Woke up a lot last night. Rooster started crowing at about 4 AM. I eventually went ahead and put on my headphones and blasted White Noise to cover up the sounds of trucks, dogs and roosters. Slept pretty well after that. I woke up, feeling really lightheaded and kind of nauseated. 

Took a shower, got cleaned up, packed my bags. I talked with Licho who is the main maintenance guy there at the chalet I’m staying at. I gave him about three dollars just to make sure he watched my bags because I didn’t wanna have to try to take those anywhere. 

I got a omelette with mushrooms and cheese and onions. They had a kind of a tomato salsa that was good. It wasn’t spicy at all. And they had a lovely plate of fruit. they had  banana sliced kind of laterally around the edges of the plate, and then pieces of papaya in the middle part and in the inner part were pieces of cantaloupe. It was really pretty and good coffee, of course Guatemalan coffee, which is just some of the best. 

That made me feel a little better. I went back to my house and got everything situated to leave. I decided I didn’t want to take any backpacks and all my really important documents. I just left those in my bag. I figured it’s gonna be safe enough there better than me hauling them around probably. 

I got a tuk tuk which is a three wheel motorcycle thing with a cabin on it from my Airbnb towards the reserve. People told me that the roads were blocked  because of protests against the government. 

The people are so poor here gasoline like $5.50 a gallon and they are lots of problems, but everything seemed very peaceful. They wouldn’t let the cars go through but if you were walking, they didn’t care. It was funny to me because here I am the tourist and we were walking up the steep roads towards this preserve and they were huffing and puffing. I was like you guys are used to this walking are you? It really made me laugh. They never walk like that. 

I got onto the little road that led to the nature preserve and I was astonished to see these three Tree guys working on trying to take down this branch. The guy that was the cutter they had throwing a rope way over a top branch and they had tied this rope to the guy’s waist and the two guys the at bottom we’re trying to pull him up the tree.  It looked like it was at least  50 foot maybe 100 foot tall.  They were really struggling so I took a picture and video and then went over there to help them pull.  I said these guys never going to get guy up that tree.  I started pulling on that thing and then he just just started going up.  Shoop Shoop Shoop Shoop Shoop. They keeps saying, “Gracias Papa, Gracias.” So anyway they were very thankful and I told him they needed to put another rope on this big branch they were getting ready to cut because that was just gonna demolish the roof. They said they didn’t have another rope. I saw one rope that was busted I’m like oh my God this guy like cutting it with a machete at the top this tree and then they had a big chainsaw tube but it looked super sketch. 

I got to the nature preserve about 15 minutes later than that. Absolutely gorgeous out here. It’s just lush and green. Reminds me of the Abaderes in Kenya. Lots of butterflies and just absolutely lovely. 

There is a group of school kids here too. I would say they’re probably first or second graders. Super loud kids. It’s exactly like being back in Azalea, squealing and yelling, and, anyway it was OK. It didn’t bother me. 

I’m at the very top of the trail now. There’s this extreme cable trail and another thing that looks crazy.  dangerous. There is no way I would go down on these things and this kind of place. It just looks like catastrophe waiting to happen. Nothing like what I went down on in Costa Rica. But it’s an absolutely beautiful view from up here. You can see several volcanoes I can also see the clouds moving in. I’m gonna go do the rest of the trails here and then go back and get my bags and then head for the lake to go onto San Marcos Le Laguna, which is going to be my base camp while I’m on Lake Atitlan.

I really enjoyed the nature preserve. The Coatimundis were my favorite. They went crazy over this one’s kids bananas. It was pretty funny. I went also went down to the beach area and that was beautiful. The butterfly gardens are enclosed in this big geodesic dome. I saw my favorite the Blue Morphos. I used to see them in the Amazon and they’re fantastic with a metallic blue color. I am headed back to Pacajashel now. I just passed over 100 orthodox Jews. All ages that seem like mainly young families pushing strollers on not the greatest road. They looked like they were having some issues with the road but they kept on going. I did a lot of shalom to them. They said they’re from New York City in particular Brooklyn and Manhattan. It’s interesting because the chalet Paraiso, which is where I’m staying just up the street from it is Shofar house so there must be some Jewish presence here for sure.

I also said hi to the guys that were cutting the tree. Look like they got it all down on the ground and it didn’t look like it hit the house below it so good job lads.

One thing is for sure all that walking up my hill out in front of my house sure has paid off. I’m walking up these hills with no problem and it’s still at altitude. It may have been the altitude that was giving me problems this morning and having a hard time sleeping I don’t know. It was very noisy that’s for sure but I am not nauseated anymore so that’s good news and I’m looking forward to getting something else to eat.

It was a pretty rough boat ride over to San Marcos Laguna. I got my bag off the boat and started going up the hill. I researched where this hotel is supposed to be on the map. But where the maps said it was and where actually was was very different. I had a young man who said he knew where the place was came to show me where it was and help me with the bag and it was pretty much impossible to find without help. And he just put that big old 50 pound bag on his bag and just walked up big part of the hill. Most of it we could push using the wheels. So I was glad to get moved in and everything worked out. I gave him a nice tip.

I ate at Buho this evening. I had pad Thai. It was so good! Came back home and torrential rain. I’m glad I had that poncho. Having that kept my backpack dry too because it’s so big.

Spent over an hour studying Spanish.

Uploaded all the pictures to my server. It takes a while because I have to do 20 at a time rather than just upload the whole batch so I kinda have to babysit the process.

I’m ready to put my earphones on. I’ve been listening to dog bark the whole time I’ve been uploading stuff. I had the window open to cool off the room. But I’m gonna leave it open while I’m sleeping

Really fun day.