2012 - Central America

June 8th-18th, 2012

Day 1 - Mexico City, Mexico - June 8th
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Mike and I left Boise Thursday around 5:00 p.m. and drove to Bountiful. We spent the night at Amber’s house and Tom gave us a ride to the airport in the morning. Our flight was supposed to leave at 10:00, but it was about 30 minutes delayed. We still arrived in Mexico at 3:00 p.m. They are one hour ahead of Nampa time. Our first stop was at the Mexico City Temple. A few in our group stayed and went through a session. The rest of us got back on the buses and went on a city tour. Traffic was very thick. We arrived at the hotel at 6:00. We then walked down the street and exchanged some dollars for pesos, and came back to the hotel to find out where a good authentic Mexican restaurant was. So we walked another 5 blocks to a restaurant called The Marioche Place. There was live music and great service. Our waiter suggested we try some appetizer called escamole that was “muy delicioso!” So we did. It was on fire as it was brought to the table. It was probably some soft little white beans with cactus and onions in a yummy sauce, but it looked somewhat like a bowl of maggots. I was a bit nervous to try it. It came with tortillas and guacamole, so I ate it and it was very good. I ordered some chicken mole dinner, and Mike had a bean and pork soup. The mole sauce on my chicken was brown and I didn’t like it very much. I found out later that mole sauce is chocolate (unsweetened) and chili sauce. Mike loved his soup. We then walked a little more around the city. We are in downtown Mexico City and it is a little nicer area than the rest of the city. It is still very dirty and Mike called it dumpy. Garbage is everywhere. Buildings are all dilapidated. But it is much worse outside of the downtown area. There are 26 million people living here—one of the largest cities in the world. Mike was surprised at the traffic, and how there are no traffic laws. Our guide even said there are only “traffic suggestions
Day 2 - Mexico City, Teotihuacan – June 9th
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We started out our morning with breakfast in the hotel. It was really good, a little of something for everyone. There was some pork in a red sauce that was so yummy! Mike loved it! We then left to go to the Anthropology museum. It is one of the best museums I have been to. They have so many artifacts of all the cultures in Central America from 10,000 B.C. on. It was a great start to our trip—to learn all about the Olmecs and the Maya and their traditions and dress and how they lived. We spent about 2 hours there, and then drive an hour to Teotihuacan; the huge temple complex of the Sun and the Moon. We first saw the temple of Quetzalcoatal (Christ) and the 12 surrounding altars. His temple was decorated with the feathered serpent, which represents Christ. The bus then took us to the other side of the park, where the temple to the moon was and we climbed that pyramid. We then walked down the sacred way—a street lined with altars—to the temple of the sun. Several from our group climbed to the top of that huge pyramid. Mike and I spent about 45 minutes just sitting on the top of the pyramid, looking over the city surrounding us. It was very nice. We still had about an hour before we were due back to our buses, so we wandered further down the sacred way and explored the altars and ruins. We had a great time at Teotihuacan. While there, I bought a couple sliver bracelets and silver earrings. Mike bought a really nice woven blanket of the Aztec Calendar and several Mayan symbols and figures. Our buses brought us back to the hotel around 6:00 p.m. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant tonight. I had chicken tacos and Mike had shrimp fettuccine. They were good. We then got on our swim suits and headed up to the roof and swam in the pool. It wasn’t a very nice pool, but it was on the roof of a 12 story building, so the location made it fun.
Day 3 – Villahermosa / Palenque, Mexico – June 10th
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This morning, Mike was so excited to go down to breakfast to have more of the pork in red sauce, but they were serving different items today, so they didn’t have any. Mike was so disappointed that he just ate some fruit and a roll and said he was done. I thought everything else was still delicious. We boarded onto the buses and went to the airport to fly to Villahermosa. It was about an hour flight. As soon as we got off the plane, you could feel the difference in climate. It was hot and humid. Mexico City was nice, probably mid 80’s. Here it is mid 90’s and very humid. We were sweating the rest of the day…and I don’t sweat! Our first top from the airport was an outdoor museum called La Venta. It is all about the Olmec civilization, which is the oldest civilization in the Americas. They may be the Jaredites referred to in the Book of Mormon. There are many correlations between them. The park had many of the large stone heads, statues, stela and altars, even an original sepulcher. There were also jaguars and monkeys and crocodiles and turtles. The walkways are all paths in the jungle, so it was very fun. We then had a 2 ½ hour drive to Palenque. Palenque is in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. And the ruins of Palenque are found in the hills nearby. We will visit those tomorrow. The hotel we are staying is the coolest place ever! This is the jungle and we are staying in little bungalows surrounded by jungle, with little pathways and bridges and flowers and butterflies and lizards and monkeys in the trees. I love this place. We had a nice verandah with rocking chairs. We did, however, accidentally lock ourselves out of our cute little house when we went out to the verandah. Mike closed the door behind us, so the cool air from the AC wouldn’t all just go outside. The door locked behind us. It took about 20 minutes for someone to come let us back in. Dinner was a buffet here at the hotel, since we are in the middle of nowhere. There are no restaurants we can walk to. They had a creamy zucchini soup that was delicious, and some fajita style beef with onions and peppers. Those were my 2 favorites. Mike loved the fish. John Lund gave a short fireside tonight after dinner. His main theme was “show love to your loved ones, and take your frustrations to the Lord”. He challenged us not to criticize anyone. He also talked about the 5 principles of intervention, being: 1) soften hearts 2) raise someone up 3) strengthen 4) exodus 5) remove the problem. It was very good. I love listening to him. He is an encyclopedia of knowledge. He must have a photographic memory, because he can remember everything he reads and reference them as he is speaking. We introduced ourselves to each other on the bus while driving here, and people were shocked Mike is my son. Some thought we were brother/sister. Several thought we were married. Once even thought we were a newlywed couple! That was odd.
