Canopy/Ziplining Tour

After a full morning of looking at and climbing ruins, some of us decided to go on a canopy/ziplining tour... It's a series of ziplines that go through and above the jungle/forest near Tikal. It was good fun (and a little scary at first, until you got used to not zipping along the line sideways!) The pics are a bit blurry due to the fastness :)


Me on the zipline
















Deanna, Amanda, Dan and Ryan
















Amanda

















A monkey's butt! :)

More Tikal

Having a Gallo (beer) to cool off a little - the perfect Gallo ad... Adam, Dan, Jen, Carolina, Ryan









Cheers!












Another temple
















Jessica and I

Tikal/Flores - Feb. 22 - 25

Once we left the Rio Dulce, we headed up to Flores to go to Tikal, the major Mayan ruins in Central America. They were impressive, to say the least, and only 20% of them have been uncovered, and it took us 4 hours to see 75% of that...


This is the tallest temple in Tikal and also where they filmed part of Star Wars (dont know which one... the third one maybe... it's been a while). We climbed to the top, which was a fair ways above the trees and you could see the rest of the temples that poked above the trees and forest as far as the eye can see










Some of the group on the top of the temple - Jana, Meghan, Jen, Ryan, Amanda, Sabrina, Adam, Dan, Jessica and Carolina



Another Temple.. this one we could actually climb the front of (the rest had newly built stairs up the side for saftely and to preserve the original stairs).... It was pretty high to climb up (and back down - but I made it without dying!)




Jana,Adam, Amanda and Me from the top of that temple


Caitlin and I

More of Ak' Tenamit

Here are a few pictures of where we stayed in Ak' Tenamit (did I mention it is only accessable by boat?). So we had a day of play, a day of work (which I'll post the pics for once I get them) and then the next day we left, heading North for Flores and Tikal. If anyone one wants to know more about Ak' Tenamit, which really is a great organization that really needs more funding, their website is http://www.aktenamit.org/

What you see when you first pull up to the first (girls) site of Ak' Tenamit by boat. The two houses are the staff housing areas.

This is where we stayed. It had two floors that just had beds (wood frames with foamies on them). The bottom floor had a bunch of bunk beds and the top floor had some single beds and some bunk beds

This is the outside of a latrine. This is the one that we were supposed to use, though most of the time we just opted to use the bush.

Oh yes, this is a latrine. You can see why they need to build more. I think there were only 3 or 4 working latrines left on the girls side - for 125 girls.... and this is the one we were to use. Basically the front half is where you pee and the back half... well you get the idea.

Ak' Tenamit - more play

After the village, we went caving. I wish I had more and better pictures of that because it was one of the coolest things I have ever done. Unfortunately a large pool of water in a very dark cave isn't exactly condusive to camera usage... well here's what I do have...


Adam playing with some of the boys from the village (they love seeing themselves on digital cameras)


On the hike back from the village we stopped at some caves for another little swim. This was probably the highlight of the trip for most of us. First was had to climb down a ladder from the hiking trail to where the entrance of the caves were. Then we had to walk a fair ways into the caves. Luckily we had guides with us that had candles and flashlights. Once inside the cave there was a bit of a stream and then a drop-off into a huge pool of water. We all jumped into the large dark abyss and swam for a while. Climbing out was a bit of a challenge but we all made it! Play days are hard work! This is the rather blurry view of the outside from inside the cave.

This rather trippy picture is of the inside of the cave. The very dark hole in the back is what we jumped into... the weirdo lines are the candles that were put around the cave so we could see.







Hiking back down to Ak' Tenamit

Ak' Tenamit - Play day! Feb 20

After our morning of the Ak' Tenmit tour and soccer we decided to hike over to a waterfall to do a little swimming. Well, the waterfall was more like one small little rapid, but it was still a great place to cool off. After lunch we took a hike up to a village. It was about an hour and a bit hike, and I think it's the only way to access the village.

Swimming in the "waterfall"

Walking over to the village - we went through some huge fields of corn that the village shared.

