Monterrico

With two weeks of school under our belts, it was time for the beach. Call us wimps... but language school is intense and we needed a break. We went to the local travel agency and booked a 2.5 hour bus ride to Monterrico, a beach on the Pacific side of Guatemala. And guess what? It actually took only 2.5 hours to get there!!!






The lovely black sand beaches of Monterrico.






According to the locals, Monterrico was the nicest beach nearby. We planned to stay for 3 nights, but as soon we got there we began to reconsider. First of all, it's real hot there. There are also a lot of mosquitos... the beds at our hotel came with actual mosquito nets to sleep under. The beach is beautiful black sand, but was loaded with trash. It literally gets trashed after Semana Santa... thousands journey there. The water was really nice and warm, but dangerous to go in over the knees as riptides kill people every year. And there wasn't much of a town.

As we were driving in our "microbus" (a small van) to the beach, we met two really nice guys, both named Estuardo. They were just out of high school and headed to the beach for a night too.
As beach veterans, they took us under their wings and took us to the nicest hotel in Monterrico. The hotel had a bunch of old cheapo rooms, and some cinderblock structures with thatched roofs... I don't think you can actually call them huts, but they were billed as that. The Estuardos (we later named them Estuardo #1 and Estuardo #2) told us if we shared a two bedroom hut, it would save us all money, and allow us to stay in the bigger space. A hut comes with its own ocean water pool.

So, we shared a hut. Lisa and three guys. Our native friends were really nice. We got to converse for 24 hours in Spanish, which was very good practice. We enjoyed the American music they brought - Guatemalans love American music. And they enjoyed a ton of beer they brought, amazingly without getting wasted.

Not to say that Monterrico is a terrible beach, but as spoiled Americans, we just weren't quite used to this, and we thought that spending our time in a more beautiful (and maybe a little cooler) place would be a better option. So we left after one night, and started our 24 hour journey to Flores, Guatemala.