Family Trip to The Beach and Zechariah Turns 5

Zechariah slept on our way to the Beach.

There are several options for places and things to see as far as trips go in Guatemala. Some are Tikal, Antigua (where we are living), Lake Atitlan, and Monterrico Beach. I've really only named a few but these are the popular ones. We picked the Beach since we would be traveling with Katy and Z.  We were able to stay from Friday afternoon till Monday morning.

Part of our view on our drive.

We basically lazed around at the two different pools, ate at the hotel restaurant, and took long naps in the afternoon.  The weekend that I was able to secure for the hotel also happened to be Zechariah's birthday weekend so it was like a double holiday for us. The really neat thing about Monterrico beach is that the sand is tinted from the volcanoes so the beach is Black.

We stayed at Dos Mundos Hotel, they have 14 huts, two pools, a restaurant, and a private part of the beach. The place was quiet and relaxing even though the place was full of kids all day on saturday and part of Sunday.  Our little hut was nice and it came with an AC unit which ended up being the best because the weekend we went was during a time when there is no rain, just lots of sun. (FYI I almost wrote "no hay nada lluvia, hay mucho sol" in spanish that means "there is no rain, there is a lot of sun". My spanish teacher would "tsk" me for writing in spanglish if I had written that.)

The beach.

Outside our hut.

The hotel grounds.

The large pool, where we spent most of our time.

Our days consisted of waking around 6:30 getting dressed for the pool and then heading to breakfast at 7. We ate typical Guatemalan breakfasts and enjoyed freshly pressed juice. After breakfast we would head over to the pool and stay till lunch time when we would head back to the hut and change for lunch.  Lunch however was different in the fact that we ate, pastas, hamburgers, fresh fish sticks, and nachos. It was not all to different from lunches we could eat in the states. In the afternoons we slept for a few hours then returned to the pool for more swimming, then at 7 we ate dinner and crashed after in our rooms for the night. It was relaxing but the amount of swimming, and sun we had made us all tired.

Nacho's

The kids and I ate burgers for almost every meal.

A Typical Guatemalan Breakfast, and it's wonderful to eat!

Happy Birthday Zechariah!

 

Speaking of sun too. Everyone except Josh had on sunblock and I was constantly re-applying it on myself, more than the kids even and some how I ended up as the only one with a sun burn.

The hotels signature drink. 

We were hoping to set off baby sea turtles while there into the ocean but even though online it says they do that from June to August it really isn't till the end of August that you get to set the turtles off. You can go to one of the many sea turtle farms and check out the hatched turtles. We were saddened but we survived. We did however get to see a tiny crab that was found in the swimming pool our first morning. We also saw dolphins or something splashing out in the ocean but they were to far out for us to figure out what they actually were.  There is a service where you rent small boats and they will take you out to spot whales, they get way to close to the small boats for my liking though.

We had a great weekend, and it would be fun to visit the black beaches again. Z got to have a virgin pina colada delivered to him poolside while he swam on his birthday, Katy as well and they both really enjoyed it. Even though pictured above is a large pineapple pina colada they had there's in fancy plastic cups.  Sorry I have no pictures of that because I left the camera in the hut that morning.