The village


The inside of one of the houses - the kitchen

Rio Dulce/Ak' Tenamit Feb 19-22

We spent only one night in Honduras and then continued our trip to the Rio Dulce (Sweet River). It's a large river that runs from a large lake into the Caribbean. While we were there we stayed at a NGO called Ak' Tenamit. The first night we were there we were divided into 2 smaller groups and our group first had a play day, and then the next day we worked.
Here are some pics of our play day (I have yet to obtain the pics from our work day... but soon I will be able to prove how hard we worked ;) )


Ak' Tenamit has 2 sites accesible by boat - a girls site, which has the girls dormitory (it's not actually a dorm, but just the houseing for the girls) and staff housing, and the guest lodge that we stayed in, and a boys site, which has the boys dormitory, the school, the Women's co-op store, and a restaurant (which wasn't really a restaurant that was open everyday for any visitors - but if booked ahead you could arrange meals) which is where we ate breakfast and lunch. We ate supper back on the girls side - rice and beans!
Jen, Jana, Deanna and Carolina


Adam, Amanda, Jess - I asked them to smile.. this is what I got

After b'fast, Melissa (a former U of S development student who now volunteers/works at Ak' Tenamit) showed us around the school. It was the Mayan new year that week, so the kids didn't have school - just a lot of celebrations. We watched a bit of a soccer game - the guy employees versus the boy students - the students won.

Caitlin, Adam, Me, Carolina, Melissa

More Copan

More pics from Copan


Jessica and the dancing tiger

Birds... lots of birds... fed by people, I might add (don't feed the wildlife!!!)... at least they're pretty

Heather, Daniella, Caitlin, Me, Meghan, Deanna, Jesslyn, Krysten at the fountain in the central park of the town of Copan








Jen and I

Copan Feb. 18-19

As most of you already know, in February we went on our big trip around Guatemala. Our rather large group was divided into 2 smaller groups and then we went our separate ways (same places, different times). Our first stop was Copan, Honduras.


The Guatemala/Honduras "border"


The Copan Ruins (well, some of them...) The long skinny patch of grass between the two buildings that have the sides that slope down is where the Mayans would play their ball game. They would have a sacred game once or twice a year and the best player of the winning team would be the human sacrifice (how's that for motivation to be an underachiever?)


Where they did the human sacrifices
















Adam, Jessica, Amanda and Clive getting positive energy from the Tree of Life


Mayan Carvings

Feb 4-6 we once again all loaded into the big, bright school bus and headed to Lake Atitlan. We went to Santiago where we spent a few hours, and then went and saw the landslide area, and then some of us stayed in San Lucas Toliman and others stayed in other areas around the lake.


The Lake from Santiago
















The park and "beach" in San Lucas. The water was really clear, though I never went swimming... not much of a beach, but a few docks.










Melanie, Katie, and Caitlyn playing on the playground






Some of us who were staying in San Lucas rented a boat for half an hour and went out to more of the middle of the lake.







In the water - Caitlyn, Katie, Adam, Melissa, Cassandra

While we were at Lake Atitlan, some of us stayed in San Lucas Atoliman at a house that belongs to the sister-in-law of one of the students from Guelph (who married a Guatemalan, and has lived here for quite some time). The house used to be their vacation home and it was quite literally a mansion. Unfortunately it was REALLY badly build on the side of a hill, and about 10 years ago most of the house just went sliding down the hill. Pretty much all that remained of the house was a kitchen and what I can only assume was a dining area, or a small living room with a bathroom. Now the living area has about 10 beds in it and I guess they just use it for when people want to stay there. They have someone that lives there and takes care of the gardening and such like, so the yard is beautiful, and it was a great little getaway... here are some pics..




This is the house (if you can see it). The part that we stayed in is the stone house in the front/middle of the pic. All the stone walls you see behind it, going up the hill, is what also used to be the house... It was HUGE!














Our first morning there we decided to have a little breakfast picnic... bread, peanut butter, jam, and nutella (which I don't think I had had since travelling in Australia). Jen, Adam, Melissa, Katie










Melissa and Caitlyn and the view from the top of the house/ruins

















Our last night there we decided to have a BBQ, which ended up being a fire inside with hot dogs and marshmallows... it was great (most of you know how I feel about hot dogs roasted in a campfire... hot diggity!) :) Melanie and the fire.

On Sunday when we were in Santiago we went to the area just outside of the city that was affected by hurricane Stan in 2005. It poured in the area for about 4 days nonstop and what they think happened was that the crater of the volcano filled with water and then broke, sending a massive mudslide early in the morning and burying the village and killing about 7000 people. We went to see the ruins, but were told by the local police that it wasn't safe to go see all of the area so we saw a little bit and then drove over to a temporary site of houses which was built by the gov't (with international help) for those people who had lost their homes in the mudslide.



What used be part of the school


















Deanna standing in front of one of the buildings so you can see how high the mud was











The houses that the gov't built for the people who lost everything. It was literally just a wooden frame and sheet metal. They built the houses on land that belongs to the catholic church. The catholic church has temporarily loaned it to them, but only for 2 or 3 years. There used to be about 700 families who lived here, now I think it's about 300









These were some of the more permanent houses being built on the land - for those who were related or a part of the catholic church