Monday was fairly uneventful and relaxing, spent some time at a café for brunch updating the blog and had a walk around town. We had dinner on Sunday night at a nearby restaurant called Picasso which was run by a German guy and had a hearty looking German menu. Sarah had a big Pork Snitzel and I had Lemon Chicken. Nice food accompanied by his two large dogs which lived in the restaurant. They hung around the tables in case anyone dropped stuff. Sarah became quite fond of Pirate who looked mostly Collie and had a black patch around one eye.

It had become quite windy around midday and remained so the rest of the day and night with the lake covered in little white-capped waves and the corregated-iron roof of our balcony noisily threatening to blow away.
Tuesday morning we packed our bags early and walked down to the nearby dock where we found a boat about to leave for Santiago Atitlan, the next village around the lake. We needed to get a bus south to the coast and thought we could get one from there. The boat dock was only just above the waterline and with the waves being whipped up by the wind we had to run along the slippery dock out to the boat to try avoid getting wet feet. Sarah was successful, I wasn’t! We boarded the boat and the man that took our money tried to make us put our packs on the floor at the front of the boat. I had a feeling they would get soaked there by the swell and we took them with us midway down the boat. As soon as we left the dock and started slowly making our way around the lake, the waves were splashing over the bow and water was spraying over the first several rows of people. (Us included) I sheltered behind my Backpack which had a rain cover on it until a plastic tarp was strung across the opening to give some protection. If our packs had been out the front they would have been sitting in water completely drenched. (Which the ticket guy must have known would happen! Bastard!!) After half an hour of ploughing through the waves and only thinking we were going to sink a couple of times, we came into a more sheltered bay and arrived at Santiago Atitlan.

The town was quite pretty on the hillside with lots more trees than San Pedro. Hopping off the boat we were greeted by a Tuk-Tuk driver and negotiated a 10Q trip to the bus station at the top of the hill. This was fortuitous as we arrived just in time to get a bus heading for Guatemala City via Escuintla where we would need to change to another bus. Perfect as we had expected to need to get three buses to get there.

We got a good seat on the bus and settled in for the three hour trip. First part of the trip was getting around the lake to the town of San Lucas Toliman skirting another Volcano and then the road turned south out of the mountains. The climate changed abruptly and dramatically.

Suddenly we could have been in Vanuatu or some other tropical island with the humidity and temperature increasing and the scenery changing to farms of sugarcane and Coconut palms. We were reminded of Vanuatu by the “living fences” along the road and in the farms. Some kind of tree that they use branches of for fence posts which take root, sprout and grow into another tree.

We passed through a few small towns and as we approached Escuintla we pulled our packs down from the bus rack and got prepared to leave via the back door. It was lucky we did because the bus barely stopped. Sarah had hopped out the back and had her backpack and the bus started up again as I was getting mine to pass out to her. Was a bit of a scramble to get off while the bus was going!

This is where the day which had been going quite well, took a turn for the worse. It was stinking hot, the town was dusty and dirty and we were being hassled from every side by people trying to get us to come in their minivans. We looked for a bus to take us south to San Jose but couldn’t find any and no-one we asked about buses was any help. After a while we saw the Golden Arches beckoning up the road and decided an air-conditioned respite was needed. After some wedges with cheese-sauce (aka McQueso Salsa, traditional Guatemalan meal.) and a McFlurry we reluctantly went back out into the scalding sun. After some more time and no sign of any buses we took up the offer of one of the minivan drivers who was going in that direction. We asked to go to Iztapa, which according to Lonely Planet was where we would have to take a boat across the river and then another bus the final 30km to Monterrico. We eventually arrived, after being transferred twice to progressively smaller and more dilapidated minivans, at the start of a relatively new looking bridge and are still discussing the merits of buying a several year old, 2nd hand copy of Lonely Planet. On the other side of the bridge we had a few minutes wait for another van which took us the final leg of the journey.
Arriving in Monterrico we had a 10 minute walk up the main street to the beach. We didn’t really know where to stay but had the name of one place Silvie’s more recent Lonely Planet edition had recommended.
A small girl who had been following us for a while asking if we needed a hotel showed us the way along the beach which was black coarse volcanic sand. We arrived at “Johnny’s on the Beach” which had a nice deck and restaurant on the beach. We were taken to look at a room but it was quite expensive at 150Q a night and smelt funny so we continued to another hotel called the “Brisas Del Mar” which was still pricey at 120Q a night but had a nice pool and the best bathroom we had seen so far on the trip.

After a swim in the pool and a cold shower we felt much better. The front of the hotel had a restaurant with a large seating area above so we lay in the hammocks for a while and enjoyed the sea breeze.
Monterrico has one paved main street which we walked along to look for a restaurant for dinner. They were all little family run comidores, empty and dark with little to temp customers to come in. Presumably the town is busier on weekends with the Guatemala City crowd because it was completely dead on a Tuesday night. We looked at the menu at one place and decided to move on and passing by again a few minutes later the owner had switched the lights out and put up the chairs, at 6.40pm they had given up on getting any customers! The place we did eat at was nothing special. Sarah had fried chicken and I had a steak. Very basic but tasty although it was served with an uninspired raw onion, tomato and cucumber salad.

Next morning (Wednesday) we walked through the town to see if there were any places to get a Coffee. A 10 minute walk down the main street took us to a dock where boats waited to take people for tours on the canals and lagoons of the nature reserve which Montericco is known for. We had been invited to come on a boat tour a few times (maybe 50 or so?) since we arrived in town and were thinking of going on one early the next morning. The small girl who followed us to the hotel had a friend who did tours who had been showing up at the hotel every few hours to make sure we hadn’t decided to go with another operator.

Walking back through town we found out from a “tourist information booth” tour operator where the Turtle Hatchery was. The hatchery is the main thing Monterrico is known for and the only reason we had come here in the first place. Sarah loves Turtles! 200 meters from the main road we came to the hatchery and found some baby leatherback turtles swimming around in an enclosure next to a fenced sand patch which they had recently hatched out of. There was a sign saying that they released the babies on the beach at 5.30pm and for a 10Q donation you could release one yourself.

We walked back along the beach to Johnny’s and had a coffee along with a quite nice breakfast (I had eggs poached in tomato salsa and Sarah had an omelet with ham and cheese) before going back to the hotel and spending the day between the swimming pool and the hammocks on the deck keeping out of the hot sun. A little before 5.30pm we walked back to the Tortuga (Turtle Hatchery) and paid our 10Q for a baby turtle and went down to the beach to wait. Down at the surf line we made the mistake of turning our back on the ocean and were swamped by a large wave which stole our thongs (that’s the footwear aka flip-flops for the non-Aussies) so we had a fun time chasing them down the coast for a few minutes trying to get them back.



The turtle people showed up with a large plastic tub of day-old leatherback turtles. Down on the beach a large crowd of people arrived and we exchanged our previously purchased ticket for a turtle and placed them down on the sand. The remainder of the tub was emptied out and the sand was a mass of little black turtles struggling towards the waves. As the lead turtles made it to the waves some boys picked up the stragglers and put them closer to the water’s edge. We felt a bit sorry for the little babies as they might have been struggling around in the black tub all day since they hatched!
















We walked back to Johhny’s for dinner along the beach.