Day 4 - Palenque, Mexico – June 11th
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So…this hotel has free wifi over in the restaurant so Mike decided to look up what escamoles were that we had for dinner our first night Mexico. It turns out that we ate ant larvae. So it really was like a bowl of maggots! There is NO WAY I would have eaten that if I’d known what it was. On to our adventures today. We left our marvelous bungalows at 7:45 this morning and drove to the ruins of Palenque. The town we are staying nearby is also called Palenque. The ruins are fantastic and so well preserved. We spent 4 hours walking and climbing and exploring this awesome old city. This city was mentioned by Joseph Smith as being some of the mighty works of the Nephites. We arrived back at our cute little jungle bungalows around 1:00. We crossed a large iguana on the path by our little house, and before breakfast this morning I saw a family of acouti. They look like a cross between hamsters and piglets. They are about a foot long. As I was reading my book on the verandah, I heard a bunch of rustling in the trees about 20 feet over. I walked around to get a better look and saw a family of spider monkeys in the tree tops. And there are lizards that run away from you on two legs, so cute! This is such a cool place. There is a huge pool here that is really nice, so Mike and I went swimming for a couple hours. Shortly after we started swimming there was a short downpour with lightning and thunder. It was great fun swimming in the rain. It only lasted about 10 minutes. The weather was wonderful the rest of the day. Several other people from our group were there as well, and we played fun water games with them. Dinner was at 7:00. It was very good again. I loved the sweet corn chowder and tortilla soups. They had beef in gravy with onions that was good also. After dinner we had a little video chat with Dave. He told us that Megan wrecked my van the day her drivers license came in the mail  It was nice to check in at home. We also had a little fireside with John Lund. He talked about the calendars and money of the Maya, and the Law of Moses in the Book of Mormon. In the morning we leave here and go to Guatemala. I will be sad to leave this place.
Day 5 - Yaxchilan, Mexico / Peten, Guatemala – June 12th
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We left our hotel at 6:30 a.m. and drove almost 3 hours to the Usaumacinta River. It took about an hour for the border guard to check all our passports and load our luggage and get on the long boats for our boat ride to the Yaxchilan ruins. We went down the river for about 30 minutes to the ruins that you can only get to by boat. The Usumacinta River is a candidate for the River Sidon and Yaxchilan is a candidate for the city of Zarahemla. It was a walled city, and we had to walk through some dark tunnels with bats hanging above us to get into the main courtyard. Mike turned on his flashlight and stood by some steps so the group wouldn’t trip and fall. What a nice boy  He said he saved at least 4 people from getting hurt. They were beautiful ruins. And there was a temple on a hill that even had all the combs on top. There have been very little renovations done, so it was all the ruins as they were found which I liked. The stairs heading up to the temple were all crumbly and kind of scary to climb up. We had a good time exploring the site. We then boarded our long boats again and went upriver about an hour and 20 minutes to get to our Guatemala City of Bethel. From there, we got on 4 small buses, since it was a rocky, bumpy dirt road for 3 hours and our big buses couldn’t handle it. Mike and I sat at the very back, so we felt all the bumps and even got some air on occasion. It was a fun ride, but the older couples really were happy when we finally got back on to pavement. Then we had to drive another hour and a half to our hotel in Peten. We were starving when we got here. We had to eat breakfast at 5:30 a.m. and we didn’t get to our hotel until 7:30 p.m., with no lunch stop, just some nuts and jerky for snacks that we had in our day packs. But dinner was fabulous! And the hot chocolate was so yummy!
