(San) Juan of a Kind

I said no pun titles yesterday but now it's today and you have to deal with my puns. (I guess you don't, you can always stop reading).

Big news to start off the day: Our hostel has free breakfast and today was French toast! Yeah, these guys branch out past banana pancakes, Oasis Hostel in Granada (just kidding, no hard feelings, I still love pancakes). This French toast had fruit on it too! I'm sure you're envisioning strawberries or bananas at this point but you are wrong! They actually put watermelon and papaya on the French toast! I found it surprisingly enjoyable and am excited for whatever they'll put on my plate tomorrow.

Whitney and I hung out at the hostel for most of the day. She made friends, I read and occasionally made comments in whatever conversation she was having, as is my usual way.

In the afternoon we took a shuttle to the beach. We saved money by opting out of renting surf boards and taking lessons and just went swimming.*

*we attempted to swim.

The waves were big and we both came very close to losing our swimsuit bottoms on multiple occasions. The beach was also populated by lots of hermit crabs to the point where Whitney gave up searching for seashells because "all of the ones I like are populated."

We got burritos for dinner which was great because who doesn't like a good burrito and brought cake back to the hostel with us! I got chocolate cake and it was delicious. Now Whitney is continuing to make friends (drinking games) while I continue my intellectual pursuits. Everyone at the hostel (and maybe everyone in Nicaragua from the sound of it) is gearing up for Sunday Funday. Our hostel is wonderfully thoughtful and goes to get our tickets for us so we don't have to wait in line at 9am. My job tomorrow is to not read, get a free shirt and make sure Whitney frequently reapplies sunscreen. Whitney's job isn't fit for print. I might have done the Lava Shot but I'm not so sure about how I will handle this challenge.

Wish me luck and read my blog posts.

San Juan del Sur

There are so many puns I could have used for this blog post title but I controlled myself... maybe tomorrow.

This morning we packed up in Granada but had time to kill so we stored our bags in a room at our hostel that smelled like a foot and set off. We got brunch at a place called Kathy's Waffles BUT I didn't get a waffle. Whitney reminded me that I've had a lot of pancakes and waffles recently, even by my standards so I got a veggie omelette. It was really just a mushroom omelette with like a singular piece of onion so it was good but disappointing.

Post brunch we simply retrieved our bags from the foot room and waited for the shuttle. Our shuttle ride was pretty plain. Nothing special to report (today was a pretty boring, lazy day honestly).

We arrived in San Juan del Sur around 3 and it's a pretty lazy place so we simply lounged by the pool for a bit before heading into town to get the lay of the land.

We're back at our hostel now. The place has a very chill, family vibe, which is why we're participating in "Mexican night" and waiting for tacos. Tomorrow we'll be headed to the beach and then SUNDAY FUN DAY. Sorry there isn't more to write about but that's just the way it goes sometimes.

Lake Monsters

We're getting to the point in the trip where being lazy is socially acceptable (not that I've ever been or cared about being socially acceptable but Whitney does), but instead of just hanging out at our hostel today, we boarded a shuttle to take a day trip to Hotel Paradiso.

Yeah. It seems weird to leave one hostel to go to another hostel-type place but I'm about to explain. Hotel Paradiso is a resort on the shore of Laguna De Apoyo, which according to my google search is  a "clean, blue and thermally vented 48-kilometer body of water contained inside the crater of the Apoyo Volcano." So a really, really, really big bath tub.

How many lakes are there inside volcano craters?! (No... really, does anyone know?). As all of that technical mumbo jumbo would suggest, it's a pretty sweet place to visit and Hotel Paradiso has it all! There is swimming and sun bathing obviously but they also had a restaurant and a spa and kayaks! We had hours to kill at this place and the thermally vented water world at our fingertips.

We started with some physical activity! Kayaking lasted roughly 15 minutes. Whitney complained about the lake having waves (she believes that wavy lakes go against nature and my explanation that where there is wind and water there will be waves has fallen on deaf ears). We also didn't have a destination for our kayaks because like Google I said, the lake is nearly 50 kilometers. So we paddled back in and got $10 pedicures. My toes were mangled ever since we went surfing so it was nice to get some fresh polish (even if that polish chipped before we got back on the shuttle home). I skimmed through a magazine in German (yup, they didn't have any magazines in Spanish or English, only German) while my toes were painted "silk rose." I don't know why they called the polish that because it is a tangy orange-red color that is extremely summery while most closely resembling the color of Kool-Aid but I guess "anthropomorphic beverage red" didn't work well in the focus groups. Whitney had her raptor claws painted white "because it makes you look tan." (Sidenote: Whitney has the ugliest toes in the world, hence why I suggested she has dinosaur feet. They're scary... they might be the modern day equivalent of Medusa and turn folks to stone. I should check on the pedicurist...)

We got lunch and fancy beverages because it's what hungry people in pretty places do. The beverages had star fruit for garnish which was very pretty but Whitney promptly spit out on the table when she tried to take a bite. Classy.

We then picked up some tubes and went to float in the lake. Whitney decided to dunk and came back melodramtically screaming that she'd seen a sea monster. Until I reminded her that we were in a lake at which point she recanted and had seen a lake monster. We swam out to the floating dock and jumped off of it to the chagrin of a few sunbathers.

SPEAKING OF SUNBATHERS! (Prepare yourself for another rant about tourist etiquette). When there are a limited number of chairs and you're planning on vacating yours for an extended period of time TAKE. YOUR STUFF. OFF OF IT. We had some time to sunbathe and would have loved to sit in chairs but we couldn't for the most part because people left their junk on them. There was a chair that was occupied by a pair of shoes, a towel, and keys for the entire day (and no, I'm not exaggerating). I don't expect you to give up your chair if you're taking a bathroom break or running into the lake to cool off but you do not get to call dibs for a whole day when I'd be more likely to see BigFoot than to see you in that stupid chair.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest... We really did have a lovely day. We were dropped off at our hostel close to 5 and went out for dinner. Whitney is now complaining about packing but I've already finished which gives me the free time to literally hang out (I'm currently sitting in a hammock) and write this post for all of you readers. We leave for San Juan del Sur midday tomorrow where we're planning on enjoying some more beach and pool time (because as I've said, it's socially acceptable to be lazy now!)

Those Hot Summer Nights

We've been blessed with air conditioning for most of this trip. This is not an accident; I am spoiled and willing to pay extra to be comfortable. We've had a few dorms without AC because it simply wasn't an option (or in the case of Antigua, they done goofed) and our dorm here is one of them. I've done well in the other dorms but last night was the first where I was too hot to sleep. Each bed here has a fan but based on the outlet situation, mine is at the foot of my bed. I said screw it and flopped over so the fan was straight on my face. It was not a good night in the dorm...

Also, I took my watch off last night and left it in the common area. I went to the front desk to see if they had it and the lady said that someone had turned in a brown watch. I said "Mine is pink" and when she went to double check, she pulled out my watch. My watch that was pink but had become faded and dirty from daily wear and tear. She looked at me and said "It's brown" before returning it. And suddenly, I needed to add "buy a new watch" to my list of things to do when I get home.

Speaking of buying stuff, parental units, Whitney has said she might be interested in a pair of real Birkenstock sandals for her birthday. She doesn't read my blog so this is an easy way for me to pass on this information without her knowing.

I Lava A Lot of Things... Except Stereotypical Tourists

One thing I've noticed here is that we go on a lot more outings and guided tours than we did in Europe which is cool and which is also how we ended up on a boat in Lake Nicaragua this morning.

Fun fact about Lake Nicaragua: it has sharks. No I'm not joking -- I googled it. Apparently the shark population has gone way down but that doesn't mean they aren't there... So that definitely added an element of danger to an otherwise take morning.

The first stop of the "three hour tour" (no one besides me seemed to worry about the obvious Gilligan's Isle parallels as we entered a shark-filled lake) was an old fort. It was pretty small and the view was just pretty. The coolest part about it was that we saw mango trees for the first time! I don't know what I expected a mango to grow on -- it's far more convenient to imagine that they grow skinned and cut up the way you buy them on the street here -- but they grow in tall trees. But I totally lied about the coolest part being seeing the mango trees because as soon as we told our guide that we liked mangoes, he told us to hold on, disappeared and came back with what most closely resembled the basket/pole combo we use to get leaves from the bottom of the pool EXCEPT instead of scooping up nasty ick from the swamp in our backyard, he used this contraption to pick mangoes for us! Yeah, we peeled a mango and ate it minutes after it had been picked. If you need to make it sound even cooler, just remember that we were on an island *potentially* surrounded by sharks. The highlight of all of this was when Whitney showed her blonde highlights by exclaiming "Freshly caught mangoes!" Yeah, Whit, the fruit really put up a fight...

Our next stop was Monkey Island. There is a tiny island in the middle of the shark-filled lakes that has been repurposed into a mini-monkey sanctuary. The monkeys are used to people coming around to the point where one of them decided to take a ride on another tour boat. If it had come into our boat, I probably would have gone overboard from the shock. One guy did have a few bananas in his bag that he shared with the monkeys and we got some sweet monkey pics.

After that, we visited a little restaurant out in the middle of the lake. This was a let down to say the least because the food was garbage. The prices were clearly far too high but Whitney and I were hungry so we split a plate of nachos and even that was a disappointment. To call what we ate nachos is an insult to nachos everywhere! I'd call it a garbage plate but that actually exists and apparently it is delicious so absolute nastiness will have to suffice.

We sat in the sun for a bit and then returned to shore. There were absolutely zero shark encounters.

Because we're the coolest, we had another tour planned for the afternoon. We took a brief intermission from activities where Whitney napped and I read but we're ready at 4:30 when we were told that the shuttle would be coming for us. Except the shuttle didn't come. The shuttle was 30 minutes late and we were not happy (prepare yourselves for a two-star review, Buena Adventures!).

Our tour was a trip to Masaya, another active volcano that is apparently known as a Hell-Mouth. We were excited to go hear because we'd heard that you could look into the crater and see the lava flowing. I was also a bit excited because I knew that the bus would take us all the way there and that I wouldn't have to hike in the dark. I also brought my book to read on the ride!

Because you're at the top of an active volcano with actual flowing lava, there are some restrictions at Masaya about the number of people who can go there. You basically get 15-20 minutes there TOPS (and for some reason, our bus got face masks as a safety precaution but nobody else had them).
I can barely begin to describe what we saw besides the obvious "lava." Imagine watching National Geographics but not on TV, in front of your actual face. The lava was not actual near my face. It was down at the bottom of the crater, but we could see it and lots of brightly coloured smoke. It was hard to take pictures to do it justice -- impossible, actually -- but we did our best and came up with several punny potential instagram captions (mainly about being hot and lava-ing stuff).

