Oh yeah, I also have to tell you about my day yesterday! Usually on Saturdays I teach my classes at McDonalds but Juan Carlos has been asking me for two weeks to go to the beach with him. I don't know why he was so gung-ho about it, I never mentioned wanting to go to the beach with him and every time he brought it up I tried to skirt around the subject. I started thinking that maybe he's just lonely and wants to go to the beach, but has no one to go with him. I decided to go as a public service, but only this one time. He's a nice dude but we don't have much in common; its hard enough for me to make conversation with people I'm friends with. The idea of spending all day in a car with him isn't exactly appealing.
We ended up leaving yesterday afternoon and driving down to Puerto San Jose which is a town on the ocean directly south of here. The part of Guatemala that I live in is super high up in the mountains, this is what makes our nights so cold and keeps the day time temperatures in the high 70s, low 80s. Once you start going down in altitude and hit some of the valley farmland, the temperature jumps up. It was easily 90 out and I swear you could feel a difference in the breathability of the air. I immediately felt more comfortable and was really blown away by the scenery. The drive there was absolutely gorgeous; it was all fields of sugar cane as far as you can see in all directions. There were steep hills surrounding the farmland that had been cut into little plateaus called tablones. The farmers use this method not only to give themselves a flat area to grow crops but also as a way to get super nutritious soil without having to till the soil very much. It was hard to get a picture while we were moving but here's a random one from the internet
And here's sugar cane. It was so green!! (especially compared to the mostly dusty and dry corn fields that I'm used to seeing by NPH)
As we went further down in altitude the trees started changing from pine to palm. We stopped at a roadside restaurant that reminded me a lot of our trip to St Thomas: open air seating with large fans slowly turning, a thatched roof of palm leaves and a seafood heavy menu. He ended up ordering for me (not really sure why...) so I had fresh shrimp in garlic sauce. It was super delicious even though I'm not a huge shrimp eater. I was a little nervous about eating seafood in Guatemala but it ended up being totally safe. He had eaten there a few times without issue so I trusted that enough to take a chance.
After lunch we finished our trek to the beach (in total I think the drive was about 2.5 hours). It was funny, the same things that I look for when we're getting close to the Jersey shore were here too; you see little roadside stores selling beach balls and inflatable rafts or cheesy looking motels with pictures of marlins and pelicans on their signs. I was getting pretty excited by the time we finally pulled into town. He warned me that the town was really poor so the chances of us getting mugged were a little higher than normal. He had me hide all my stuff in his car which is why I couldn't take any pics :( Better safe than sorry though. We passed the Guatemalan Navy Base which is kind of like our Coast Guard; they use large fishing boats and patrol the waters. They aren't really equipped for fighting, though they also have a separate Coast Guard too, so I don't really understand what their Navy does.
We parked our car at their Army base (which was right down the street from the Navy base and didn't look at all like an Army base. The dudes were just walking around in T shirts and shorts, guess they're not big on uniforms there). From there it was a short walk to the actual beach which was absolutely gorgeous. There were barely any people there (which is always a nice thing when you're used to overcrowded NJ and NY beaches). The sand along all the shores in Guatemala is black, just like Hawaii. I'm guessing this is probably due to volcanos, but I don't know that for a fact. The cool thing about black sand is when the sun is setting, it reflects back. Super gorgeous.
We walked down the beach and chatted for a while, then walked out on this stone pier and watched the waves come in. It was quite romantic, lol. Seriously it felt like a bad date at times, I ran out of things to talk about and I wanted to go home but didn't want to offend him. Eventually I just told him that I was tired and should be getting back so we headed out. The drive home was cool, we chatted about marriage a lot and since we have very different views on that, it kept the conversation flowing for quite a while. All in all it was a nice trip and I was glad to have finally seen the beach! I think it'll be a lot nicer if I go with my friends next time and maybe spend a night there, but at least now I feel like I've done my good deed :)
I really wanted to talk about all the things I've been thinking about for my return home but now it's late and I have to get up early tomorrow for a med run! Guess it'll have to wait until then :P
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