Best Honeymoon Ever! - Guatemala

It went from great warm dry Utah weather, overnight, to REALLY cold, and rainy. Arg.

There was snow on the tops of the mountains already. Arg again.

It's not snowing here yet, and things haven't started freezing together (e.g. windshield wipers, etc...). Not arg yet.

Anyway, so I was thinking about how I hate the cold, and miss places where winter means it just rains, but is still warm, like, oh I don't know, the best honeymoon EVER!

Our honeymoon was so incredibly awesome that I can't talk about the whole thing in one blog, so I'll do it country by country. Our wedding festivities were insane. The week of the wedding America's family flew into Portland, and we spent time on the Oregon Coast, around the Columbia River Gorge hiking up Multnomah Falls, and other "Oregon" festivities, it was a lot of fun. We then got married in the Portland Temple (someday I'll put up a post with pictures), then spent about a week in this nice resort in Bend (Central) Oregon. After that we went to Illinois with my parents and little brother Miles (who was stuck in a mandatory training the day of the wedding...stupid ARMY), and had a second reception at America's home in Tuscola. That was great too, and fun for my family to be there.

Then we took off for the second phase of our honeymoon, it was awesome! We flew from Chicago to Guatemala City, and spent the first five-ish days in Guatemala.

Before heading out and about from the city, we stopped by to see the Guatemala City temple. Then we headed out to Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala.

This was a "typical" meal we ate in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Antigua. This was where the delicious drinks started, they never ended.

Here is my sexy wife on the rooftop of La Merced monastery in Antigua.

We then took some crazy local buses across the Eastern Highlands to Lake Atitlan, claimed to be the Waters of Mormon by the local LDS members. It was really pretty. Rather than staying in the over-touristed commercial town Panajachel, we took this little "ferry" to a small town on the opposite side of the lake called Santiago Atitlan, where we found a cheap hotel and stayed for the night, it was a lot of fun.

The dock pulling up in Santiago Atitlan.

The next day we headed back to Panajachel to see if we couldn't find some fun souvenirs for our new apartment, and to head back to the capital for a bus up north. As soon as we got there and started looking around, torrential rains came out of nowhere. I guess we knew it was the rainy season...

I went to find an umbrella while sexy lady America hung out in one of the little souvenir stands that lined the whole main road. This seems to be a common occurrence seeing as how within minutes everyone working there had plastic tarps and coverings whipped into place. These didn't happen to be of much use to me since it only took a matter of seconds to get completely soaked. By the time I found an umbrella (20 minutes later) it was kind of pointless. Though America appreciated it.

After staying another night in the capital, we got on a 12-hour bus ride up north to go see Tikal, the largest Maya Ruin currently discovered. This was America's first long bus-ride, which is why she's still smiling...man she thought she knew what she was in for, whoops!

One of the larger temples in the grand plaza at Tikal. We stayed in a city called Flores, and took a bus to the archeological site and spent the day there. It was wet, and hot, (not rainy wet, sweaty/muggy wet), but it was so awesome. One of those places that you just feel special to be able to see, something that the majority of the world will never see in person, simply amazing!

So this was the first of far too many things we did that required America to overcome her fear of heights, I don't think she ever overcame them, but we had a blast trying!

Here from the top of probably the tallest temple of the site you can see some of the other temples poking out above the trees. It was truly awe inspiring looking over the jungle and wondering what life must've been like back then when this was a thriving city.

The next day we hopped a bus that took us to the Belizean border to head back south towards Honduras. But that will have to be in another post. Guatemala was great, we loved it, and would definitely go back.