Day 6 - Tikal, Guatemala – June 13th
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Today was amazing! We had an early day and drove an hour out to Tikal. I love Tikal! We start out by walking about 30 minutes through a jungle trail and then we step out into a clearing and see the top of a massive pyramid peeking out over the jungle canopy. So we climbed to the top of this pyramid and from there you can several other pyramids over the treetops. This temple was almost 300 feet tall. We sat on the upper steps for about 15 minutes, listening to John Lund explain about Tikal and the landscape and what we would b seeing. He says Tikal is a good candidate for the city of Nephihah. This city shows civilization starting 900 B.C. to 1000 A.D. We spent the next 4 hours walking through more jungle paths and then come across another clearing the pyramids and courtyards and buildings. We saw so many monkeys in the trees above us; spider and howler monkeys. Mike and I climbed all that we could, and even some places we shouldn’t. The pyramids here were so majestic. The whole experience was just fun! I loved all the hikes through the jungle and awesome ruins. After our tour of Tikal we went on an hour long zip line excursion. It was quite an experience. Everything is much more laid back here, and they don’t have all the safety guidelines and restrictions that the US has, which make it fun to be able to climb steep pyramids. So much that we’ve done here, places we climbed and explored would have been off limits back home. We climbed up to these platforms, with no railings, high in the treetops and strapped ourselves in and went zipping about 100 feet to the next station in the treetops, unhooked, climbed up another ladder to another small, wobbly, without railings platform, hooked up and went again. There were 8 different zip lines. They call it the canopy tour. It was a lot of fun and a little scary. But a great experience. We got back to the hotel around 5:00 p.m. I did a little laundry while Mike napped. We had another great dinner, and then John Lund talked to us about relationships. He’s been a marriage counselor for 30 years. His main focus was to be clear with your communication. Make sure your words, body language and tone of voice all match so there is no miscommunication. And don’t hint drop. Be clear with your expectations. He’s a great speaker and very entertaining. Mike laughed through the whole presentation.
Day 7 - Lake Isabel / Amatique Bay, Guatemala – June 14th
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We left Peten, and our hotel, Valla Maya today. It was a nice place, the food was excellent, and each morning there was a crocodile in the river by our restaurant. Today a man went closer to it and tossed some rolls to it and the croc came out and ate them. Mike was down with him, and he was pretty pleased that he could understand most of what he was saying to him and respond back in Spanish. There were also several red and green and yellow macaws in the trees by our villa. Very pretty! I wish I could bring one home. We drove 4 hours in the bus and then boarded boats and went for an hour and half boat ride in Lake Isabel, through the Rio Dulce River, and out into the Caribbean. The water was green and clear and it was very beautiful. We arrived by boat at our resort on the coast of the Caribbean called Amatique Bay. This is an amazing place. There is a nice sandy beach, and an old Spanish light house. The pool area is like a mini water park and zoo. We spent a couple hours in the pool and going down the waterslides. We also played on the beach for awhile and picked up little seashells for Megan. We didn’t swim very far out on the beach, because the water was pretty dirty, with trash and dead fish. The water was very warm though, warmer than the pool water. At dinner time, we changed our clothes and went down to the restaurant by the pool. We ordered a plate of nachos, 2 cheeseburgers and pina coladas. Every thing tasted really good. At the end of our dinner, I really wanted to get my book and go down to the beach and lie in a hammock and read. But out of nowhere came thunder and lightning and down pouring rain. A peacock came in out of the rain, right in the middle of everyone. And there were HUGE spiders. The body itself was about 2 inches long, with long black and yello2 legs in huge webs in the trees. It was so creepy! And there were lots of them.
Day 8 - Copan, Honduras – June 15th
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We left our hotel at 7:00 this morning and drove to Quirigua. It is a city that Joseph Smith said was a Book of Mormon city. Mike and I were talking, and we think that probably most of these old ruins are Book of Mormon cities, that later civilizations built upon. All the ruins are like that. They would just build new temples over the old ones, like a Russian doll. There wasn’t a lot to this place, mostly some large stela and round stones with carving on them. Joseph Smith said of these round stones, that the Book Mormon unfolds their history. We weren’t there very long, since it was a small place. But it was cool to be in there. We saw our first snake through. Someone said it was a Boa, and he wasn’t happy. He had just been hit by a machete. That’s how they trim back the grass and weeds. We then had a 4 hour drive into Honduras. Mike and I slept most of the way. I tried to read, but we were at the very back of the bus so I started feeling nauseous. I enjoy just watching the scenery. It is so different from home. We arrived at Copan around 2:00 p.m. It started to rain really hard. We went into the museum first, so we got out of the rain. In the museum, they had put several of the artifacts and steal and house fronts, to protect from the weather, and they made replicas to put on the site. We were in the museum for almost an hour. The main thing in the museum was a replica of a temple that another temple is built over. It was a burial place for kings. But they preserved it by covering it and building another temple over it. Mike and I saw the tunnels that led to it, and started to go down, but we were kicked out. Apparently you needed special tickets that we didn’t have. By the time we went out of the museum to the ruins, the rain had stopped, but everything was nice and muddy. We enjoyed the site. The lower section we walked into was a large plaza area with stela all around, a ball court and 3 altars, or pyramids. One of the pyramids had a staircase of inscriptions, about 40 steps tall and 10 feet wide. Each stone had an inscription on it and tells a story. It looked very cool. Then we went to the top section, and found an amphitheater, and the burial temple and housing complexes. We had fun exploring everything. After Copan we came to our hotel a few minutes away. We had another delicious dinner in which I ate way too much. Then I went and sat in the hot tub for about an hour with several others from our group. This hotel has free wifi, so we were able to video chat Dave and the kids again.