And this is what brings me to my rant... I hate people. Whitney and I got some incredible views but we didn't get "The View". The View would be the prime time real estate for viewing actual molten lava. We were too late to the party... There was a higher outlook but it was so crammed with people that we would have had an easier time swimming in the lava pool than we would have getting to this spot. Take your picture AND LEAVE. Let me repeat this, take your picture and leave. Let other people in! Don't take a picture, edit it, decide you don't like it and take the next one. Take half a dozen and edit them later (by the way, man on the bus who spent most of the ride home "expertly editing" the 3000 pictures he'd taken on his IPAD(!), just adding a red filter to every picture you took isn't truly editing... even Instagram encourages you to do more than that). I don't want to complain because it was a cool experience but I'm going to... Why can't people wrap their heads around the concept that they aren't the only ones at a tourist attraction and that they're acting selfishly? Why do people with iPads think they're real photographers? Why am I on the same bus with people who fulfill both of those requirements?

IPad man, for the record, eventually finished with his photos and started reading on his IPAD with the screen at full brightness. He was reading the Bible and was highlighting every other sentence (and occasionally entire pages) because of course he was.

We got back late and ended up going to the (please don't judge us) Japanese restaurant by our hostel. It wasn't our first choice but walking around an unfamiliar city late at night wasn't a great choice either.

To sum it up, I lava puns but not people.

It's Hard to Throw Shade With Broken Sunglasses

Contrary to popular belief, the greatest tragedy of last night was not the death of my dignity/digestive tract but actually the moment where I broke my sunglasses! This came after The Lava Shot and was the most devastating blow of the evening because anyone who knows me knows that I ALWAYS wear my shades. I always have a pair of sunglasses. Always. Day or night, rain or shine, summer or winter -- it doesn't matter because I always have a pair of UV blockers with me. I proudly have sunglasses tan lines!

I was closer to death when the arm of my sunglasses broke off than when I swallowed a beverage that had roughly the same heat signature of the sun.

But l was also still a little tipsy when this happened, so I went to sleep.

Today, I was able to postpone the inevitable doom and gloom of a life sans shades with waffles for breakfast. Our last meal in Leon was back at the breakfast place and I love waffles! What isn't to love when they are, quite literally, groovy pancakes?! Whitney got fruit and hash browns because she has never really been a big breakfast eater (or maybe because she's a huge disappointment and hates happiness. I'm not really sure there's a difference).

Soon after, I was wearing my broken sunglasses in a comically lopsided fashion as we got on the shuttle to Granada, the next stop of our journey. I was hanging on for as long as I could!
What wasn't hanging on to the back of the truck was someone's backpack because it went flying off 20 minutes into the trip. Thankfully our backpack was not the one that the driver had to go hunting for and thankfully the backpack did get back onto the truck but it was a pretty eventful four minutes.

I wanted to take advantage of the drive to write about The Lava Shot Challenge but Whitney remembered that she had a game on the Kindle and took advantage of the fact that this device is technically hers (not that she has ever read a single book on it). She played a game called Hungry Shark and took way too much pleasure in eating people... like giggling like maniac and egging the shark on... I share a room with her...

Our hostel in Granada is really nice (even though it doesn't have AC). They offer tours, have a pool, lots of places to hang out and computers complete with Spanish keyboards (which led to some pretty ridiculous problems when I tried to use one when I was writing an email... where is that @ sign?!). We got lunch at the Nicaraguan equivalent of KFC because we were really hungry and needed to get ourselves sorted out (Whitney said that it was better than KFC but I didn't say anything because I know I shouldn't talk with my mouth full).

I took a quick swim while we came up with a game plan and then we were off. We would walk to La Merced and climb the bell tower there to make up for not getting to go to the top of the bell tower in Leon. BUT the church was closed. I guess God doesn't like working at 2pm on a Tuesday because he'd closed shop. So we wandered. We ended up at another church which was big and yellow and apparently the Cathedral of Granada. I guess it's important because it's a part of their geotag on Snapchat. We kept on walking because what else do you do when it's 95 degrees and your sweat mustache is growing a stache of its own?! The heat is what led us to gelato in a well-traveled area and being in a well-traveled area is what brought the sunglasses guy to us.

Do I like the replacement shades I bought? No, Whitney will be taking them from me once I can find *proper* replacements but are they better than the crooked, sliding off travesty I had on my face thirty seconds before he showed up? Absolutely.

Feeling refreshed from a combination of gelato and new eyewear, we went looking for the chocolate shop. Did you hear that? Granada has their own chocolate factory where you can make chocolate and eat chocolate! I don't care that I just ate frozen sugar dairy stuff, chocolate is bae. So imagine my disappointment when we find out that this Chocolate Museum is an exact replica of the ChocoMuseo that we went to in Antigua!!! I recognized the logo from a block away. We still went in but it was a sad moment for my chocolate loving self.

At this point, Whitney was still shy of her 10,000 step goal and my sweat mustache hadn't fully grown into a sweat beard, so I suggested we walk past La Merced again to see if The Big Man was in. He sure was and we had the pleasure of climbing some tiny spiral stairs that I hadn't encountered the likes of since Europe in 2014 (that's one of the major differences between Central America and Europe; over there, you climb stairs while here you climb mountains but they're equally brutal). The view was stunning -- Granada from all angles! We noticed some other churches that seemed close that we wanted to walk to but things are not as close as they appear from up above so by the time we got there, I had transformed from a sweaty bearded lady to an actual puddle of sweat so we returned to the hostel.

We lounged and then went out for dinner, which was good, but then I got dessert and that was even better -- a molten chocolate lava cake just to prove that not everything with lava in the name makes you want to cut your tongue out of your mouth!

The Lava Shot Challenge

Before I talk about the outcome of The Lava Shot Challenge, I need to add something to my last post. We all wore orange jumpsuits for the ride and looked like the cast from Holes; Whitney performed Armpit's rap from the credits, it was a good moment for humanity. My jumpsuit had a monstrous hole in the crotch, it was not a good moment for humanity.

On to The Lava Shot! Have you ever wondered what it would be like to set your face on fire? If you want to find out, try this shot.

 Let me break the challenge down for you:

• Three shots of rum infused with ghost peppers (the last one is a double)
• You have five seconds in between each shot and have to wait 30 seconds after the last one to eat or drink anything
• If you succeed, you get a free shirt

So, the rum. I am not describing flavored rum. This is not the cute Coconut Malibu stuff that I personally believe tastes like sunscreen that you can buy in any liquor store in America. When I say "infused", I mean that you see the peppers floating in the bottle. You see the peppers being poured out of the bottle and into the shot glass that you're about to drink. You see your life flashing before your eyes.

Now that the shots are on the table, I'm just pumpng myself up. Like woo! I got this! And woo! I really want this shirt! And woo! WHITNEY CAN YOU SET UP THAT CAMERA ANY FASTER SO I CAN JUST DO THIS ALREADY???!!!?!

So, yes, there is video footage of me, which is good because I don't remember much of what happened next. This is basically what I imagine my internal monologue was after rewatching the most ridiculous one minute and 28 seconds of my life (it all happened so quickly that my real internal monologue was just me thinking I WANT THAT SHIRT because there wasn't any time for anything else and if there had been, I would have realized that I was an idiot for attempting this and would have stopped).

First shot: I got this. That was spicy but I'm ok. If I jump up and down a little bit during the five second break, I'll be ready. I can totally do this.

Second shot: Ok, this one was harder. Am I crying? There's no crying in baseball or weird drinking games! Yeah, I'm definitely crying...  I could probably breathe fire right now... maybe I already am? Holy Hades that is spicy. I have one more of these??????? Shyt. (Rewatching the video, I see that the bartender stops me from taking the final shot before the five seconds have been counted down, I was so ready to be done)

Third shot: *battle cry* I WANT THAT SHIRTTTTTTTT

Oh crap, I didn't get it all down that time and need to finish...

Final thirty seconds of counting where I preformed a very impressive interpretive dance that I called AHHHHHHHHHGHH: First off, AHHHHHHHHHHHHGHH! EVERYTHING BURNS. I actually can't see because I'm crying right now. I can't feel my mouth. I can feel some of the contents of my stomach and they want OUT. NOW. My sinuses are probably going to be clear for the rest of my life. The worst part however, was in the ears. Have you ever eaten something so hot that your ears feel like they're going to shoot off the side of your head? Because I have and I don't recommend it. It was like an old cartoon where steam comes out of a character's ears except that this was real life. Even though it isn't in the video, I'm pretty sure that steam DID come out of my ears. Since I knew I had survived the shots at that point, my thoughts went from I WANT THAT SHIRT to IS THIS REALLY 30 SECONDS?! BECAUSE IT FEELS LONGER THAN 30 SECONDS. Whitney actually says something along those lines during the video, which was good because if I'd tried to talk, I would have passed out. Those last ten seconds were brutal; I knew I was going to make it but I still had to survive.
Whitney stopped filming shortly afterwards but the look of desperation on my face when I made a mad grab for the water bottle is something else.

Whitney asked me later if I would have done it if I'd known how bad it was going to be and I said probably not but nothing shows how unsuspecting I was than my lack of preparedness for the post-Lava Shot experience. I had like half of a water bottle at the ready... um, that was not enough. Whitney got me a ginger ale and I just pressed it against my lips because my mouth was too hot to handle anything. The bartender gave me a shot of sugar to let dissolve in my mouth (at least that's what I think she said, the burning in my ears wouldn't dissipate for like another 20 minutes). This is when I decided to just pull the trigger and ran through the hostel to the bathroom. Yup, I had to run through the whole building which instantly alerted people to what I'd just done. I didn't actually vomit, surprisingly! I just kind of slumped over the toilet wondering how I'd just done that... It was during this time that I recorded the most pathetic snapchat in the history of ever; I'm sweaty and in the fetal position on the floor of a horribly lit bathroom proclaiming my victory, although it probably looks like I'd lost at that point. Whitney came over a few minutes later with the ginger ale I'd left at the bar and my prize. I got my shirt. I knew it was beautiful but in the moment, I was mainly thinking "bleurgh" because I was holding ginger ale in my mouth so that I could cool off but I couldn't actually swallow so I needed to spit it out into the toilet.

I sent Whitney to get a glass of milk and order some fries and I pushed myself off of the floor. Gargling milk would become my new best friend for the rest of the night and I wondered if I could pull off wearing ketchup as lipstick into a new fashion trend. Whitney ate more of the fries than I did because they were too hot when they first arrived!

