You Only Live Once

Learning Backstrap Weaving

During our stay in Santa Cruz, we saw that our hostel, La Iguana Perdida, offered backstrap weaving classes. You could sign up and spend an afternoon with one of the cook's sisters, learning this important tradition in the lives of Mayan women throughout Guatemala.

On streets all over the country, you can see women sitting in front of large looms, with one end attached to a wall and the other end wrapped behind their backs, using the weight of their own body to keep the strings taut, weaving beautiful fabrics. Backstrap weaving feels very Guatemala, so we knew we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it out.

We spent an afternoon up in the town of Santa Cruz, picking our colors, prepping our thread, trying to remember which sticks need to be woven through which threads, and realizing that it's way more difficult than it looks. It was a very cool experience, and we came away with homemade souvenirs! We got some great photos too, so I'll just leave you with those now. Enjoy. :)

Santa Cruz and San Marcos

Post-Thanksgiving, Sam and I decided to spend our last days of vacation being fairly lazy, but doing it in a completely gorgeous place. We moved around the lake towns, spending a few days in Santa Cruz and a few days in San Marcos, and we spent the majority of our our time:

Lounging

La Iguana Perdida Hostel, Santa Cruz

Enjoying the view

San Marcos

Santa Cruz

View from Santa Cruz

View from Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz

Rewarding ourselves with an almost-end-of-year massage from the San Marcos Holistic Center. Only $25 for 90 minutes!
Proudly listening to favorite tunes on repeat

Norweigan Recycling's "Miracles." Thanks, Genny!

Enjoying rustic but fancy accommodations

Loved these lights!

Hotel Aaculaax, San Marcos

Hotel Aaculaax's bathroom -- a cave!

And taking a backstrap weaving class! More on that in a minute.

Thanksgiving in Guatemala

For months, Sam and I have had plans to do Thanksgiving dinner with our good friend Cheryl at "the mansion" (my affectionate name for her apartment) in Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. So of course, after having planned on this for months, something was bound to go wrong.

On our way home from the islands, Jess, Nicole, Sam, and I ended up trapped in the town of Copán, Honduras. For the first time ever this year, all shuttles out of town were full, and we couldn't convince anyone to take the money we gringas were offering and get us the heck back to Guatemala. That figures.

So, Thanksgiving 2010 was officially moved to Friday in our book. Better late than never, and trust me, the food tasted just as delicious.

Our chicken bus also forgot to drop us off at the crossroads, so Sam and I spent some time hiking back on the highway to catch the next bus. Crap like this doesn't even faze me anymore.

Cheryl is a pro at cooking a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner, but Sam and I are...less experienced. Let's just say that I think we both realized this year, as our first Thanksgiving that family members didn't cook for us, that we have a lot to learn.

Thankfully, though, Cheryl had our backs. "Now pay attention girls. I'm going to be giving you some important tips for not embarrassing yourselves in front of future mothers-in-laws."

And the results? Considering Guatemala doesn't have all the same ingredients (no sweet potatoes here), we had no meat thermometer, and the fact that altitude just screws everything up in an oven, I'd say we pulled off our very own Thanksgiving miracle. :) We had the full spread -- turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, cranberry sauce, homemade gravy, warm bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, and plenty of wine -- and every single bite was too die for.

Sam makes pie crust from scratch!

Straightening hair while starting the pie. That's multitasking.

Cheryl mans the homemade gravy.

Patented turkey lifter!

Yum.

More yum.

So happy about our meal!

Even happier about dessert!

Sooooo good.

And then where did we spend the next day recovering from all our eating?

Here, at the Porta del Lago Hotel. Eight bucks for a day pass to the pool and sauna. Loving life.

Pool on one side of us.

Lake and volcanoes on the other side. Not bad. :)

I Swam With a Whale Shark

Stop hyperventilating. I did not take the above photo, and that guy was not swimming directly at me with that giant open mouth pointed towards my face. But, that is what a whale shark looks like, and just listen to this story...

I already told you that the Bay Islands are considered one of, if not the, best places in the world to see the biggest fish in the entire ocean -- the whale shark. Whale sharks are HUGE, belong to the shark family but resemble whales in that they eat plankton (a.k.a. not human divers like myself), and are covered in distinctive spots.

