Livingston with the Parents!

At 3am on Monday the 10th, I awoke for fall break. We caught the 4am bus to Guatemala City, so I could get to the airport in time to pick up my parents. As a surprise, my host mom Elena rode with me to the capital, just so she could meet my parents for a really short amount of time. Their plane got in a little late, but low and behold they made it, so we headed for the next bus station to head out to the Caribbean coast for the week. I spent a little over an hour playing translator between my real parents and my host parents- but it went really well, and we left at 3pm for Puerto Barrios. The bus ride was pretty long, but riding in a first class bus makes the biggest difference ever and the ride was in fact only 6 hours. We stayed in a hotel in Puerto Barrios for the night that was actually made of all wood for some reason- quite the antique hotel. We took a boat to Livingston the next day- the only way to get there and arrived at our hotel, Villa Caribe after 30 minutes. The hotel was really nice- a nice surprise from the shady hotel the night before.
Livingston is on the Caribbean coast, so the temperature was stifling hot, but the tropical atmosphere was beauuuuuutiful! Much to our surprise, the town wasn’t that touristy, so I played a key translator role all week for my parents. Mom actually tried to pick up on some Spanish, while dad continued to say things in English and when they didn’t understand- he’d shout the same exact thing in English as if they would understand him this time. Regardless, we had an amazing time. A friend from the group Lauren also came to Livingston with 2 of her friends- so the 6 of us kept busy.

We took a couple day trips while we were there. One was the Rio Dulce. We had a private boat to ride down a beautiful river and make some stops along the way in 2 small communities and we stopped at some hot springs to swim. We also made a day trip to the 7 Alters, a series of little waterfalls with a huge one at the very end to swim in. We even jumped off the top of the waterfall which was pretty awesome. After the Alters we went to the Playa Blanca (white beach) to relax and swim and eat some pretty amazing packed lunches. Our packed lunched were part of the tour- and they consisted of some ham, cheese, mayonnaise, and ketchup sandwiches – ew. The rest of the week was spent swimming in the pool, catching some rays, relaxing, listenin’ to some music, and eating some pretty kick butt food. I saw my parents off at the airport on Monday morning, and Lauren and I jumped a bus back to Xela. I’ve been super sick all week and haven’t really left my bed except for Friday at Jodi’s wedding (more on that later). Hope you’re all doing well back at home! Miss you tons!