Things cooled down about an hour after I'd done the shots when the alcohol started to kick in, because, in case you had forgotten (like I did) there was rum in those peppers and I took four shots in 15 seconds!

In the end, it was 100% worth it. The Lava Shot Challenge cost me a grand total of $3.50 (and some taste buds) and is a story I will tell for the rest of my life. Whitney found out from the bartender that most of the people (men) who try this give up after the first shot and that I was a real champ! It was one of the hardest things I have ever done and I am prouder of that shirt than I am of my college diploma. It will, undoubtedly, be a story in my autobiography about how unparalleled determination combined with mind-numbing stupidity can get you far in life, or get you a t-shirt at the very least.

Why Extreme Sports Aren't For Me (You probably wouldn't like rolling down a volcano either)

I have mentioned once or twice a million times that I am not a talented athlete. I'm not even an athlete. My idea of an extreme sport is knitting while watching TV. I get nervous watching Olympic divers! I get nervous watching Olympic table tennis!! But I love my sister which is why today I agreed to do something extreme and climbed into a tractor to go volcano boarding. I love my sister so much that this whole day is serving as her birthday present (let me also note that three years ago today, we ran a 5K for her birthday... Where is my tacky t-shirt prize for best sister ever?!)

I even bought her the neon orange bandana so that she didn't have to taste ash and eat rocks as she went down the volcano!

So I'm going to call the vehicle that we took to the volcano, Cerro Negri, a tractor, but it was, in fact, a death machine. First off, people sitting on the outside (us) had to duck to make sure we didn't get hit by trees! Like oh yeah, I survived volcano boarding but I got a concussion when I didn't move out of the way of an incoming branch... It also somehow amplified the impact of every tiny pothole to be a world shaking earthquake. I thought I might bounce out.

When we arrived at Cerro Negro, we still had to hike to the summit. It would be an hour and we stupidly decided to carry our boards when we could have paid someone $5 to do it for us had to carry our boards and orange prison jumpsuits. Now before I get any further into this story let me quash any visions people might have of us strapping a snowboard to our sneakers and surfing down molten lava. These boards closely resembled sleds. They had formica on the bottom and we were informed that this is what allowed us to slide down the ash and rocks of the volcano (not hot lava). As we were hiking the volcano, our tour guide gave us interesting volcano facts that I have now forgotten, but I promise you that they were riveting in the moment. She also took our picture! Lots of pictures actually, that she posted on Facebook for us (look up BigFoot Hostel and Volcano Boarding if you want to see me!).

And then we were at the top. Oh god. Oh goodness gracious. I've done a lot of stupid things in my life but this was up there with playing ball in the Brady Bunch house.

What's that thing they say about Mother Nature? That she's a bitch? Oh yes, that is certainly right because when you're sitting on a piece of wood sliding down what could be described as Mother Nature's back acne, you are not in control. It does not matter what your instructor said about sitting up, lying back or how to turn, you are just going down wherever Mother Nature's cousin, Gravity, sends you. Some people wanted to go fast, others wanted to go slowly but it really didn't matter what they wanted and it certainly didn't matter that I am a nerd who prefers sarcastic comments and watching TV to bungee jumping and drag racing, I was going downnn.

Even Whitney was nervous at this point...

We were towards the back of the group and Whitney went before me. She seemed to have a good time going down and clocked in at 20km per hour. In reviewing the footage from her GoPro, she is singing Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles for a good portion of her five minute ride.

And then it was my turn... I got off to a really good start! And just as I was starting to feel impressed with myself, Mother Nature laughed at me, and I wiped out. Actually, I flopped into a pretty impressive hole on the side of this thing. As I got myself straightened out, some guy cut me off -- that shouldn't be possible since there are specific  tracks but did I mention that you can pretend to be in control here but you aren't? My point exactly. So I wiped out again. Have you ever tried to run uphill in volcanic ash and get yourself resituated on a three foot sled? I don't recommend it... I kind of rolled down most of the volcano instead of using my board to be honest. And to add insult to injury (although I didn't get injured, thankfully) IT ACTUALLY STARTED TO RAIN ON ME. Just me. The rain started when I was going down and stopped when I was done. How does that happen?!

I have no idea how fast I was going because I DON'T CARE. I didn't get the fastest speed of the day of 70-something kilometers per hour because I'm not insane!! (The all-time fastest is 95). I'm just really happy that I was still alive and able to sit on the tractor ride home without having to ice any body parts (which was not to the case for everyone. Whitney, future physical therapist, gave quite the consultation as she casually sipped her two free beers).

For lunch (which was more like a mid afternoon snack since we didn't get back until 2), we went to a local bakery and I had a chocolate croissant and chocolate cake because when you're still covered from head to foot in volcanic ash and have most of a volcano in your socks, you get to eat what you want.

We've spent the rest of the day relaxing with long showers and longer blogging sessions. At one point, I dipped my toes in our hotel's pool but considering that it is smaller than the average fountain in an American mall, it wasn't that exciting. We're heading out in a bit for dinner and then I'm doing The Lava Shot Challenge tonight. It's extreme but it isn't a sport so I'm game; Whitney is not. They line up three shots and each one gets spicier. You get five seconds in between each shot and if you don't vomit in the thirty seconds following the third shot, you get a free shirt. I want that shirt. #InItForTheShirt. I will win!! And will probably blog about it so prepare yourselves for another thrilling tale of my drinking escapades.

Now everyone wish Whitney a happy early birthday because if she ever tries to make me go volcano boarding again, she won't have another one!

Nicaragua's Next Big Superhero

Could be me!! Ok, that seems highly unlikely since I don't speak Spanish but I do have an idea for a superhero that I'm sure both Marvel and DC will be drooling over when I explain it a few paragraphs from now.

We slept in this morning since our plans were relaxed to see the least. I had looked up a breakfast place nearby that seemed delicious so we headed there. I got banana pancakes which were more like pancakes with bananas on top but semantics aside, they were just as good as the reviews on TripAdvisor suggested. Now, I must add a personal pet peeve of mine: leftover pancakes! The order was just three pancakes but they were big! I told Whitney that I was having a hard time finishing them and she suggested a to go box. I was disgusted! Anyone who says that leftover pancakes are edible is a liar and can't be trusted. Cold pancakes take the joy out of the world's fluffiest breakfast dish!!! It's like watching someone kick a puppy made out of bacon and eggs. Eating a forsaken pancake out of a Styrofoam container essentially the equivalent of eating dirt. Dirt mixed with other things people don't like eating. It's the worst. Rant over. I want to go back tomorrow for waffles.

After that, our plan was to putz around Leon and take a shuttle from our hostel to the beach in the afternoon but when we got back the hostel to grab our stuff, two of our dormmates invited us to go out with them since their plans were almost identical to ours except that they planned on taking the chicken bus to the beach for a third of the cost. And that's how we ended up spending the day with Ryan and Holly.

Ryan and Holly are British and people who happen to be traveling together. They only recently met and are travel buddies for the near future because they happen to have similar plans. Clearly they're cool since we decided to spend the day with them.

Our first stop was Catedral de Leon, or as everyone here says, "the big white one -- you won't miss it." Apparently you can take a tour of the church and go up into the bell tower which sounded cool and everyone was right, you couldn't miss it, but no one factored in that it was Sunday and this was a church. They're a smidge busy with their worshipping to be giving tours, so instead we creepily watched a few minutes of the service and took some pictures outside.

We ended up taking a taxi to the beach instead of the chicken bus but we still got there! This was the first "real" beach of the trip according to Whitney, which means a beach that you can truly lie out on. Caye Caulker's beach was non-existent really and El Tunco was rocky but here were had miles of sand to choose from. I went looking for shells (I'm obsessed, what can I say?!) and Whitney caught some rays and Zs. The major downfall of this whole plan was that when I asked Whitney if I should bring my Kindle, she told me No. The answer was yes!! Oh well. 

Now, the major downfall of the beach in general is the sand! This is where my superhero idea comes in. I created a superhero character for myself named Season's Greetings and I have a power for every season (my alter ego works in a Hallmark store selling greeting cards). It is universally agreed upon by my crime fighting partner, Jas Spencer (aka Infinite IQ) and the kids who would ask us what our superpowers would be if we had them that my "fall power" is the coolest -- every leaf I step on is a crunchy leaf -- but the summer one is probably the most useful! The "summer power" is that when I go to the beach, I don't bring the sand home with me! We were all so sandy! It was mutant sand too! It was everywhere. Never have I needed these superpowers more than I did today. (And yes, DC and Marvel are fighting over me now. See you all at Comic-Con when we announce my development deal, seven movie contract and that I'm the founding member of the groundbreaking Justice Avengers, an unprecedented collaboration between the companies featuring their most lackluster and unpopular properties fighting crime and debating whose powers have the fewest practical applications).

We DID take a chicken bus back to Leon and getting on was weird because it was almost like a Speed situation where they couldn't fully stop the bus. In helping me on, a guy basically used my little knubby ponytail to lift me up... That's not a handle, sir and my scalp wouldn't be in pain now if you used the breaks!

We said a temporary goodbye to Ryan and Holly here so that we could wash off while they went to the grocery store and then we just hung out for a bit. We ended up getting a passable dinner and wondering if we were listening to gunshots -- turns out they were celebrating the Revolution (cuz it's a holiday here but we still can't figure out what happened) and we were not earshot from an attempted robbery/murder/suicide. 

Back at our hostel, Whitney has brought out her Eno because BYOH (bring your own hammock). It's actually made her very popular and the center of attention, which anyone who knows Whitney knows that this is exactly where she likes to be. We're changing up some plans for the rest of our trip now. Whitney and her godmother, Lindsey, have been swapping GIFS as we prepare to deviate from our itinerary, spend an extra day in Nicaragua (Sunday Fun Day in San Juan del Sur, anyone?) and add a stop to Jaco, Costa Rica into the mix. We're super excited to get to see Lindsey and I'd like to give her a shout out, a) for hosting us and b) because she messaged me tonight and told me to keep blogging! See you soon, Lindsey!!

Captain's Log

I've never seen the original Star Trek but in honor of the latest movie being released yesterday, this is my captain's log. Or it would be the captain's log if anyone ever let me be the captain! Basically, the easiest way of writing this post was to simply document things as they happened because it was another travel day. So I'm in the middle of five weeks in Central America instead of five years in deep space but you get the point and this is my day.

