Antigua

Again this post begins with the story about how I got here. My last day in San Pedro we started daydrinking around 3 and went out afterwards. So it would have been very nice to sleep in the next day. But I had decided to again not take the tourist shuttle but a public bus. And I had read there was one direct bus running from Panajachel to Antigua at 11 in the morning. As I still had to get the boat to cross Lago Atitlan to get from San Pedro to Panajachel I got up at 8:30, left the hostel around 9, took the boat and made it to Pana around 10. Enough time to find the bus station and get some breakfast - I really needed some food after last night.

I went into a tourist office only to find out that the direct bus was not running. But the guy there was really friendly and helpful and gave me three options:

One - Take a tourist shuttle direct to Antigua. It would be a comfortable Mini Van but this would also be the most expensive option.
Two - Take a public bus to Chimaltenango and change there for Antigua. This should be pretty easy but the bus to Chimaltenango was only running at 1 p.m. and this would mean wait another 3 hours after getting up so early.
Three - Take the public bus to Solola go from there to Los Encuentros to take the next bus to Chimaltenango and go from there to Antigua. 4 different busses. Challenge accepted!

The guy from the tourist office was really nice and wrote down exactly the names of the places where I had to change busses and even drew me little maps of these places so that I would know where to find my next bus. And it turned out to be an really easy task. Of course everybody would see that I was not a local and help me find my way around. The only thing making it hard was that I only found food the last time I had to change busses. Whenever I got somewhere the next bus was already waiting. Normally there are always people coming on the bus and selling their stuff. But today they would only offer ice cream cones - not what I was looking for with a hangover. In Chimaltenango I decided that there is gonna be another bus and just went to get me breakfast before getting back on the bus.

And after not much more than 3 hours I arrived in beautiful Antigua. I walked through the streets looking for my homestay and was wondering in which of these nice houses I would be staying. The adress I had gotten from the Spanish School was 3 Calle de Rubio. I walked down the street and found number 3. A really nice looking house. I nocked on the door but no one would open. I realized the next house in the row had the number 3b. So I gave it a try. No one opened but a few docks started barking. I was thinking about leaving a old lady showed up at the first house. I told her I was looking for Amanda at 3 Calle de Rubio. She pointed down the street to the entrance of a backyard and told me it's there. I went into the backyard which was full of old stuff and looked more like a big dumpster. This couldn't be right. I wanted to leave when a guy showed up asking me if I was looking for Amanda. He pointed me towards a door in the last corner of the backyard. Seriously? I rang the bell and was happy to find at least something like a courtyard with a few rooms behind the door. But Amanda told me to sit down and wait. As it turned out her place was overbooked and they would send me to another homestay! I was so happy. And the new place I got is super nice. I have a huge room with 2 beds by myself. The bathrooms are big, clean and have hot water. And the best thing: it's a 2 minutes walk from the garden where I had my spanish lessons.

My stay here was like being back to school. Getting up at 6:45, breakfast at 7. Spanish lessons from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. then walk home to where lunch was already waiting (the other kids had only 4 hours so I always had lunch by myself). Dinner was served at 6 p.m..
I was told my "family" would sit down with me for the meals so I could practice my spanish but this never actually happened. It's more like a little hostel and the people you talk to are the other students.

Learning spanish 5 hours a day pretty tough. I think I know a lot but it's still something else to actually apply it in a real conversation. After a while I was able to speak a little with my teacher (it's only one on one lessons) but it was still a completely different thing once I was out in town. I still don't get a word when people talk fast and I mostly know the right answer to a question 2 minutes later.

In the afternoon I would spend my time strolling around town. As I do not have WiFi in my homestay I usually go to some Cafe with WiFi and do my homework there. I went out a few times at night but unfortunately Antigua was a lot more expensive than I thought. But I still liked it and enjoyed my time feeling at home in a place.

Ines, Thomas and his friend from Germany came to Antigua for 2 days. Ines showed me some of her favorite places and we had drinks at Cafe Sky with the perfect view to the sunset over the volcanoes.

Watching the Volcanoes from even closer now was the most exciting thing in Antigua. One night Fuego went wild and would not stop shooting Lava! So I'm superexcited now to leave tomorrow for the hike up to Acatenango.Read more