The Lockwood Blog

Here I sit, at an internet cafe in Caye Caulker and I really have to ask myself, “Why am I sitting in front of a computer?”.

Well, at least there aren’t rules against drinking in public (or internet cafes for that matter), *sip* ahhh.

Every restaurant has the motto “slow down”. Everyone here will tell you if you’re walking too fast. I was told to relax by a chef on the street, and I was already pretty friggen relaxed. I’m burnt as hell, the SPF 45 is almost meaningless. Tomorrow I’m SCUBA diving in the Spanish Bay and having a night dive at the local reef. Today I snorkled with nurse sharks, eagle rays, sea turtles, and saw those neat fish in symbiotic relationships with other fish. There are thunderstorms over the horizon which illuminate the clouds shrouding the moon.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life.

So I’m not going to use the internet for the rest of the trip. We’re leaving for Playa del Carmen the day after tomorrow, and I’ll be home Saturday night. I’ll do a big round up post, and a couple of packing advice posts about what I used and what I didn’t. But other than that, I hope you’ve enjoyed the last couple of posts and I encourage you to post your questions or e-mail them to me so that I can answer them in the big round up.

The beer is beckoning. Over and out.

I found more of that delicious Guatemalan internet, and today it’s not half bad, so here is a pictureful post of today for you!

This picture was taken from the top of Temple I, Tikal, and as you can see it was pretty dizzing for vertigo sufferers. Luckily, though, we didn’t take the stone steps up because people tend to fall off those and die. Instead, we took a steeper set of rickety wooden stairs off to the side.

Here’s a view of the same temple from another angle, and as you can see it has been restored very carefully. Tikal was amazing in terms of it’s resoration, and I got to see some workers actively chopping blocks under the direction of an archeologist for further resortation of the 1000 odd temples in the area.

We visited Tikal at 5:00am, in the hopes of seeing the sunrise from Temple IV, but unfortunately it was overcast. Luckily, one of the guides basically told everyone to shut up, and we got to sit peacefully on top of the temple and listen to the sounds of the jungle for a good 20 minutes. My camera did something weird in the silence though, it took completely green pictures when I tried to frame one particular part of the jungle (thrice repeated), even after subsequent normal pictures. No scientific explanation available.

In the afternoon we went to a nearby ziplining adventure company and did a tour of the jungle canopy with 9 different ziplines. I have a bunch of hiliarious videos that will have to wait to my return to Canada to become available. Here’s a picture of those of us who did the ziplining:

I got a lot of enjoyment out of teasing Francesca (the blonde in the middle) over her unhappiness about heights by doing this:

As you can see, I’m having a ton of fun, and the next stop is San Ignacio, where I plan on spending a night in the jungle, exploring caves and camping with bats!

Hello everyone! I’m writing you on the last day of our stay in Antigua! Today I’m going to visit a coffee plantation to see how they manage to make such delicious beans! There’s so much to write about and so little time. But since it’s Canada Day, I thought I’d at least give you a rundown of yesterday’s adventures!

Yesterday, we visited the Pacaya volcano outside of Antigua and Guatemala city (I think that’s the correct name, I need to double check). It was amazing! We drove up to a little village about 3 kms from the active region of the volcano, only breaking down once, which resulted in the most interesting “bomb start” I’ve ever seen. Our van needed help getting started, and we couldn’t bomb start in reverse, because there wasn’t enough torque, but we couldn’t turn the van around to bomb start in forward, so the driver had a bus back into the van and push it uphill to start it!! It was interesting to say the least.

When we arrived at the village we were immediately surrounded by children selling walking sticks, or to be more specific “renting” them, since you give them back if you didn’t throw them into the lava. The hike to the active region took the good part of an hour, but the three of us from the GAP group got to meet a lot of interesting travelers that were on the hike too. 90% of the hike was through pretty densely forested areas, and the last 10% consisted of a dramatic transition from rolling green hills, to desolate, smoldering rocks. This first picture sort of shows the transition in the distance:

It essentially felt like walking into Mordor, and I was very sad that I didn’t bring along a sacrificial ring to throw into the lava. I did, however, bring a couple pounds of fireworks for, what else, celebrating Canada Day! (Okay, I have to admit that the draw was to throw explosives into lava, but it’s kinda neat that it was the day before Canada Day). Anyway, to give you an idea about how hot it was there, you can look at this second picture, which has an embarrassing amount of glistening sweat.

As you can probably see, we were able to come dangerously close to the lava, and in some cases we were able to light our walking sticks on fire by shoving them through cracks under the rocks we walked on. I initially tried lighting my fireworks with a lighter, but the wind was too strong, so I just threw them down cracks where it was hot enough for them to spontaneously ignite. The resulting shower of sparks and flames really looked like an eruption. (Someone got a video, but it’s not too good). The molten lava that was flowing in the first picture was a little too hot to get to, which is probably a good thing. The air was dense and sulfurous, and probably upwards of 50 degrees Celcius in some places. It was threatening to rain, and we would have welcomed it.

Darkness fell shortly after we arrived at the top, and we had to leave or risk being targets for bandidos in the darkness. On the way down we could see another volcano in the distance erupting, with thunderclouds in the background providing lightning, and the stars above shining down. It was a pretty awesome sight.

Alright, I’m signing off and having a coffee filled day!!