By Juliette Clem
Hola friends + family of Maya!
Greetings from El Paredon, Guatemala. This past week has been packed full of so many fun and interesting activities that I thought the best way to share them would be through a collection of photos. I hope you enjoy!
We started our week in Antigua, where we had our first student-directed travel time so we got to choose our activities, which included ziplining and attending a local soccer game. We then traveled about an hour out of Antigua to the trailhead of Volcan Acatenango, to begin our overnight trek.
Julian taking a snooze on the way up, after a delicious lunch of fresh veggies such as avocados, onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers and tortilla chips!
Paige impressing all of us with her black belt karate skills.
After a long five and a half hours, the group finally made it to base camp!
While some chose to watch the sun rise the next morning from base camp, Hanna, Annie, Hannah and Julian decided to push through another steep hour and a half to watch the sunrise from the very top of the volcano.
After the descent, we headed to back to Antigua for a celebratory lunch at a nearby farm and then piled into another minibus and left for the beach! We arrived in El Paredon with aching muscles.
We have spent our time here relaxing on the beach, taking surf lessons, and working with a local social enterprise and sustainable development organization called La Choza Chula.
Other fun things we’ve done include making empanadas in cooking class, and playing carnival games after a town-wide trash clean up.
With our time in El Paredon coming to a close, our group is sad to leave this beautiful place but is also extremely excited for our journey to Nicaragua on Tuesday.
Juliette OUT!