Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat´s Excellente Experience

Fregando en Guate!

Bienvenidos, bienvenidas a todos y todas! Lo siento por being very slow to put up new/exciting blog entries, however, I assure you - this entry will rock you!

Saturday morning, 7am - Jimbo throws his oldschool travel pack in the luggage compartment of the greyhound bus headed for Guatemala City, Guatemala. His trip has started... he is, to say the least, excited.

I land in La Cuidad de Guatemala at around 1130am, barter a taxista for a cheap ride to the airport, where I am supposed to meet Chris Bitonti and Jeff Allen at the exit.*

*After days of careful planning, we had agreed to meet at the exit... sounds pretty easy - we are very stupid.

After an hour of waiting for both hombres, who have should have landed and been at the exit waiting for me, I start to get very, very nervous and most importantly, cranky. Finally, from a short sea of Gautemalans, emerges a gringo that I know. It is, in fact, Jeff Allen.

Awesome Cool Guat Travel Player Bio
Jeff Allen - College buddy
- Working in the DC area
- Speaks Spanish
- Stupid idiot

Jeff and I embrace, he spots Chris Bitonti outside of the airport waiting for us. I would like to thank Chris once again for sticking to our oringal plan of NOT leaving the airport so that we could find eachother easily.

Awesome Cool Guat Travel Player Bio
Chris Bitonti - College buddy
- Working musician in Los Vegas
- Speaks 3 languages (two of which are imaginary)
- Stupid idiot

Loud yelling, high fives, bro-hugs (standard) with an audience of 200 plus locals watching our every move - that trip of a lifetime has commenced! We track down a van that will be heading to Antigua, negotiate a price and head up to the parking structure to head out. We jump in the van, and blinded by the excitement of chillin out vacation style with buddies, we don´t notice that the man throws our gear in the back and then heads back down to the airport exit to grab more tourists.

An hour later.

We realize that we won´t be leaving anytime soon. We also realize that we have a deadlie. Our plan is to get to Lago Atitlan. The problem is that one needs to take a boat to arrive at the hostel that we have reservations for. We meet up late and have been waisting more time sitting in the van without moving. We grab our gear, sneak away, find new taxi, three hours later we arrive in Antigua.

4pm - 99 percent of the vans leaving for Lago Atitlan have already left. We pass toursit center for tourist center looking for a ride. Score - we land the last van of the day! To celebrate Jeff and I leave the center to grab some Guatemalan coffee. While leaving I notice that Chris is still stairing at the man who helped us. After a 10 second pause of silence, Chris throws out the only spanish word he knows, queso.

Jimbo - ´gracias por ayudarnos, amigo´
Jeff - ´muchas gracias, hombre´
(we leave)
10 second pause
Chris - ´queso´
Dude who helped us - (stairing awkwardly at Chris) ´ok´

Four hours in a jam packed van with other travelers. No one talking, except, of course, Jeff and I. Everyone hates us, I think Chris farted once, but we arrived JUST in time to take the last boat running for the night! We get to the dock, and while waiting for the boat, we make some friends with some local hombres. They are suprised we speak Spanish, they like this, they give us a few shots - Saturday night is guys night out!

Rocky boat ride. Pitch black dark. We arrive at the hostel ´La Iguana Perdida´(The Lost Iguana). After a long day of traveling, emotions running high, the night only gets better! Immediately we are greeted by a girl who works there, she takes us to our room, informs us that dinner is over but then invites us to the kitchen to eat all the left overs we wanted!

Time to start partying. This hostel is famous in Central America for the cool vibe. It is ran cruize ship style in that all the guests hang out together, day excursions, group meals, and night activities! Saturday night - cross dressing party. Before introducing ourselfs to the other people staying at the hostel; Chris, Jeff and I decided to change into women´s clothing. We walk into the dining area where all the other guests are only to find that we are the first people to have changed into the appropriate evening attire - we are the most popular people at the joint.

Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat, in the words of Pink, gets the party started. Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat beers, Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat high fives, Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat dance moves. Within 30 mins, everyone else has changed and we are mixing it up. We quickly become really good friends with 6 people.

Insert, Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat Additions:

Jess - from the States
- college girl
- coolest girl just about ever

Meghan - from the States (friends with Jess)
- college girl
- cranky

British People
Luke and Carey - Traveling while in love
- Cool ass accents
- Call cigarettes ´tabs´
- Luke likes techno, Luke and I are friends because of this

Canadians - 2 young stupid idiots taking a trip through Central America
- like dancing
- like Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat´s sense of humor
- stupid idiots

With our powers combined, that night, while wearing women´s clothing, we made an Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat decision. We swore the other travels in using beer, dance moves and beat boxing - we spent the week traveling as an international team of stupid idiots... and we did well.

Chris, Meghan, Jess, Jimbo, another girl, and, of course, Jeff in front. This is a majority of Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat. Picture on the side of the road with Lago Atitlan in the background surrouned by moutains.
More roadside pics of Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat, roadside, on the way to a Guatemalan market.