6:54am - We left our room
7:00am - Time we were told that shuttle would arrive
7:30am - Time we believed the shuttle would arrive
7:52am - Time that the shuttle actually arrived
8:10am - We finally got on the shuttle and started driving
9:58am - Our driver pulled over to the side of the road to relieve himself. Not joking.
11:45am - Lunch break. We ate chicken tenders and the world's soggiest, most flavorless French fries at a gas station that was spitting distance from the El Salvador/Honduras border.
12:11 - Pull up to the Honduras border
12:14pm- Get out of the truck. Have to fight off people offering to exchange my money
12:17pm - At the immigration window
12:19pm - Given a little slip of paper. I don't know what it means but at 12:20, our shuttle driver takes it and $15 for when we cross the next border (that's what I think, anyways)
12:35pm - I find out that we haven't actually entered Honduras yet, we've simply exited El Salvador.
12:36pm - I become worried that the heinous stench of body odor might be me. Whitney reads what I am writing over my shoulder and starts smelling me.
12:39pm - We hand over our passports to the shuttle driver at the Honduras border.
12:53pm - The shuttle driver returns but doesn't return our passports. He has them on the dashboard, he just doesn't give them back
2:00pm - It starts raining
2:20pm - It REALLY starts raining
2:29pm - Whitney reads over my shoulder and comments that it's 2:29 and not 2 or 2:20. I tell her that I record things once I have deemed them worthy of the blog
2:31pm - Whitney gets mad at me for leaning away
3:11pm - We stop and the driver leaves with our passports again. He tells us to stay (or maybe he says something else in Spanish -- I don't know but we don't leave either way). Note: the rain has stopped but I don't know the exact time
3:19pm - Driver is back, still no English
3:24pm - We see multiple signs that are welcoming us to Nicaragua and I don't think much of it except that it means we're probably going in the correct direction. The driver leaves and some guy in a gas mask comes and sprays the shuttle for pesticides.
3:27pm - We stop again. The driver tells us that we can use the bathroom and he mysteriously heads inside with our passports
3:40pm - We succeed in taking US currency out of a Nicaraguan ATM (this was a big deal because we'd repeatedly tried to do this in El Salvador and couldn't get anything)
3:45pm - Whitney debates trading seats with me but does not debate continuing to use me as a pillow
4:18pm - Our passports are finally returned to us. We have gotten two stamps for entering and exiting Honduras and a card for entering Nicaragua. We got two passport stamps for a country that we spent three hours and 32 minutes in but zero stamps for the country we spent the past four days in or the country we're going to spend the next week in. That must be a record.
6:48pm - We have checked into our hostel and gotten our beds. We got free t-shirts as part of our upcoming volcano boarding and got our Big Foot Hostel booklets stamped (we now have six stamps which means that if we ever come back to Central America, we get a free night!). I also found a bumper sticker in our room from BelAir Cantina in our dorm! This probably isn't a big deal for anyone except me and Jas Spencer but for those of you who don't know, BelAir Cantina is a taco shop in Milwaukee and it is our favorite taco place!!! We went out of our way to go there for tacos throughout the tour and one of their bumper stickers is here in Leon, Nicaragua! Small world!

Side notes:
-To the man-baby who was our only remaining dorm mate last night, stop sighing and rolling over dramatically because we have the lights on at 8:30pm. We know that you're napping off your day drinking just so you can go out again later. Also 11:30pm is a time to keep the lights off, thank you. Also don't put stuff on other people's beds while they're sleeping in them
-To the 5'3" girl sitting in the front row of the van, stop fussing every time my knee grazes the back of your seat. You have more than twice the leg room than I have and six less inches worth of human to maneuver. My knees are touching the back of your seat because I don't have anywhere else to put them!!! Let me know if you feel like trading because I don't just only get the pleasure of forcing my body into previously unknown positions  but having knees jabbed into my back as well!!
-To the girl that we are 99% positive we met/didn't like in Flores, shut up already! Apparently you're annoying in any country (and we've now been in four with you)
-To ATMs in El Salvador, Why wouldn't you let us take out cash? We're down to our last US dollars!!!
-To Bank of America, if the reason we couldn't get cash in El Salvador is because you shut off our cards without warning, I will be coming for you (Plus you aren't even the "Bank of America" anyways since you don't have any branches in Montana OR Vermont, so false advertising!!!)

--Your Captain

We See the Undertow

And we say LET'S GO!

Actually, no, that's terrible advice but it does come from what is, in my opinion, the cutest part of the latest Pixar animated love-fest, Finding Dory. Dory's parents teach the forgetful fish a song to protect her from the ocean's nastiest current and Whitney and I think it's cute and sing it a lot. BUT not in front of our surf instructors today because I think they wouldn't have let us in the water if they knew we were gunning for the riptide.

The fact that I'm writing this blog post means that only my fear of swallowing a lot of salt water came true today and nothing worse. Am I a surprisingly gifted surfer? *Pause while I laugh at the thought of ever being perceived as a talented athlete* NO. Definitely not. I do theatre for a reason! Did I live? Well, we already covered that topic.

It was actually a lot of fun. Our instructors were named Negro (like the color) and Roberto (like someone named Roberto) and they were very thoughtful. Especially because I was very bad. Whitney likes to say we have had surf lessons but I like to remind her that it was a singular informal lesson EIGHT years ago. It doesn't count. Facts aside, Whitney is distinctly better at all of these things than me and didn't get to enjoy all of the quality time that I spent falling on my face and spitting out mouthful of sand.

All in all, surfing is something I would try again and would definitely rank higher than trips to the dentist and looking at my middle school yearbooks on a list of things I enjoy. Whitney is already planning a triumphant return to the waves in Costa Rica and by that, I mean she's watching videos of me falling that she took on her GoPro while we were out there (for the record, I'm recommending taking another class in Costa Rica but I might get out-voted). Oh and if people laughing at my surfing wasn't bad enough, Negro and Roberto lost their minds when they found out I'm 24, apparently I barely pass for 20. Add that with "astronomically uncoordinated" to the list of things that are no longer new.

Teasing aside, as they returned us to our hostel, they mentioned that Roberto leads afternoon trips to a nearby waterfall and they asked if we'd be interested. Since we had literally zero plans for the rest of the day, we said we were game and we went out separate ways to prepare for the activities. During this downtime, I continued reading Amy Poehler's Yes Please and she once again proved to be the perfect author for me when less than a full page into this literary endeavor, she compared improvisation and living in Chicago to surfing. DID I MENTION THAT I JUST CAME FROM A SURFING LESSON? Freaky... (No, I never mentioned this to Amy Poehler because I've never spoken to her, that's what makes it such a happy coincidence!)

So I needed out, worked on my tan lines and got a smoothie. It was a "Hawaiian Rainbow" smoothie if you're curious but it was more of an orange-pink color than a ROYGBIV situation.

Now, 1pm rolled around and Roberto came to meet us. We would be going out to this unnamed waterfall (I still don't know what it's called to be honest) with two other guys and it was going to be a twenty minute drive and a twenty minute hike. The ride, apart from lack of legroom, was easy. The hike... was not. It is what I imagine the walk down to hell must be like. Yes, I said DOWN. (And this is why I'm pleased that I've already booked a first class seat to hell, I deserve to travel in style and this hike was anything but). We had to do down the side of a mountain to get to this waterfall! And not just that, everything was muddy and slippery. It was all particularly strange because Roberto had instructed us to wear proper shoes and was barefoot the entire time. It might have been the first hike I've ever been to where I was actually looking forward to the incline!!!

When we arrived at the first waterfall, you could actually jump off of it; Whitney did, I did not. I elected not to participate because I have both a tendency to fall over and a tendency to fall into things and these just aren't the thoughts you want when you're jumping off of a rock and into a body of water that is also made of rocks.

The next waterfall was not jumpable but actually swimable so I went into this one and spent a lot of time getting ice water in my mouth (A+ for hydration!).

Remember when I said that I might actually be looking forward to the hike back up the mountain? Yeah... We went back a different route than we'd come and this route is at what I would estimate to be an 89 degree angle. I couldn't tell if I was dripping because I'd been swimming or because I was sweating like it was going out of style but it was unpleasant. I asked to be left behind roughly every 12 steps (Whitney said it would take more effort for her to explain to people where I was than it would be for me to finish the  hike so I had to keep going but I don't think that's really true, either way, I clearly made it back because I wouldn't be blogging from the forest).

When we got back, we really wanted to collapse in bed for a bit and we did until we got hungry. Whitney really wanted pasta so we went to a restaurant that advertised it's "Feltucine" and she got that while I went with the more traditional quesadilla.
Moving on, last night, I posted an SOS about getting food in the rain and .we eventually did but we also went out and captured a few of the coolest lightning pics I have ever seen (one of which is now collecting likes on my instagram page) but then the rain started tonight. We'd already eaten, thankfully, and had even watched the sunset on the beach when this storm swooped in. The lightning might as well have been a fireworks display from the rapidity of strikes and the thunder was just booming over everything like a never-ending roll on a timpani drum. So Whitney and I did the only logical thing that two girls who have spread out their entire suitcases across a dorm room, over the course of two days and have a 7am shuttle in the morning, we set up camp in the hammocks outside of our room and enjoyed the show. (And wrote this post in my case).

We are headed to Leon, Nicaragua. This journey will require not one but two border crossings as we must pass through Honduras to reach our final destination. I wouldn't mind an extra day or two to relax in El Tunco but Leon means volcano boarding and that has been Whitney's dream since she knew it existed. Stay tuned as always, faithful readers; I'll be back.

P.S. after writing this whole post and watching the storm from afar, Whitney wanted to go watch it from the beach and try to get more pictures. I agreed because I am the world's best big sister so we put on rain jackets and went out. Her pictures put mine to shame. Technically she took the other picture that I already posted on instagram but now she has about 10 million other pics and videos to upload. It was insane. Either way, what she will get in instagram likes, I get in her undying gratitude and love so I'm winning here.

Rain has started. We're in our room and we need to raise our voices to be heard over it. We have not eaten dinner yet. I don't know what we're going to do. This is not a drill.

El Tunco Tan Lines

As promised, I shall attempt to describe the major differences between San Salvador and El Tunco but be warned that the major differences are like ALL of them.

We took a taxi from San Salvador today. A public bus would have cost like a fraction of the price but it would have meant piling all of our gear onto a chicken bus and we just couldn't figure out how that would work. Plus the taxi cost less for both of us combined than some of the bus tickets we've purchased for ourselves in the past few weeks so that was cool. EXCEPT FOR WHEN WE ALMOST DIED ON THE DRIVE HERE! Yup, seatbelts are not really a thing here, apparently, because while our taxi had them, thrusting actually have buckles so it was that awkward strap that doesn't really do anything. Combine that with some reckless driving and you get a really fun ride where you're holding your breath because the driver is attempting to pass three cars and a truck by going into the opposite land and you're suddenly staring at oncoming traffic.

