Made it!

We made it! We're alive! We drove about 225 miles through the Guatemalan countryside on a 200cc dirt bike with no license plate and fake helmets, and we lived to tell the tale!

What a great adventure! The tops of my knees are sunburnt (I wore shorts on the motorcycle) and my hindquarters are nearly numb from riding a dirt bike seat for so long, but it was a fantastic experience!

There are two routes to Monterrico. We took the longer one one the way down so that we could stop by the Auto Safari Chapin. It's a really large, really well put together zoo in the middle of nowhere! They've got a kind of traditional outdoor zoo with lots of African animals and a few swimming pools (guess it's also a bit of a water park). They also have a huge lake you can take a boat ride through. It's got a bunch of small islands that are populated by various birds and monkeys.

We also got to hold a baby lion! They had a lion cub and they would let you hold it and have your picture taken with it for 25 Quetzales! It was an offer we couldn't refuse. Unfortunately, this is just a picture of the picture they printed out for me - Sondro took some pictures with his camera, but he hasn't sent them to me yet. Maybe this is the first step to my someday becoming a lion tamer like my uncle Jim!

After holding the lion cub, we hopped aboard a shuttle which took us through the driving part of the zoo - the actual safari portion! Normally you can just drive through in your car. But we only had a motorcycle and we figured it wouldn't be a good idea to tempt the lions.

The safari was really cool! The shuttle took us through large fields that held giraffes, zebras, lions, hippos, ostriches and more! It was almost like being in Africa! Haha - as the late Dr. Martin would say, "having never been there, let me tell you all about it." So, I just binged his name, and evidently he wrote a book! Did not know that ...

Guess you don't have to go to Kenya to have a safari after all. Go ahead ... click on that "Kenya" link ... you know you want to ... it's there for you to click ... Seriously, though, you should check it out - pretty funny link :)

Anyway, after we left the safari, we continued our journey to Monterrico! Much to our surprise, however, the road dead-ended into a river in the town of La Avellana. We were thoroughly confused, because on what passed for our map, the road looked like it went all the way to Monterrico. Undeterred, we loaded ourselves and my motorcycle onto a boat and were ferried down the river to Monterrico!

Turns out it's really, really hot once you get out of the mountains. We noticed that it was warmer when we got out of Antigua and into the plains, but only once we stopped riding did we really feel the heat! It was oppressive! We were both sweating constantly! At the Auto Chapin Safari, I'm pretty sure I drank about two liters of water!

We only stopped to ask directions twice on our way to Monterrico! Not bad for a couple of gringos, huh? The coolest part about stopping to ask directions was that we could! My Spanish has officially reached a survivability level! I can usually make myself understood and - if people talk slowly enough - I can usually understand at least the gist of what they're saying! Pretty exciting.

I'm also able to carry on some small talk now and I'm hoping to be able to have pretty decent conversations soon!

There's more to show and tell, but I've got lots of homework to do, so I'll tell you more later!