would stop and see a movie.  We got to see Tangled......yes, in Spanish!!  The kids really enjoyed it though.  I was surprised at how dead everything was.  There was only one store open in the mall!  We made it home in record time with the lack of traffic anywhere!  It was amazing how empty the roads were.

Sunday, January 2, 2010
After sacrament meeting, while I was playing the postlude, Chris comes up to me and apologizes for interrupting but we had a problem.  At the end of the meeting, Chris was playing with Laina's hair and found a tick stuck in her head!  YUCK!!  YUCK!! YUCK!!

We aren't too experienced in ticks and Chris read about all sorts of problems that could happen, so we opted to go to the hospital to have it removed.   

Chris took Laina in while Morgan, Cole, and Alysa and I sat in the car and had our own primary lesson. It was really disheartening when they all complained that they never have singing time in primary and learn songs.  I am tempted to just show up in sharing time and take over!  Just kidding!!

After sitting in the car (Didn't we just do a week long road trip in the car!?!) for over an hour, I went in to see what was going on.  I recognized one of the nurses as one that had helped me when I have pneumonia.  Such an unpleasant memory!

I finally was able to follow everyones directions and found Chris and a very traumatized Laina.  She was refusing to take her medicine.  Chris left me with her (all the other kids had to wait in the waiting room) while he went to pay.  She was being extremely stubborn and absolutely refused to take the medicine.  We finally found out that it was pain medication and that we could just give her tylenol at home.  

Chris told me that when he got into the hospital, the doctor wasn't there so the nurse called him and he told her to pull it out with some plier things.  Chris had been researching on his iphone and read that you don't pull it out because it breaks off and the head of the tick is stuck in the body.  He told the nurse that he wanted an experienced doctor to take care of it and that he could do what she was doing at home himself.  She kept saying that that was what the doctor wanted.  Well, after a failed attempt and a broken in half tick, Chris insisted that the doctor come in immediately.   The doctor finally showed up and ended up having to cut her head open and dig around until he found all the rest of the bug (hopefully he got it all!).  He then stapled her head back together.   When he cut her open, she started bleeding pretty good and ended up with some blood in her hair.  Her response was, "That's o.k. if there's blood because my hair is already red."

The rest of the day was spent searching for ticks in everybody else's hair!  

Day 1: Quetzaltenango - Chimaltenango - Guatemala City - Zacapa

Day 2: Zacapa - Morales - Rio Dulce (The place where the lake turns into a river)

Day 3: boat trip to the Caribean Sea and back to Rio Dulce

Day 4: Rio Dule -El Estor (the road isn't on the map) - Coban

Day 5: Coban  - just short of Salama 

Day 6: Quetzal Forest - El Progresso - Guatemala City - Chimaltenango - Quetzaltenango  (The other route would have been to go from Coban to Huehuetenango and down to Quetzaltenango but it isn't paved!)