But it was only a near death experience as you know because you're reading my blog and while I'm sure that heaven has WiFi, I'm not sure about hell and we all know that I booked my ticket there before this trip was even a thought in anyone's brain. Plus, whose ever heard of a ghost writing a blog that no one reads? I mean, that would totally go viral.

Anyways, El Tunco vs. San Salvador. San Salvador is rather industrial and strangely hilly. El Tunco is exactly two streets worth of town and complete beach. Parts of us felt weird for not going out and doing things in San Salvador but that is the point here! Plus, our hostel here has hammocks, a pool and BIG BONUS air-conditioning in the dorms.

The clouds that hung over us in San Salvador parted this morning and we had clear skies when we arrived in El Tunco. We ditched the sweatshirts for swimsuits and headed to the beach.

The beach that has BLACK SAND. I know these are the things my mother likes to know. Yes, the sand here is black. It surprised us too. Black sand is hot, fyi, but cool. The waves were monstrous and the tide was quickly coming in so we didn't lay out there for too long but we did book surf lessons for tomorrow morning. Remember what I said about giant waves (of course you do, it was one sentence ago... if not, please refer to the previous sentence), well, yeah, people surf those things. Whitney has been talking about it for weeks. I'm a good sport and I'm going for it. But the thing is, I'm bad at sports so this is probably going to end up with me swallowing a lot of sea water.

So we went back to lounge by the pool. I sprawled out with my kindle and worked my way through the first third of Amy Poehler's Yes Please (it's strangely apropos even though Amy Poehler, to my knowledge, has never backpacked through Central America with her sister. I do KNOW that she doesn't even have a sister because I read that in her book). Around 3pm, the clouds started to come back but that didn't send us inside, it just moved us under cover -- there are hammocks on a covered porch at our hostel so we set up camp there and I kept chugging along through Yes Please until we decided we needed to wash away the sunscreen and blog (well, I wanted to blog, Whitney is talking with some British tourists and trading tips on where they should go in Guatemala and where we should go in Costa Rica).

Sweating in San Salvador

So while it's barely 80 degrees here yesterday, the humidity was at 74%. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. I, unfortunately, do not have a ton to report because San Salvador is really the first place that has underwhelmed us. We've certainly had a good time yesterday but there isn't as much to do as we had hoped and the gloomy skies mixed with the mind-numbing humidity made us want to take a nap more than we care to admit (however, please refer to my previous post on what I have to say to people who are going to be pudgy about how I send MY vacation!).

So, how did we spend our sweaty day in San Salvador? Besides sweating, of course.

It started with a walk down the street for breakfast. We'd spotted a cute cafe the night before and thought we should try it but then it was closed. I really have no idea why a breakfast place wouldn't be open for breakfast but no one asked me. So we went to Denny's instead and I got the cinnamon roll pancakes which were insanely delicious.

We were going to be adventurous and take public transportation to the city's central park but after a half hour wait at what we thought was the bus stop, we gave up and took a taxi cab. The highlight of the ride was that our driver, who spoke no English, blasted Christian rock the entire time. Now to be fair, if listening to Pitbull and Shakira could really teach a person Spanish then I should be fluent but it's still strange to me that you're blaring Jesus music without a clue what it means. Do you like Jesus? Are you Christian? Are you pretending that you don't speak English so you can laugh at us as we sit in the back of your cab and express or confusion over your taste in music? I really have no clue...

Anyways, rant aside, we got dropped off at the Palacio Nacional which was like the Palacio Nacional we visited in Guatemala City in some ways and different in others. Guate City gets the points for style here. It really wasn't a competition because there was not a lot happening here. BUT San Salvador gets points for us being able to understand the tour... because there was no tour. It was self guided, which in our case means bumping into walls for 20 minutes without a clue what we're looking at or if we're even allowed to be wherever we are. There were no maps to help anyone out -- in English or in Spanish -- and by the time we found information to read, we were sweating to heavily into our own eyes to see it. So we took several VERY unattractive, sweaty selfies and left.

We walked into a church across the street but left when we couldn't tell if a woman was trying to tell us to cover up or asking for a cover charge. (She kept pulling at her shirt and holding her hand out. We also thought she might have been telling us to be quiet but she was louder than both of us combined so this will just have to remain a mystery -- our list colony of Roanoke if you will -- because now we shall never know).

Since that church was a bust, we visited Iglesia El Rosario. This was another church but it was one of a kind. From the outside, we couldn't believe that this was the place that we were looking for; it was an awkwardly shaped junket building in the middle of a crappy square but inside was magic. The whole church is shaped like an arch (I told you that it looked weird outside) because on the inside, the rows of stained glass make it look like a rainbow! I can't begin to describe how cool it was and it was definitely the saving grace of our trip downtown. We took some slightly more attractive but equally sweaty selflies here before taking a cab back towards our hostel.

Except that we weren't going back to the hostel. Our hope was to visit the museum of anthropology and we got dropped there easily enough but when we went in, things were weird. We went over to the desk to buy tickets but no one was there to help us. We were, however, surrounded by cater waiters, security people and lots of men in fancy military uniforms, so there was some sort of shindig happening and we were not invited. The museum wasn't closed per say but we also weren't getting in.

We decided that we would head in the direction of our next intended visit but made a pit stop at Wendy's for dinner frosties. It was hot and we were sweaty so we got mediums but these were like super jumbo frosties! I swear they don't make them this large in the States. Their medium was like you'd just pissed off the ice cream equivalent of Bruce Banner and he was Hulking out. And I, of course, managed to finish the whole thing.

After that, I forced my dairy-filled stomach through the heat/humidity of the day up a giant hill to the Museum of Art.  We were helped in the museum by our usual dry wit and sense of humor AND the fact that I introduced Whitney to Google Translate because it has a function that allows you to take a picture of something and immediately translate it! (Although sometimes it does this badly) We were translating a lot of the names of pieces although we figured out that a lot of them were "untitled" rather quickly. Why? I don't know but it became a great bit for our sister stand up routine.

After that, we returned to our hostel where Whitney kicked my butt at foosball (apparently our dad gave her lessons so she could make friends in college. This explains so much). The score was 10-0...

We went out to dinner and basically picked the first place we saw that wasn't an American chain. We have no clue what it was called but it was fantastic! I got surf and turf (SUPER cheap) and Whitney got some crazy soup that basically included the entire cast of The Little Mermaid, singing crab and all (actually I did all of the singing but the soup did have a whole crab that I unceremoniously tore apart for Whitney to eat). After dinner, we found ourselves very thirsty and at the bar across the street where Whitney taught me how to take a tequila shot (for the record, I still prefer my tequila to be blended with ice and juice and handed to me in some type of decorative glass).

And that was our day in San Salvador. I'm writing to you now from the next stop on our trip, El Tunco and to say that it is the opposite of San Salvador is an understatement. Stay tuned for my next post where I will try to state all of it and more!

Day 1 in San Salvador

I'm being rather optimistic in my post naming here because at the moment, it's more like three hours in San Salvador.

I am currently in bed because somehow spending 12 hours on a bus can be exhausting. How counterintuitive but as I'm sure I'll write in my best selling autobiography some day, traveling and relaxing can be tiring. You don't realize how you're on sensory overload 24/7, but everything around you in brand new! Sounds, sights, smells, even the language on this trip! So we're simply hanging out now (and to anyone who thinks we should be out doing and seeing more, I say "go buy your own plane ticket because this is my trip and I do what I want!").

So we got here, dropped off our stuff, hit send on my last blog post and went out for dinner. Now, even though we're taking it easy doesn't mean we went the easy route for dinner. Oh no, we walked one whole block past the Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Papa John's and Denny's (the easy American options) to the authentic pupusa restaurant to get some legit deliciousness. Now, what is pupusa? Whitney, who had never had it before today, describes it as a Mexican Hot Pocket and I guess she isn't wrong because pupusa is a thick corn tortilla that is filled with cheese and other stuff! I first discovered pupusa on a trip to LA and then I rediscovered it in Washington DC and then again at Whole Foods (microwavable Salvadoran food... what a time to be alive). When I first had it, I wrote something along the lines of "if I ever go to El Salvador, I know I'll be able to eat something there!" (This was back when I was a pickier eater. Before I ate pig's tail if you will). Little did I know that I would be here just a year later! And I was right. I have something to eat here!

We split four different pupusa, which was a lot because for something rather small, pupusa fills you up like you're emptying the contents of a cement mixer into your stomach. Four bites is probably a more realistic portion size! But the whole thing cost less than $4 which kind of blew my mind (and I mean $4USD because the USD is the currency here, although they use a lot more dollar coins than we do. Like a lot, I've seen more of Sacajawea and James Madison in my wallet today than I have since my parents gave me five $1 coins that I don't think I ever spent because seriously, who takes them?). We got plain cheese, chicken, beans and "ayote." We did not know what ayote was and we basically got it because Whitney said it while she as looking at the menu and they wrote it down. Google says that it is squash.

We dug in when the stuff arrived at our table. Actually we didn't at first because it was super hot and we had to awkwardly cut them all to make sure we each had half of each sample AND THEN we dug in. Words cannot describe how much better this was than whatever nonsense we ate for lunch. I'm not even going to count lunch as pupusa because it is not worthy -- garbage tortilla sack is a far more appropriate moniker. Even though it was good, we probably only ate the equivalent of one full pupusa a piece. The plain cheese received the highest score while the beans failed to impress.

We stopped at a drug store on our way back for our usual water run (buying a large jug is so much cheaper and environmentally friendly than buying smaller bottles every day) and returned to the hostel. Whitney curled up in bed while I started coming up with plans for tomorrow. Arriving so late today sort of screwed us out of some things that might have been cool to see but we still plotted out an exciting day for ourselves. I tried to watch a bit of TV on the tablet and when that didn't work (the vacation gods think that unReal can wait apparently), I started typing away on my phone to bring you all this incredible post of food-related brilliance. It's like my regular brilliance only better because I'm talking about eating!! I think that's it for now since I don't think you're interested in a lengthy description of the 7-Up that Whitney and I split or the water I'm drinking now. If you are, comment below and I'll laugh at the weirdness of your request and undoubtedly ignore it!

