Ven a la playa conmigo!

Don't study. Forget all of your Spanish review plans and just play on the Pacific black (volcanic) beach with friends, Sönke, Thomas and Hailey. How could I possibly say no, when Thomas told me that they had the plans set, and an open spot in the car and hostel. We traveled about 3.5 hours from Antigua to the beach of Monterrico. It is about 3/4 of the way down the Pacific coast between Guatemala's borders with Mexico and El Salvador. We left at 6:00 pm on Friday and just made dinner at our hotel, Hotel El Delfin. It was 206 Q per room with no bathroom in the room... do the math... double occupancy makes it 103 Q per person... divide by 7 makes it about $15 per person per night. Win!

So here is a photograph of a few parts of the hostel. You can see that there is mosquito netting above my bed which thank God ended up not being terribly necessary. There were a few mosquitoes in the room, but I just took to squashing them every night before bed. I shared a room with Hailey who is quiet, goes to bed early, wakes up early and does not snore. We were all exhausted when we arrived, so we went right to dinner and then bed. I was pleasantly surprised that the food was good.

In the morning I got up early to spend time looking out at the ocean. After being in Antigua, where everyone pushes food and goods on you, it was amazing to be allowed to sit quietly and write in my journal. In fact I had to chase someone down to get breakfast.

Of course I ordered the one thing on the menu that I'd never heard of, Sopa de Huevo, Egg Soup. It is evidently very common in Guatemala but almost never ordered by non-Guatemalans. Like so many times in the past, the waiter asked twice if I was absolutely certain that I wanted the spicy egg soup for breakfast. I assured him that I did and he walked away trepidatiously. Just to let you all know, it was amazing. It was a bit like egg drop soup meets chicken noodle, in all the best homemade ways. After breakfast we got ready to go kayaking.

Being the token American in a group is a mixed bag. There is no doubt that I'm going to be the loudest and encourage everyone to have the most fun, but it also inevitably leads to good natured teasing when I take one too many videos. Spoiler alert...the videos will make everyone laugh for years to come, and of course I share my photos after the fact so it's entirely possible that this video is showing up on Dutch and German Instagram!! I have done a lot of kayaking in the Florida mangroves with Mike, so one of the big benefits of taking me along is that I knew all the birds. There were lots of egrets, herons, cormorants, songbirds, and one bird of prey that I think might have been a juvenile Osprey. Sadly, the sun was in a bad spot to tell for sure.

Our guide for the kayaking was really lovely. He said that he enjoyed having us because he didn't have to teach us how to sit in the kayak or hold the paddles! He told us that sometimes he has to tow people back to the dock. I have to say I'd be completely humiliated if I needed to be towed back to shore. We really got a huge bang for our buck because the guide took us on a lovely paddle in the main river and in the mangrove forest. I have to be honest, the tide on the way back was actually remarkably strong. I had to dig down and focus on paddling and not how far we had to go. Once we got back from kayaking, we were told we were able to use the entire Maya Jade resort! This is a lovely resort in El Hawaii, a town 45 minutes from our hotel. It was lovely because they had 3 pools and an enormous black sand beach. Of course, I headed right for the hammocks to take a nap. All of you who know me know that napping is my favorite, and a hammock only makes it better.

On the way back to our hotel, the guide said do you wanna go and release turtles? That is the silliest question ever! Of course I want to go and release turtles. Meet my turtle Rilke. I know that he's going to be one of the fraction of a percent that makes it to adulthood, because I told him so. Plus, he's named after one of the greatest poets, so he has to live up to that name. Rilke, and all the others, are Olive Ridley sea turtles, Lepidochelys olivacea. The species is the second-smallest and most abundant of all sea turtles. But please don't let their current status fool you; they've declined about 30% in the last 10 years. Primarily this is due to habitat loss and the fact that their eggs are a delicacy in many restaurants. There have been attempts made to allow for legal collection of their eggs in order to satisfy this market, but the reviews on this have been very mixed as to how effective it is in protecting the species overall. At this particular location they raise turtle eggs year-round. They are released almost every day at sundown, and on end I have to say it was a pleasantly not-American experience. No one needed to tell anyone, Don't grab the turtle, or Release it gently. They just carefully kept an eye on all the people and the turtles and let you enjoy your few minutes before you put them down on the sand so they could find their way to the sea.

After our amazing turtle experience, we returned to our hotel and had dinner. I told you that the food here was pretty good, but had not shared any photos. The drink has a very funny story to it. We made it back in time for happy hour and everybody else just ordered the typical beer, Gallo, which were 2 for 1 in happy hour. I of course ordered the beverage that nobody had ever heard of. It ended up being 2 bottles of tropical malt beer dumped into lots of fresh fruit juice. I'm telling you all, order the thing on the menu that no one has ever heard of! Then we came to dinner, and I ordered whole fish. Again, I ordered the one I'd never heard of because when I Googled the names, they all came up as fish; thank you, Google Translate. Amazingly it ended up being Mackerel. Everyone who knows me, knows I love my oily bluefin fish. I'm not sure that this could have been a better dinner, until the fireworks showed up for dessert!!!

I know that this photograph might seem misplaced, as sunset clearly happened before dinner, but I wanted you to see it exactly as I did. Thomas and I were standing on the beach and I said, "Wow, I really wish we could see the green flash". He had never seen it and so immediately Googled it. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that you do need a long view of the horizon to see it, which wasn't perfect in this particular location. What was perfect was the sunset.

The next morning, I got up early because we were supposed to go and see dolphins. Unfortunately, Guatemala and food had other plans for us… Sönke was not feeling well. 😕 The upside is that I got to sit on the beach, eat another breakfast and watch the waves roll in before going back to real life and school in Antigua.

I'm going to leave you with a wonderful, fun video of me playing in the Pacific with my friends. I hope that you are having a wonderful summer too.