It's not prime whale shark season (that would be in the spring) in the Bay Islands right now, but Nicole, Jess, Sam and I still couldn't resist talking all week long about "Come on guys, HOW cool would it be if we saw a whale shark???" It's especially hard not to entertain the idea when giant whale shark paintings cover Utila's main street.

Well ladies and gentlemen, on our very last day of diving, we were enjoying another lovely surface interval (tanning time on the boat in between dives so that nitrogen can escape your body and keep you from passing out during the next dive) when our beloved boat driver, Captain Cookie, started yelling at us:

"GET IN THE WATER. GET IN THE WATER RIGHT NOW!"

We thought, "Maybe we've come across another pair of dolphins and get to snorkel with them like we did yesterday?"

"GET YOUR FACE IN THE WATER RIGHT NOW! DON'T WASTE TIME WITH YOUR *&@*%*# WETSUIT! WE HAVE FOUND A WHALE SHARK! HE IS RIGHT HERE!"

At that point we shut up and got ourselves into the water.

See all the people on that boat pointing to that Jaws-lookalike triangular fin sticking out of the water? Yep, that's our whale shark.

We had come upon a baby whale shark, probably about 10 to 12 feet long, with a huge body and all the familiar spots. He was right in front of us at the surface, so we all got to swim around after him for a good 10 minutes before he took off. IT WAS SO COOL.

This was the best photo I could get myself. See him??

We swam with a whale shark. Okay, once-in-a-lifetime experiences this year: let's add one more.

P.S. And as a final thought to all the worrying parents out there, Wikipedia says: " This species, despite its size, does not pose significant danger to humans. Although massive, whale sharks are docile fish and sometimes allow swimmers to hitch a ride. Whale sharks are quite gentle and can play with divers. Divers and snorkelers can swim with this giant fish without risk. :)

SCUBA Diving!

Fact: Scuba divers have more fun than regular people.

Fact: The DVDs we had to watch in SCUBA class were a little ridiculous.

Fact: Going into it, I wasn't really sure I was going to love diving.

Fact: I am an idiot.

To start off our vacation, Sam, Jess, Nicole, and I headed to the island of Utila! Utila is the smallest of Honduras' Bay Islands that hang just off the eastern coast of Central America, in the gorgeous Caribbean waters. Getting to Utila meant 36 hours of shuttles, buses, and ferries for the four of us, but vale la pena. So worth it.

Utila sits on the world's second-largest barrier reef, and it's also known as the Whale Shark Capital of the World -- famous for sightings of the biggest fish in the sea. It's also called the cheapest place on earth to get dive-certified. Utila = coral, whale sharks, and cheap? Sign us up!

We spent almost a week on Utila at the highly-recommended Cross Creek Dive Center. For the price of our course, we got: accommodations in a private cabaña with private bathroom, porches, and AC unit, all course manual and DVD trainings, 2 confined water dives (shallow water dives where we learned how the heck to manage yourself while several feet underwater), 4 open water dives to complete our certification, 2 free fun dives, and lots of all-around awesome instructors and co-divers. For all of that, we paid $250. Seriously, a STEAL.

AND, the whole thing was awesome.

I loved taking the boat out everyday into the gorgeous water.
I loved that how stupid we looked geared up in wetsuits, dive tanks, flippers, and masks never got old.
I loved all the random skills we had to learn to do underwater (take off your mask...can't see now...and put it back on, take out your air source...without freaking out...and then put it back in, pretend you are out of air and make an emergency ascent breathing off your buddy's air supply, learn to change your buoyancy using just your own breath).
I loved that because you can't talk underwater, divers have their very own sign language. Shakes hand horizontally - problem. Crosses first and second fingers - I need to pee.
I loved the massive massive massive walls of coral we swam through.
I loved all the colorful fish, colorful eels, scary sting rays, bizarre-looking squid, giant crabs, little lobsters, and other animals we swam across.
I even loved the chicken wraps from Big Mama's restaurant right across the street from Cross Creek. Ate at least one per day.
I loved loved loved everything.

Nicole and I show off the underwater "okay" sign.

How did I think I wouldn't love this?

So this post's conclusion: SCUBA diving was freaking awesome, and now I'm officially certified for life. Now who's with me on the next exotic dive trip?!