127 Years Trapped on a Bus

It is a good thing that I charged the Kindle Fire last night because I have a lot to write and a lot of time to do it. This post was written on the bus to El Salvador and posted whenever I next have Wi-Fi (which hypothetically could be on the bus since it does have WiFi but the WiFi moves slower than the traffic I'm about to describe so probably not).

Before I continue, let's all take solace in knowing that no matter how long I'm stuck on this bus, it will still be a shorter amount of time than R. Kelly has spent Trapped in the Closet, waiting to be relevant again. (For those of you who weren't a tween in the mid-2000s, the guy wrote like a 30 part song that involved cherry pie, a midget, lots of cheating spouses, a gun and of course, being trapped in the closet. I still haven't actually seen the entire thing so I'm just assuming that he's still in there, singing his little heart out). There's also that other guy who was a slave for 12 years and they made a movie about him and it won an Oscar! So hopefully this won't last that long either but if it does, I want Jennifer Garner to play me in the film adaptation of Thomson's Travel Blog (it should also be  musical). Oh, and for my last pop culture reference (in this paragraph... probably) to things that have lasted  longer than this longgg bus ride, I don't think we will have the same outcome here as James Franco in 127 Hours. We don't even have a knife that could be used to remove any limbs anyways. (Plus what would we even want to cut off first? It seems very messy).

Now, the day started simply enough! We got in a taxi at 5 am and went to the bus station. Everything was going according to plan! Until the taxi driver overcharged us by nearly double what we owed him. The language barrier made things rough in the first place but he got money to make change for us but after giving us that change, he came back five minutes later and returned another 40Q. Like I'm sorry, sir but how did you just figured out that we only owed you 105Q after I gave you one 100Q bill and three 20Q bills. Oops! Whatever. It's weird but at least I got my money back. Next, we got our bus tickets. It was standard so I'm not going to describe waiting in line and buying them because I'm sure everyone who is reading this has waited in some type of line in their life and can imagine it for themselves without me turning it into the blog equivalent of Shakespeare in the Park.
The next bit is exciting because the bus actually left on time! 6 am sharp! If anyone thinks this is too good to be true, you would be correct because we stopped at 7:30 am. It is roughly a five hour ride from Guatemala City to San Salvador so this was not good news. (Side note, I started writing out all of my thoughts for this post at 11:30am, so you're in for a real treat of increasingly sarcastic, cynical and hangry comments). The bus driver came back to spit some Spanish at us and leave. Yeah, he didn't literally spit but he might as well have because we would have gotten as much information from his saliva as we did from his words.

Two women asked us if we knew what he said. What was your first clue? The fact that we speak English or when we were looking around for someone who might be able to translate for us and saying "What do you think he said?" That was the hangry talking and now that I've gotten it out if the way, I will say that we appreciated their help because it meant that we weren't 100% in the dark but like the sae 98% as the rest of the bus. The only information we had was that the border wasn't open yet. Apparently it was the day everyone at the border decided to play hookie.* The slow, essentially nonexistent WiFi meant that googling anything about the situation was out of the question so while Whitney took my sweatshirt to use as a second pillow, I got out my regular Kindle and finished reading Tina Fey's Bossypants.

*From what we could tell later in the day, the border wasn't accusing closed but the street was for some type of protest.

Now you're probably like but Thomson, what if you need to use the restroom? And trust me, I had the same thought but thankfully, the bus has a toilet! At least, I was thought I was thankful for this. The WiFi works better than this bathroom. The only thing that could make sitting still for for hours worse would be doing it in there. First of all, the bathroom was missing one crucial thing: toilet paper. The sign in the door says that the bathroom is "For Urinating Only" so I guess the bus company is under the impression that women don't do that. Next, if you find a few napkins to use and dare to enter, you will find a toilet so questionable that even the dirtiest of porta-potties would be repulsed. The bus's AC doesn't circulate in there either so it is like tailgating a garbage truck on a hot day, or, depending on who you ask, driving through New Jersey.  And finally, we get to the smell. Our seats are at the front of the bus so we don't have to deal with the smell unless we have the misfortune of walking back there but it's almost as if Satan ate some muy caliente Mexican food as an appetizer, 10 pounds of curry for his entree and a bowl of diarrhea for dessert and then just waited it out on the back of the bus. And never flushed.

And yes, the vivid description was entirely necessary especially when you consider that fact that we've been parked on the highway for four and a half hours now and I have nothing to do except come up with overly detailed rants about everything around me (that sentence was written at 12:01pm so we've been on the bus for a grand total of seven hours now).

And I know you're like hey Thomson, you said you had that book, you should be fine and not bored at all and the answer is yes, I'm "fine" but it's the sarcastic fine. Like as far as I know, my identity hasn't been stolen recently, I still have all of my fingers and toes, Teen Wolf hasn't been cancelled and a meteor isn't hurtling towards us but my patience is as thin as a corn tortilla.

Also, entertainment wise, they have a TV on the bus, which was in Spanish, but it was something to look at! Until they turned off the screen but left the audio running. The crazy part was that the movie they were playing was Cloud Atlas which is, from what I've heard, nearly impossible to understand in English so I wasn't keeping up with the Spanish at all... But maybe someone else was and they were probably mad that they turned the picture off without any warning.

Whitney has been sleeping through most of this ordeal; she alternates between using my sweatshirt as a pillow and using me as a pillow and when she's awake she complains that she wants Cheetos and sings the one line of Kanye West's Famous that she knows (it's the controversial one about Taylor Swift that has been inexplicably blowing up the internet this week even though the song came out months ago. It isn't fit for print. At least not by me on this forum -- I'll talk about the devil's hypothetical bowel movements but I try to avoid using naughty words. If you want to know what the line is, check out Buzzfeed.

Now, at 11am, something very exciting happened. We started moving!! Everyone was amped! Until we realized that we were moving BACKWARDS! Yup. The only place this bus has gone in nearly five hours (12:16pm now) is BACKWARDS. I'm not even sure how close we are to the border but I have  feeling we'll be out of gas -- or worse, this Kindle will die -- before we reach our destination.

UPDATES --
12:26pm - Traffic on the opposite side starts moving again. There is hope for us after all.
12:28pm - We start moving in the correct direction. We don't want to get too excited but it was worth writing down
12:29pm - We start imagining how long the traffic behind us must be but stop because it makes us sad.
1:41pm - They got the tv screen working again by smacking it (I guess they never turned it off, just faulty equipment). They started another movie and it's in English but it's that weird one where they put Johnny Depp's brain in a computer.
2:00pm - Movie is still on but the screen is dead against
3:00pm - We are officially in El Salvador. We got to the border at roughly 2:20 and they collected all of our passports while we were free to go to the bathroom. Yup, that's right, we didn't have to see an immigration officer to exit Guatemala. Whitney and I ate the worst pupusa in the history of the world on the bus (I knew we shouldn't have gotten pupusa here specifically and that it would only lead to disappointment but we were so hungry. It was not the introduction to pupusa that Whitney deserved because pupusa is like THE thing to get here and is delicious when done properly). They also changed the movie while we were out. I have no idea why. The new movie was also in English and has Christopher Plummer in it but that's all I got because I missed the title sequence. It looks like a period piece of some sort (the screen is going in and out again). Whitney got Cheetos which she found to be far more satisfactory than the pupusa and I must, unfortunately, agree.. Then someone came on the bus to return our passports; we got stamps for exiting Guatemala but none for entering El Salvador. They actually put my exit stamp OVER a stamp I got in Canada when I flew from LA to Calgary last year. Not overlapping but entirely over the stamp! To be fair, the Canadian stamp was nearly invisible because Canadian immigration didn't care to make sure they had enough ink but it's a little weird. Hopefully it isn't  problem in the future but if it is, I can say, hey, have you ever been through Guatemalan immigration because I literally have not! Someone from El Salvador came on the bus to check our passports again and this person did not seem to like that Whitney and I had been to Belize before we'd been to Guatemala... I can't keep track of what countries don't like each other and why! But, I mean, everything is fine. We got through and are now just itching to get on the road again as it is now 3:13 and we are still parked at the border.
3:16pm - We're off!
3:25pm - We agree that two days in San Salvador was the right decision because we won't be seeing much of anything today
4:03pm - It's raining. A lot. Fingers crossed that it isn't when we get to San Salvador. Whitney wants to "hope optimistically" which I said is the only way to do it. Also the TV just came back on but I have no clue what is happening or if it is even the same movie.
5:00pm - I am finishing/posting this entry to my blog from our hostel in El Salvador. It's been exactly 12 hours since we got on that stupid taxi. Oh, and it's still raining.

Guate City

Whitney and I have gotten into a pattern of dark and early starts. It's like getting up "bright and early" except the sun isn't up yet and you're so tired that you'd fall asleep standing up if you stood still for any amount of time longer than five seconds.

Our shuttle was supposed to pick us up at 5am but that was 5am Guatemalan time, which can mean anything between 5:05 and 7am. Luckily we were not waiting until after the sun came up and the shuttle arrived around 5:15. It was obvious from looking at the shuttle that it would be nice than the one we took to Panajachel. First of all, there was no luggage on top of it and second of all, it wasn't anywhere near full. There would still be enough twists and turns to rival an Olympic high dive but that can't be helped at this point in time.

We stopped for a bathroom/coffee break about an hour into the ride and since it was surprisingly cold, we ordered chocolate caliente con leche (hot chocolate with milk) to simply hold and warm ourselves up, or in my case, spill on my pants. I drank what was left after it had cooled down to a temperature that wouldn't melt my tongue. I also bought a loaf of what I thought was banana bread since breakfast foods were few and far between... turns out it was carrot bread which was surprisingly pleasant. I picked away at it throughout the remainder of the drive and still have plenty for the next few days.

When we arrived in the city, we actually got dropped off at the airport. Guatemala City has a sketchy reputation so it was easier for our bus driver to drop us there than to take us directly to the hotel, but we still got there in plenty of time. We got changed at our hotel, which is called a hostel, but the rooms are far more private than your typical hostel and off we went. We only had today here but like I said, they've got a bad rep and despite being the capitol, it isn't a place that caters to tourists.

We walked about 15 minutes to the Central Park -- we'd been told that it was the prettiest part of the city and the only traditional tourist attraction that we could walk to, so that's where we went! We arrived at the National Palace at 10:59 which meant that we were just in time for the 11am tour!!! The one snag in the plan... no English. The tour guide came up to us and explained in Spanish that there would be no English but we decided we would go along for the ride since it was a beautiful building and we didn't have any other plans. We did see an information desk when we got inside and asked them if they had any information that might help us in English but they told us that the only translation they had was Korean. Because that's helpful! (Seriously? What a random language to have. I don't think I've seen a single Asian tourist since I've gotten to Central America).

