Placencia

We went to Placencia this weekend. It was a 6 hour bus ride, but well worth it. Just the ice cream alone was worth the trip. For those of you who have spent time in Central America, you are probably as surprised as we were to find great ice cream. An Italian couple opened a gelato shop in Placencia with the best ice cream we have had in a long time. Our group went twice a day and they soon began to recognize us due to our frequent trips. Honestly, I think it was the highlight of our trip even though we saw a dolphin jump.

We also really liked swimming by the pier on the North Beach. That's where we saw a dolphin jump on our last day there. One of the volunteers found a star fish as well. Of course we all took turns posing with it.

We loved sitting on the dock and watching the sunset. You can see the progression with these two photos.

One last view of the beach by the pier. This one was from one of the restaurants. 

If only we could go to Cuba. We have heard the best way to get there is through Merida, Mexico, but I don't think we want to take the risk. Some day we'll go to Cuba.

Tikal

We went to Tikal, Guatemala this week. We were waiting until we had all the volunteers here so we could all go together. Tikal has several of the tallest pyramids in all of Mesoamerica and one of the largest Maya sites.  The views were absolutely amazing.  We were calling it Mayan Disneyland. Here's our group on the bus ride there.

Below are some of the crossing signs we passed on the way in. The first one is for jaguars and the second one is for snakes.

This is the only picture we have of the our group. For one week, all the volunteers were together before some starting going home.

Here is the view from Star Wars Episode IV.  

My sister Carolyn is here for a month to work with HELP International :)

Fourth of July

Our cook, Mama Kay made us hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries for the Fourth. Adam and I spent several hours looking  around for A & W Rootbeer. The rootbeer floats were really worth it. Mama Kay made a flag cake complete with 50 stars as well.  Unfortunately, fireworks are illegal here (and we didn't dare try to sneak some across the border from Guatemala) so we didn't have fireworks.

The last two weeks we have been working on painting murals over the graffiti in the Victor Galvez Stadium by our house. So far, we have painted 20 murals. The best part has been how many community members have commented on the murals. People often stop to compliment our work. Some offer to help paint and one woman went out and bought us more paint because she liked the murals so much. It's been great working on a project that's so appreciated by the community. The volunteers were featured in yesterday's paper.

Hazel stopped to help us paint the other day. She and her little brother were very helpful.