After two weeks of Spanish School in Antigua (steph remembered that she hates school...),we decided to head down to the south pacific coast of Guatemala to a place called Monterrico for the weekend with a couple of friends from our Student Accomodation, Kris and Alyne.
We headed off Friday afternoon after our last spanish class (for a while), for a nice three hour drive. Monterrico is touted as a very touristy spot as it is Guatemala's most popular beach - but touristy was not really a word that came to mind. The place is very underdevolped which is great for a beach side paradise....We had three really nice 30+ degree days, the rain stayed away and we had a great time tackling the killer 2 + meter beach break. The sand was soooo hot by mid afternoon - we had been wondering why the beach soccer players had been wearing shoes!! (might have had something to do with fact that it was very black volcanis sand? maybe?)
The beachside restuarant served nice burgers (we were craving meat after almost completely vegetarian meals at the house), cheap beers, cerviche (prawn cocktails) and great cocktails. The accomodation was basic but all we needed, and had a couple of really nice pools for cooling down after battling the beach break. The water in the ocean must have been approaching 30 degrees.
Friday night we participated in a turtle breeding program by realeasing some turtles from the beach. We are not sure where they get the turtles from, but it seems like they are helping the population....maybe. It felt a little mean sending these tiny little turtles into the huge beach break which just about drowned us! but, they all made it in eventually. Good luck George!
Saturday morning we were awoken at 5am for a tour of the Mangroves and surrounding river. It was very peaceful watching the sunrise over the mangroves with the four volcanoes that surround Antigua in the distance. There were plenty of local fisherman catching camarones (prawns) and wading about catching catfish. Most of the rest of Saturday consisted of the beach, pool, food and booze, and a couple of hours playing pool in a dodgy little bar. After a few more bevvies and a bit more pool, we returned home a little after midnight, and turned on the TV while everyone got ready for bed. When flickng through the channels we found a hardcore XXX porn channel - bizarre.
Sunday was more of the same until we got the bus back at 4pm....By the time we got to Antigua it was around 7:30pm and we still had to find accomodation. After a little while we had to settle on a dorm (for the first time). After a final dinner with the house mates, we had a couple of drinks at no se' (a nice chilled bar in Antigua) and then we got an early night as the next day we were traveling to Lake Atitlan.
