Traveling Adventures

With the temple closed for maintenance and cleaning, we've had a week of rest and adventure!  On Monday we left our apartments at 6:00 a.m. to board a bus and travel to Quetzaltenango with the Roberts, the Wilsons, our tour guide, Hna Viveros, and our bus driver, Israel.  It is about a four hour drive to Quetzaltenango which is also called Shela (Shayla).  It is where Gary and Dena served their fist Latin American mission.  We'll call it Shela for the rest of the time because it is so much easier to type!  The views along the way are pretty amazing.

All of the area we traveled is in the highlands like Guatemala City so is quite mountainous.  There is a lot of agriculture in the area, but not what we are accustomed to.  You can see patchworks of different crops that are all hand cultivated and harvested.  Each little area is worked by different families and much of it is on very steep slopes and runs right up to the edge of cliffs.

We also saw several volcanoes along the way.  This one is Santa Maria it is near Shela.  We also passed twin volcanoes named Agua and Fuego (water and fire), but we weren't able to get a good shot at them with the camera.  Agua has a lake inside it and in the 1600s erupted sending boiling water through the streets of Antigua.  There are a total of 33 volcanoes in Guatemala.

When we got to Shela we went to Walmart -- yes, there are Walmarts in Guatemala.
This adorable mother and baby were in Walmart.

 Then we had lunch at a really good restaurant that is a chain here called San Martin.

 After lunch we drove through some interesting streets with markets, chicken buses, etc.

We got stopped by a policeman who asked to see the bus papers.  The owner of the bus had renewed the insurance, but he forgot to put the papers in the bus, so it was two days past expiration, and we wondered if we were going to get out of there!  They worked something out, and we finally got on our way.

From here we went out of town and up a very steep, high mountain to a hot spring.

 As we climbed, we saw more and more fog and lots more crops growing on the slopes.

 At the hot spring, you can see the fog over the hillside where the hot water runs down into the pools.

Some of our group put on swim suits or shorts, but we just put our feet in the water.  It was the perfect temperature and felt so good!

It was a national holiday, so the place was crowded.  This group of young men near us were having so much fun, and they loved having us take pictures of them!

On the way back down the mountain we were able to get some good shots of scenery.

When we returned to town, we did a little sight-seeing and shopping then had a bite to eat.

We then went to the temple compound and spent the night int the temple patron housing.

The next morning we went to the temple.  It is absolutely beautiful!  We loved it.   Here are pictures of us in front of it.

We changed, checked out, and took more pictures before boarding our bus.

On our way down the hill, we met this friendly group of locals who waved goodbye.


We then drove through the mountains and villages to Huehuetenango where we stopped for lunch at McDonalds and then drove out to the ruins at Zaculeu.  They were amazing, but newer than those we visited last fall.  These dated to 1300 to 1500 AD.

This picture is all of our group in front of the ancient temple.

We drove from there back to Guatemala City.  It took about six hours, so we didn't arrive until 11:00 p.m., but it was a wonderful trip!

We pretty much rested the rest of the week except on Friday morning we attended a senior missionary zone conference where Elder Carlos H. Amado was the speaker.  We were then treated to a wonderful breakfast along with patriotic music, pictures of scenes in the US, and table decorations in stars and stripes.  It was a wonderful way to celebrate the Fourth of July.