It was ok though because Whitney and I simply made up our own commentary. All you need to know was that it is an important government building, because that's basically all we know now and we paid for the tour! Our best lines of the day included people having to enter a room by sliding on their bellies like penguins, mattress surfing for diplomats ala Princess Diaries 2, a daily performance of The Phantom of the Opera where they drop the chandelier and of course, the incredible architectural fete of being the only building ever constructed from the ceiling down. There were also a lot of murals that needed to be interpreted; essentially the Spaniards wore clothes and the Mayans did not. At one point we found a clock that some might say was two and a half hours behind but I know better; that clock is on Guatemalan time!

After that, we visited a church. There are a lot of churches here but not a lot of information, unfortunately. It was pretty but we left quickly to go to the post office. And then we made the discovery of the century! I thought finding Dunkin Donuts in Antigua was great but the Dunkin Donuts I found in Guate City was better. This Dunkin has a special window... for ice cream. Yup, these Dunkin Donuts do frozen dairy comes! Chocolate, vanilla or twist for less than 50 cents US. Like I said, this was a life changing discovery because I no longer care that there isn't anything to do here, I need to come back. Also, I have seen three Dunkin Donuts in Guatemala which is three more than you can find in the entire state of Montana, so someone needs to get on that pronto.

And then we returned to our hostel. We didn't really have any plans so we ended up committing a cardinal sin of travelers by going to the McDonald's up the street for lunch. Now, I haven't been to a Mickey D's in over a year and a half but I hate to admit that I kind of loved it today. I won't be filling up on Big Macs for the rest of the trip but we actually had a decent lunch.

Next we had a mini Parks and Rec marathon at our hostel. We did our laundry and hung out. We watched Parks and Rec because we wanted to watch Inside Out but we couldn't find anyone who would stream it in Guatemala. TV doesn't exactly play by the same rules and since we were in an Amy Poehler mood, I thought I would introduce Whitney to the brilliance of her show.

We got pizza for dinner because, again, it was easy and are getting ready for bed now since we have ANOTHER early bus ride in the morning (this one to EL SALVADOR!!!). I'm in for a HOT night because although the temperature here had actually been on the cooler side, the mosquitos are out! Our hostel is called La Coperacha, but everyone thinks we're saying La Cucarachas, which we are not because I, unlike Whitney, know what that means and would never stay at a place called The Cockroaches. Names aside, however, that doesn't stop bugs from getting into this open air hostel and our beds actually have mosquito nets over them. Those mosquito nets (which I am sitting under now wearing a long sleeve shirt, yoga pants and long socks) add at least 10 degrees so this should be fun. (I'm telling myself that it is worth it to avoid getting bitten but if I get bitten, I'm not sure what I'll say).

Onto the land of pupusa tomorrow! ¡Adios Guatemala!

Lazy Lake Day

Panajachel is a pretty lazy place which is really nice when you've been to five different places in nearly two weeks (tomorrow will mark stop number six and exactly fourteen days.

Whitney and I got up to run some errands this morning while her friends slept in. These errands where finding breakfast and the best deal of bus tickets to Guatemala City for tomorrow. Breakfast was easy. I wanted pancakes and had seen a place that had them yesterday so we went there. The pancakes were gigantic -- just the way I like them -- AND they were unlimited. I wasn't able to even finish the initial plate I was given but knowing that more were simply one poor request in Spanish away made me happy. Shuttle tickets were also pretty easy to find but we did some shopping around. We found that nearly every other store here has offers for shuttles that are all basically all exactly the same but we were able to find a group that would take us straight to Guate City instead of stopping in Antigua like the rest do. Who knows if it will be any better than the shuttle experience we had getting to Pana but it was worth a shot. The downside of the shuttle was that no matter where we went, they all left at 5 an, which means that we have to leave at 5 am. It isn't as early as we had to get up for Tikal but hey, maybe we'll actually get to see the sunrise tomorrow. (There are also a lot of shuttles to Tikal from here which I don't get because it's like an entire day of driving away but whatever).

We went back to the hostel to wait for Katlyn... Yup, the spelling of her name has been confirmed. I was rooting for a spelling that included the number 8 in it but nope, out of all of the different spellings I tried in my last post, I still messed it up. Either way, soon we were off to the ferry to San Pedro, another village across Lake Atitlan. On the way, I made a very interesting discovery. I found a hostess cupcake-esque snack called pinguinos (with some accents over a few of the vowels). Now, this would not be a big deal for a normal person, in fact, the normal people I was with did not understand why I wanted to take a picture of the package. I wanted to take picture of it because there were penguins on it; pinguinos means penguin in Spanish and when I was touring Aladdin, I would always get the penguins' attention with a Spanish lesson and call for "los penguinos," so I was excited about something that would only ever excite me but it's cool.

Whitney and I also got mango. They sell cut mango on the street here and we've been living on it. I barely tolerated mango in the States but I'm obsessed with it now. It also costs less than $1 US! I don't know how I'm going to get my fix when I get home, mainly because I don't know how to cut a mango... that's what YouTube is for, I guess.

The ferry was supposed to be a twenty minute ride but surprise, we ran out of had hallway through. They had extra gas so we were only floating aimlessly for about five minutes but it was still a moment of culture shock. San Pedro is very similar to Panajachel but it was something new to look at. Katlyn's friend, Clark, came with us and took us to a hostel/restaurant/pool for lunch so we got food and lounged for a few hours. Whitney and I went off on our own for a bit and Whitney got a hair wrap which is something she had been looking for for a while (she'd also been desperately for "street corn" aka corn that you buy on the street and since she found that last night, I guess it was only a matter of time. Side note of the corn, lime! They rub slices of lime instead of buttering the corn and it is wonderful). She got two fish charms of the end of the wrap which she didn't even realize was symbolic of us until I pointed it out, I guess she knew subconsciously but it's cool that the hair wrap represents our #SisterTrip (Back story: I'm the big fish and she's the little fish and the whole thing is based on a typo in a Facebook post from years ago).

We met back up with Katlyn and Clark got the shuttle which did not involve the engine shutting off mid-ride but the might have been better than what actually happened, because storm clouds were brewing and the water was getting choppy. Whitney and I were in the back of the boat so we were ok but a few of our fellow passengers arrived in Panajachel looking like they'd just stepped off of Splash Mountain in Disney World.

We split up for a short bit with Whitney heading to the market with Katlyn to buy supplies for dinner (we're cooking at her place tonight) and me going to buy myself a snack. I went with ice cream because it's National Ice Cream Day back home and I will not disgrace the name of my country by being unAmerican and not celebrating! Also no one was out selling mango...
Whitney is now back at the hostel with me. Everyone is cleaning up for dinner (actually, I was writing this post... semantics) and then we're going to make some pasta. And then it will be an early night for us because 5. AM. SHUTTLE!

You Get What You Pay For

And we did not pay for our shuttle bus from Antigua to Panajachel today. As part of our brilliant bartering with the hostel after we ended up in the non-AC room, we exchanged the third night of our stay for the equality priced ride to Panajachel. So while technically NOT free, it kind of was and therefore, the awful ride we had should have been expected.

Before the bus, however, things were pretty good because we did the New England thing and went to Dunkin Donuts! Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do!

Now, back to the shuttle. To set the mood, it was late! So things were already going well. Next, it was a tiny shuttle and it was basically full when we got on (we got the last two seats) so our bags had to go on top. That's cool, I can handle that! What I can't handle is when my bag is half hanging over the edge of the rack and the driver tells me not to worry about it. No, sir, I will worry about it! I need that stuff. So when he wasn't looking, I climbed up the ladder on the back of the shuttle and properly secured my bag.

And now we're on the bus (which, fyi, was more like a van). We obviously have the worst seats because we're the last ones there which means that we will be riding with one butt cheek dangling off the ends of our respective benches for two and a half hours. Except that the roads in Antigua are cobblestone and the rest of the roads in Guatemala might as well be, so we were in serious danger of bouncing off for most of the time. Did I mention the alarming speed at which our driver took the numerous twists and turns of our journey? Because I left my stomach somewhere between here and Antigua. Add in the benefit of breathing in exhaust fumes the entire time and you'll see why I was in a bad mood when we got to Panajachel.

The next example of you get what you pay for was to be expected. Whitney booked us a hostel through AirBnb at the last minute for this excursion and it cost exactly $23. For both of us. For two nights. Yeah, $5 plus tax a night. So no, we weren't expecting much. The biggest surprise when we arrived was when the manager told of that AirBnb doesn't allow for listings of less than $5 but the rooms are actually only $4 and then he offered us a beer at 11am to make up for the price difference. We declined.

Now parents, before you worry, this place is not unsafe or super dirty, it's just absolute bare bones. I mean, $4 a night...

Now, I was still in a bad mood from the bus ride and being super hungry so we went to find lunch. I'll admit that it's hard to be in a bad mood here because it's absolutely stunning. Coming here is like stepping into (or dangerously driving into) another world. Lake Atitlan, the lake that Panajachel is on, is gorgeous!

We met up with Whitney's friend, Caitlin (Spell check? There are approximately nine million different ways of spelling that name and Whitney calls her by her last name, Stevens, anyways) and walked around. Katelyn took us to a market where we got chocolate covered bananas for the equivalent of 13 US cents! Catelynne took us to a grocery store where we didn't buy anything! Kaytelinne took us to the house where she is staying while she works here for the next three months to watch National Geographics!!! We got a neat little tour from C8lyn's host as well and then we got tacos for dinner!

That's basically it. Whitney and Katelinn are going out tonight while I am going to sleep because I'm exhausted! Peace and love, blog readers!

Guat's Up?

You're probably like did Thomson really use ANOTHER pun as a title for her blog post? But I'm like guatever. And the jokes on you because I bought a tank top that says Guat's up? on it so the fun never ends! Whitney and I actually bought the matching shirts in Flores but wore them today because they a) SCREAM "tourist" louder than a baby crying at 3 in the morning and b) we were going to be climbing UP a volcano today!!

I'm so punny.

Are you still reading? Because most people have probably thrown whatever electronic device they were using to read this blog across the room because they can't stand anymore of my puns. If you're still here, congratulations! (We don't need them anyways).