Day 9 - Guatemala City – June 16th
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Today was mostly a travel day. We left Honduras at 8:00 a.m. and drove to Guatemala City. It took about 5 hours. Along the highway at one point, we saw a bunch of obsidian on the canyon walls and chunks just lying on the ground. I wish our driver would have stopped and let us get some. Our first stop in Guatemala City was to the relief map. It is a model of Guatemala, and it sits in a park. It is about half a block big, and shows the different elevations and cities and ruins in the county. It’s quite interesting. We then stopped at the Guatemala temple. We arrived just as a bunch of new missionaries arrived. They had just finished their 6 weeks training at the MTC, and will be shipped out to different areas all over Central America. It was fun to talk with them. We then went to the ruins here called Kaminaljuya. They are nothing spectacular like what we’ve seen. But the cool part about it is that there is a temple, just like Solomon’s temple, built in 570 B.C., the same time and place Nephi built the temple. We then went to our hotel, the Grand Tikal Futura. It is a very fancy place. The first thing we did after we put our bags in our room was to go to the mall under the hotel and eat at the food court. We were very hungry. John told us about this place to eat in the food court that is one of his favorite places to eat in the world. So we tried it. It’s actually a Chinese place, Guatemalan style. Mike ordered some spicy chicken on fried noodles. I had some rice with fajita style beef, onions and peppers. They were both really good. John also told us to try the ice cream place, but we were so full, that we decided to go back later. They also had a taco Bell, so Mike wants to try the taco bell and see if it’s the same as at home. And there is free wifi here too, so he is downstairs in the lobby checking it out. I’ll meet him there in awhile to go back for ice cream.
Day 10 - Lake Atitlan – June 17th
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We left our hotel at 8:00 a.m. and drove to 3 ½ hours over the beautiful mountain passes to Lake Atitlan. I enjoyed the drive up. The sun was shinning and the scenery was gorgeous and John Lund was instructing and making us laugh. The lake is gorgeous as we see it down in the valley, with the volcanoes surrounding it. When we got down to the lake it was starting to get cloudy, so we couldn’t see the tops of the volcanoes. We boarded our boat and had an enjoyable ride on the lake. When we were about 20 minutes away from our destination on the other side of the lake, it started raining. Not really hard, like we’ve seen a few times here, thank goodness, but a good steady rain. We boarded our boat in a little town called Panache, and we ended at a little town called Santiago. They gave us 2 hours to shop and walk around. We walked through some of the shops. I got some shirts for the family at home, plus a couple bracelets for me. We spent the last 30 minutes at a little eating area with the Gilmore’s. They had ordered some lunch, so Mike got a coke and we chatted with them. We really like them. I’ve enjoyed everyone on our tour with us. We especially like the Gilmore’s. There were also some cats there. The only other cat I saw on this trip was at our hotel in Honduras, hanging around the pool. There was a really skinny, haggard looking orange cat that kept begging the Gilmore’s for some chicken. They like cats, like me , and he gave it a few pieces and then the bone when they were done. He ran off with it, and 2 other cats chased after him. We then got back on the boat and went back to Panache where our buses were. Then we had another 3 ½ hour ride back to Guatemala City. It was still raining, so we were wet and cold and the windows were all fogged up, and John was on the other bus, so it wasn’t as pleasant getting back as it was for the drive this morning. It was 7:30 p.m. when we were back at the hotel. The food court closes at 8:00 so we just went straight there for dinner. Mike got some Taco Bell, and I ordered us a pizza from pizza hut. While the pizza was cooking, we went to the ice cream place and ate some more ice cream. We had to smuggle our foot into our room, since they don’t like outside food or drink brought in. We ate our pizza and burritos, and then went down to the lobby so we could video chat with Dave on Father’s Day. All the family was over for dinner, so we got to talk to mom and Mark and the whole gang.