Jimbo, decked out in an authentic Guatemlan shirt (bought for 2 bucks at the market). Me stetching in Tikal. Tikal is famous for its Mayan ruins. We left for Tikal at 330am after a night of dancing with Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat at a local bar until 230am. I was tired, dehydrated, cranky but doing everything I could to kick Mayan Ruin butt. Here, I am either performing an acient Mayan ritual, or trying not to get sick.


Cute girl that I dont know, Jimbo and Canadian #1 (I know these guys names, but find it fun calling them Canadian 1 and 2). An a ferry that travels 15 and a half feet while on our way to Flores, Guatemala. This ride was an all day trip in a van full of Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat and other tourists. Jeff and I made the trip loud by singing and playing sweet travel games like ´bother everyone else in the van´.
While at one of the roadside police checkpoins where they search for fruit. Jeff and I started making the most out of the situation:

Jimbo (pretending to be a policeman): "You guys been doing some fruit today?"
Jeff (playing himself): "Uh... no, no, we would never do that"
Jimbo: "Because it looks like you guys have been doing some apples... how many apples you guys been doing today?"

Swedish man, traveling with his with, is visibly laughing... more of a hardcore chuckle, his wife does not find us or his incouragment amusing. This conversation continues for 4 hours.





Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat enjoying Lago Atitlan. We took a boat to a place where one can cliff jump. I will admit, I was scared to do it, not wanting to jump and hit rocks. Luckily, an old local was sitting near the jump and I asked him what he thought. His response:

"Si hombre, se puede saltar del baranco... las ninas aqui lo hacen, pues"
(Yeah man... you can jump... the little girls here do it)

The man called me out on my manability... no one calls me out on my manability. I jump from the 15 meter cliff and smack the water. Post jump, while falling to my possible death, I start yelling "ohhhhh shhhhheeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttt!"
Apon immerging from the water, realzing I didn´t die, I start acting like one of the many little girls that jump from the cliff. Swimming doggy style, smiling and yelling "look dad, I did it! Dad did you watch? DAD, DAD WATCH ME!"






Jeff, Jimbo and Chris. We decided to all jump at the same time. Much like the meetup at the airport, things went wrong.
"OK... I am going to count to 3, on 3, we jump" - Jimbo
"OK man, I think I am rea" - Chris
"Uno, dos, tres vayaaa" - Jimbo, cutting Chris off

Jeff and I jump, Chris yells something like QUESOOOOOO and follows us. Later, Chris confessed that me counting in Spanish to three messed up Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat´s decision to do the bro jump. Jeff and I performed the jump perfectly. Judging by the picture, Chris decided to not jump, and in turn, did his best Chris Angel Mindfreak impression and started floating up in the air. The jump ending with us yelling and Chris and I colliding.






Me with some honorary Roadside Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat brohams. We did the two dedos up to let everyone know how much fun we were having. Post foto these two knuckle heads charged me a quater for the picture...



Second night at the Iguana Perdida. Chris and I rocking out on the guitar. Luke (left) being British.



More roadside fun, Chris rocking out his headband that he bought. Post purchase, at no point during the trip did Chris remove his headband - quite the rockstar! After buying the headband in the locals market, Chris befriended a 12 year old local vendor... the kid started helping Chris with his Spanish and just hanging out. This slowly turned into the kid using his best skills to make Chris buy something. This caused the punk to be banned from Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat - banned for life. I told the kid that we would not being buying anything from him. This resulted in him telling me that I am a bad person and then storming off while yelling "shit" in choppy English.

Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat chillin out on the steps of one of the ruins at Tikal! Chris and I our struggling through our post fun night out cranky tired time...

Founders of Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat. Chris with his headband. Jeff rocking the authenic Mayan gear, Jimbo lost in his beard.

Us stairing at a big piece of rock pretending to know the meaning behind it. We had no money to pay for a tour of Tikal. Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat decided to try to just follow a tour and steal all the little tidbits of info. Within 14 seconds that tour guide informed us that we had to leave. There was a silence, some awkward stairing and then us leaving.

Me trying to pass for a local in the market. A beard in Central America makes you feel like Paris Hilton, because everyone looks at one without being able to speak. Add in me speaking local dialect Spanish and these people are blown away.

Meghan, trying to not be cranky, Canadian #2 and me. Canadian #2 showing the hand phone, cutting-it-out with some scissors.

Same pic as before but with a twist. Chris and Jeff holding hands. This made the rest of our excursion very weird... I felt very ´third wheel´.

Me doing my best to make Chris jealous. Dancing with Jeff while at a bar in Flores... not weird, right?

All of Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat at the Iguana Perdida. Dude chilling out in the yellow pants is the scuba instructor - Awesome Cool Travel Team Guat doesn´t do scuba - we do AWESOME!

Fin.

All in all it was a perfect trip. We literally planned nothing and enjoyed everything... it was a no stress trip with not complaining (minus Meghan who was always cranky). So many great memories, so many wonderful conversations. Life is defintily changing, but it is great to know that after 8 months of being away from everyone that it takes 2 seconds at an airport to feel completely at home with your bro´s as if time has stood still!