Lago de Atitlan, San Pedro

Lago de Atitlan is amazing. Beautiful, peaceful, and full of a bunch of great people. In addition, its super cheap! So these pictures arent really from San Pedro, they are from San Marcus ... both on the lake. San Pedro is a bit cheaper and more of a party town as chill party towns go. Its touristy, but all the tourists are in one part of the town and the town itself is actually up a steep hill. So it seems different. There was a phenomal cafe there, where the guy got local beans, roasted them himself and made one of the better lattes I have ever had ... all for about $1.15. I ended up staying 4 days total here. Two days with Lars (on the right) and two days with Nina and Daniel (left, Daniel not shown) The second two days were in San Marcus, supposedly having magical powers. So you can guess the kind of people were there. A bunch of holistic centers and the such. But there was some great swimming off some rocks there.

The Market at Chichi

The Chichi market was pretty cool ... in a town called Chichicastenango. There is a huge market there on Thursdays and Sundays, everything you cold ever want. I ended up getting a couple of things. Bargaining here was pretty fun. Only spent a couple hours here but there was plenty to see!

Volcano Pacaya

So this program isnt the best for pictures but trying my best! This is Volcano Pacayo, about an hour and a half outside of Antigua. The last large erruption was 9 months ago. We hiked up to the top and walked on the lava flow. It was amazing the heat that it puts out, some peoples shoes were melting. Then we spoted a huge flow shown on the right and we hiked further into the flow to get a better look at it. The guides weren´t too happy about it, but it was a new flow so they were excited as well. Pretty cool and pretty crazy to think that you are standing a foot or two away from flowing lava!

Antigua, Guatemala

Antigua is a nice town. Its pretty touristy but a cool place to meet backpackers. Within 30 minutes of arriving I was having dinner with another girl from Seattle. I swear ... Seattlites are everywhere. We ended up partying with one of the bartenders, this is the view from his house ... AMAZING. I ended up meeting the people that I essentially traveled with for the rest of my time in Guatemala here.

Guatemala City

Hey everyone, so Guatemala City is a bit of a hole, no offense to anyone out there. Its got its benefits but not much going o

n around. Actually most tourist avoid it like the plague. Its got some cool things to do. Weirdly, there is a section of town Zona 10 or Zona Vida that feels like California to me. Bunch of gringos, hotels, nice open air restaurants. Though there are two cops with shotguns per corner so perhaps thats why all the foriegners congregate there. Just a bit of a weird experience.

Seattle Sculpture Park

The Seattle Sculpture Park opened the weekend before I left, so I went to check it out. Pretty cool! It makes Seattle seem a little more metropolitan. I had a nice day and it was so great to see so many people out and about in the park. Here are some sculptures that I liked. I have to admit that I didn't take as much time as I should have, as I typically waited until the last minute.

Sweet, Sweet Crystal

Spent the night at Crystal and visited the great Snorting Elk bar with my friend Chris. What a great place. We got some great runs in at North Back. I went back the next day and continued on North Back with Charlie, Dara, Susan, and Erich. Had some great ski days while I was back. Here is a shot of Mt. Rainer to the left, and my friend Chris on Brand X to the right.

Back to da 206!

Its snowing here! I was pretty excited that my first winter day actually included snow. How lucky and unusual for Seattle. In keeping with my vacation style I spent my first day having a long lunch at Salumi including a couple glasses of wine, then heading to Zeitgeist for a nice latte and a bit of dessert. That pretty much took up my whole day. A photo to be posted soon.

Nassau

Nassau was a great time, some highlights include breaking in, well maybe that is a strong conotation more of a wandering into the Atlantis resort and the Compass Resort. We rented a car one day and felt really old. We went around the island and had lunch in this tiny town on the South West shore. We also "wandered" into an abandoned mansion that was on the South East shore. The most details we could get out of any one was that it was just unliked and the owner had not been there for about 10 years.

The Honeymoon Begins

We spent our first day of our honeymoon going to Treasure Cay, one of the top ten beaches in the world, according to someone. Darci's scooter's seat hatch broke, in which the gas tank was contained. Some local help was recruited to pry into it. It was pretty funny. On the right is the beach, we didnt feel it was top 10 material, but neither of us decided that we had much authority on the issue.

Our Last Day

Our sad last day on the sailboat. We had some great sailing. It was a great windy day and was a beautiful day. We really lucked out over the week with weather and it turned out to be a great week to sail. We met some pretty cool people and had some pretty crazy nights. The days too ended up being a bit crazy.

The Wedding

The wedding ceremony was a beautiful day. We were married by Capitan Tad just off of Spoil Bank Cay. The Maid of Honor, Photographer, and Wedding Planner did a great job making our day a special one. Unfortunately, our song 'Its only just begun' wasn't able to be played.

Great Guana Cay

We sailed back south to Great Guana Cay to partake is some fun at Nippers, get a bit nipped at Nippers. I don't that is official, but it should be. The Nippers Freeze is pretty deadly. The town on Great Guana Cay in tiny, only one real road. We met some great people at Nippers and infromed them that Stephvyn and Darci were going to be merried the next day. Stephvyn and Darci are pictured on the left. Aren't they a great couple.

Green Turtle Cay

We sailed to Settlement Harbor to partake in part of their New Year's Day Junkanoo celebration. Had some great food, including Guava Duff. A bread with guava in it that is sliced and drizzled with a guava sauce. It was great. Afterwards, we ended up at the Pineaple Bar. Here is Tad, getting a little excited at the bar. There we met a guy named Mitch from Chicago who ended up picking up our tab. Pretty nice of him but we slipped him some cash, no where near enough though.