I FOUND A SCORPION

Okay, I could also name this "My trip to Monterrico" or "Weekend Beach Getaway", but since seeing a scorpion was the climax of the trip for me, I'll just start with that. This was hanging out in the bathroom. I didn't kill it (nor did I try to relocate it), and naturally after it ran away everyone was paranoid that it was sitting under a toilet waiting to attack. Very quick bathroom breaks for the remainder of our trip.

So Monterrico is a touristy beach town on the south coast of Guatemala, about two and a half hours from Parramos. NPH is up in the mountains and because of this, we have a relatively mild, arid climate. It's warm in the day but borderline chilly at nights. Very nice, in my book. Once you start heading away from Parramos, you get out of the mountains and the climate changes drastically; Monterrico is hot to the point where you wouldn't dream of sleeping in pajamas (despite the mosquitos) and so humid that you're constantly covered in a mist of sweat, regardless of your inactivity. It's not a climate that I enjoy, but the excitement of new scenery and three days of hammock-laying was more than enough to keep me happy. Here are some photos I took on the way

You can see Volcan Agua in the background of this one

Coming into Monterrico, the surrounding villages are made up of tiny farms, and while Monterrico makes most of its money from tourism, you can see that many folks there also keep small family farms. The style of the houses are also different than the mountain homes. Here most things are built to be very open and airy, and the roofs are thatched from banana leaves. There's a constant backdrop of Reggae music in the streets, so it's pretty easy to feel like you're on some island somewhere

But there are still reminders of Guatemala! You can't walk down the street without tripping over a chicken or pig :)

And we still had Guatemalan prices! $5 a night for the room and $1.25 beers at the bar. Good life :D

Like any beach town, they had a bunch of souvenir shops. I always think of my sister Jamie when I see stuff like this. Look at this awesome starfish!

I LOVED these!! They're little seashell armadillos! (For those who don't know, I collect armadillos). I exercised very good self control though. Hooray for staying on budget

They have great locally caught seafood here. It's a shame I don't like seafood much. This is what Holger had for dinner, I stuck to the locally caught fried chicken :)

The hotel that we stayed at was rated as the worst hotel in Monterrico, but being saavy volunteers we knew that that meant low prices! And it actually wasn't that bad! Though I did get a visitor. It reminded me of NY

At first I loved the idea of this open ceiling in our room, but then when I tried to go to bed at 10p and the bar was full of drunk people singing and dancing until 1a, I realized it's flaw. They might as well have been dancing in my room for all the sleep I got.

Speaking of, here's the view from the bar attached to our hotel. I spent most of my time reading in those hammocks to the left.

Okay, so the beach. The beach was absolutely gorgeous: black sand, crashing waves and surprisingly very few people.

This is the most crowded I ever saw it.

But I soon figured out why! The beach is beautiful, but the crappy thing about black sand is that it gets really fucking hot. Like, to the point where you can get serious second degree burns on your feet from walking from the hotel to the water. A lot of people avoid the sand altogether during the day and only come out in the late afternoon and night. I stuck to hiding out under my shaded cabana and taking pictures (though I did eventually brave the heat and hung out in the water)

And it did get a little cloudy which helped a lot

Jack, Vroni and Kim hanging out

One slightly crappy thing about Monterrico is that the ocean is ROUGH. The waves are huge here so swimming is very dangerous; three people drowned the week before we got there. It didn't stop us from going in, but after getting the shit kicked out of us by the waves and having the undertow drag us out to sea a few times we were quick to struggle back to the beach.

And I discovered that stray dogs are a lot cuter when they're playing in the ocean

Steph wasted no time inviting herself to play volleyball with some local kids

Charlotte was my reading buddy for the trip

On the way out, I saw this. This sign isn't anything special, but it made me think of my Aunt Gerry who worked for years at a hotel called the Hawaiian.

All in all I loved the vacation. I spent almost the entire thing laying in a hammock reading a book about icebergs, drinking strawberry smoothies until I was nauseous. Couldn't have asked for more :)

A special shout out to my sister Kayla who sponsored this trip :D