Curacao: Willemstad

I spent the first day and a half wandering around Willemstad, a Caribbean town mixed with a bit of Amsterdam.

The floating market: boats come the 70km from Venezuela everyday

Dutch, English, and Papiamento that mixes in a lot of Spanish

New Year's Eve

NYE 2012 Sunset

Making sure Hailey has some New Year's fun too

Rappel

I spent last Saturday outside of Antigua learning to rappel for the first time.  We rappelled down a 40m waterfall and though it looks sunny and warm, the water was freezing.  I was fun, but would definitely be more enjoyable with some warmer temperatures.

Christmas Week

My mom came down to visit for Christmas and we took a quick trip over to the Rio Dulce/Livingston area on the Atlantic Coast.  Unfortunately, it poured the entire time we were there, with the exception of the last morning as we were leaving.  So instead of beaches, kayaking, and waterfall hikes, we finished some books and hide under a palapa. 

On the way back to Guatemala City we made a quick stop at the ruins of Qurirgua, on the 23^rd, just missing the celebrations for the end of the long count Mayan calendar.

Christmas Eve in Guatemala is capped off by an amazing display of fireworks at midnight.  Living on the 18^th floor, I have a pretty good view of part of the city and it was literally fireworks for as far as you could see (plus the ones that were nearly exploding on my balcony).

On Christmas morning we headed to Santa Cruz, one of the towns on Lake Atitlan.