Anyways, we booked this trip to Pacaya, an ACTIVE volcano, on the fancy thing called the world wide web a few days ago and got a confirmation email yesterday that Armando would be meeting us at our hostel at 8 today. What we did not know was that we would be Armando's only charges for the day! Yeah, we're so classy that we get private tours! Armando was a character. He was an older gentleman who was very excited when we told him that we were from, as he said it, Bawwwstunn. (His English is 900 times better than our Spanish but is definitely still a work in progress). Apparently he has a friend who owns a taco restauran in West Newton so he knows a lot about the area (and we are going to have to investigate this taco cooking friend of his). Now like I said, Armando's English is not the best, which is why he spent 10 minutes of the ride to Pacaya telling us about how the Catholics here eat only turkey during Lent after Whitney asked if all of the churches in Antigua were Catholic or how he spent 15 minutes of the ride back explaining pet cemeteries, funeral processions and the Guatemalan stance on cremation when Whitney asked if he had any restaurant suggestions for dinner. Now, I did mention that Armando was on the older side so you're probably wondering "how could this old man possibly take these girls on a hike up a volcano?!" And so were we! But that's where Roberto came in! He would be our guide on the mountain and Armando would pick us up again at the bottom.

Being with Roberto increased our Spanish vocabularies by about 100% because we asked him a lot throughout the tour! So now we know 20 words instead of 10! He was actually a very patient guide and very good to us throughout the day.

Now, hiking up a volcano was not very different from hiking anywhere else if you ask me and that was mainly because my entire inner monologue of "Holy crap! I thought I was in shape! When does this end? Why did I do this to myself AGAIN?!" remained the same. The summit is, of course, entirely different because um, it's a volcano! You can't hike to the crater because it's too dangerous but we got pretty close! We then went through all of this ash that was left from previous eruptions (the last big one was in 2010) and let me tell you, volcanic ash is NOT for the uncoordinated. This is code for me. I fell on my butt. Hard. And more than once. I also skinned my hands and elbow. And oh yeah, to add literal insult to injury, Whitney caught it on her GoPro. (I was going but anything but pro-ing at that moment). Whitney fell too but not in the same spectacular fashion that was my performance of the Swan Lake equivalent of falling on your ass.

The bonus of my falls was that I got volcanic ash in my shoes! It became pretty clear that simply walking through this place was going to make anyone a mess but not everyone got to take the mess home with them... in between their toes... (In case the ellipses didn't make it evident, having volanic ash and rocks in your shoes when you're only halfway through your 3+ hour hike is not, in fact, a bonus).

We did take a break in this honest-to-goodness game of The Floor is Lava for a snack. And by that I mean we used volcanic vapors -- coming straight from the earth -- to roast marshmallows. Yup, Roberto brought marshmallows and sticks for us, told us where to set up and then we knew how to do the rest! Roasted marshmallows are a delicious snack to begin with but when Mother Nature is doing the cooking, it is somehow wayyy more satisfying. Whitney took a very good "food in the air" pic with our toasty gelatinous treats in the foreground with the volcano behind. (For those of you who don't know -- like me up until very recently -- "food in the air" photos are when people just hold pretty food in the air to post on social media). Possible Instagram caption: Getting toasty at the top of a volcano. #WhitneyPun

Post-marshmallows (but pre-social media posts), we stopped at the Lava Shop, because why wouldn't a volcano have a gift shop? We bought ourselves a little something and then it was time for the descent. As you can probably imagine, the descent was easier than climbing up was. My internal monologue never involves nearly as much swearing on the way down...

And then we were reunited with Armando. The drive back included the discussion I mentioned earlier along with explaining the KKK and American race relations to him. Whitney slept, although I'm not sure how because his driving got... interesting... as in we've hit some unexpected turbulence and the pilot has turned on fasten seat belt sign so stop getting up to use the bathroom already.

When we got back to Antigua we cleaned up and went to explore the city some more. We didn't take Armando's dinner suggestions (it involved way too many references to dead people instead of dead farm animals) and ended up at a place called Frida's. It wasn't good because it was the first real meal we'd had all day but because it was just really, really good! We went there because Whitney saw people with pretty drinks as we walked past and we ended up splitting a pretty drink of our own! We also split a quesadilla and a burrito and were splitting at the sides by the time we were done!

And now, it's raining so we have taken refuge in our hostel, which isn't great refuge when you consider the fact that the power went out and basically took the WiFi with it (we have power and "WiFi" now but this connection is living up to the hotel's WiFi password: "thereisnowifi"). (In fact, this post was written last night but didn't post until this morning). BUT Whitney made my life when she requested a Hamilton/musical theatre jam session, so we're packing to the sound of Lin-Manuel Miranda (and some Rihanna that they're playing in the bar that we just can't drown out).

On the move to Panajachel tomorrow!

P.S. My Instagram game improved significantly today when I realized that I can sync my camera to my phone. I still can't upload photos to the blog with just my tablet but if you'd like to look at my pictures as well as read my words, my handle is thomson.was.here

P.P.S. How did I not mention that Antigua has geofilters on Snapchat???!!!?! Who am I? They have three and take my word, they're adorable.

P.P.P.S. I don't know why I wrote "take my word" in my previous postscript. Like you're reading my blog, of course you're taking my words! And you must really like my words if you're still reading at this point because seriously, this post is longer than the waitlist for tickets to Hamilton...

P.P.P.P.S. Just testing to see if you're still here. That is all.

Antigua Runs on Dunkin; Thomson Runs on Chocolate

Actually, Thomson doesn't run... or if I do, it's with the grace and dignity of a fat toddler chasing an ice cream truck, but more on that later! (The running on chocolate thing that is, we don't need to discuss what happens when I try to make all of limbs work together to propel me through space at anything faster than a leisurely stroll because, trust me, it isn't pretty).

So, if you read my last post, you know that I survived stomach bugs, bug bites and a 10 hour bus ride to get to Antigua. But what you don't know is that the 10 hour bus ride actually brought us to Guatemala City and then we had to take another shuttle to Antigua! Fooled you!! I'm such an unreliable narrator! Who gave Holden Caulfield a blog??? And that last line alone should explain why I don't run...

We got to our hostel around 8am and were able to check in. Except just kidding, they tried to put us in a dorm that didn't have AC when we had paid up in advance for a room that had it! We told them that we would take a refund for the non-AC room but they didn't want to give us a partial refund (because they hate refunds of any kind apparently) so we would just leave our stuff in a hallway closet until check in officially began at 2. We would get the air conditioned room that we'd paid for and they wouldn't have to give us a refund for 7Q a night, otherwise known as ONE US DOLLAR(!!!). But let me tell you, getting changed in a hallway at 8 in the morning when you know that a perfectly good bed is 10 feet away and could easily be yours is pretty infuriating. Spoiler alert: When we came back to check in later in the afternoon, they'd overbooked all of the rooms with AC and ended up putting us in the same room they'd showed us at 8am and giving us the stupid refund.

Once we were all dressed (and we dressed up for fun today), we went out to breakfast and then walked around the town. Antigua has a lot of old churches. Like a lot a lot. And we couldn't really figure out why there were so many religious buildings in one place with such little signage (and I mean signage at all, we couldn't even find signs in Spanish to explain what all the churches were doing there) but they were pretty to look at and all highlighted on the map that we'd gotten at our hostel so we bopped along from church to church for a while. P.S. Some of these churches are actually *RUINS* of churches, like the old one was destroyed in an earthquake or volcanic eruption or something and what's left of it is still chilling here without any real explanation as to why.

But we noticed that as old as some of the architecture is here (and the churches do date back to the 1500s according to Google), Antigua is not without its modern influences. These newer stores and restaurants are made to blend in but it's a rigging McDonald's, how well can it actually blend?! (Surprisingly well, Whitney didn't believe me when I told her that I'd seen McDonald's bags which meant that there must be a McDonald's nearby). We saw a Mickey D's, Wendy's, BK and yes, Dunkin Donuts. I nearly passed out at the sight of Dunkin. During the winter/spring tour, Jas and I developed a very sophisticated system of alerting the other one to the presence of a Dunkin: it involved slapping the other person and screaming "DUNKIN!" repeatedly. So that's why I did on the streets of Antigua, except I was slapping Whitney instead of Jas and she didn't appreciate it. But as excited as I was to have spotted the holy grail of early morning dining establishments, I couldn't help but think WTF???!!!?! They have Dunkin Donuts in Guatemala but NOT in Montana? Dunkin Donuts' slogan is "America runs on Dunkin" but I've learned the horrible truth is that many Americans have never even been to Dunkin but everyone in Antigua is welcome to get a box of munchkins whenever they feel like it! I will be going there before I leave just to get some Dunkin en espanol.

For lunch, we went to a place called Ta'Cool. Nuff said.

And after lunch, we came to the part of the day that got me closest to running! We were going to ChocoMuseo for our "bean to bar" chocolate making class. At any given time, I am 86-94% chocolate so I was really excited to learn how to make it. And more excited to learn about how it was made from actual chocolate makers and not from the ride at Hershey Park that we went on like nine times during one visit when I was little because I loved chocolate THAT much. Our chocolate making guide was named Orlando, like Orlando, Florida or Orlando Bloom, whichever we preferred. He took us through the whole process. We got to roast beans, peel beans and grind beans (the last one was a competition that I pitifully lost). We learned about how the Mayans had a chocolate drink that translates into "bitter, spicy chocolate water" (which we actually got to make later) and how the Aztecs used cacao beans as currency (my type of people!). We made three different drinks: the bitter spicy one, a tea with the peel from the cacao beans and an early European hot chocolate type thing. I didn't like any of them! BUT I loved talking about chocolate! At the end of the workshop, we got to pour our own chocolate that we could pick up later in the day. I made two milk chocolate bar -- one plain and one with nibs which are the inside of the cacao bean -- and Whitney made a bunch of different shapes. We were very proud of our chocolate and were planning on saving them to bring them home and share but it's already too hot for them so they needed to be eaten! Which we have started to do now. Sorry not sorry. Chocolate forever!

We have since been trying to reorganize our lives in the tiniest dorm room known to hostels and have changed the itinerary! We've added a stay in Panajachel, Guatemala! We're cutting out one day in Antigua and one day in Guatemala City and dropping Panajachel right in the middle. It is a lake and Whitney has a friend from college who just moved there! Apparently there is going to be a festival happening there on Saturday night as well so we really have something extra.special to look forward to. We also grabbed dinner at the Rainbow Cafe which was suggested to us by yesterday's yoga instructor. So things are really fantastic here and oh yeah, did I mention that we're hiking an active volcano tomorrow? I might be willing to rethink my stance on running if things start to go south there but fingers crossed that I can keep walking like the uncoordinated goon that I am!