Sunday Adventures

We had all day free on Sunday while the UConn kids were arriving, so we woke up and wandered to a café in the Parque Central of Antigua called Café Condesa. I got delicious French Toast (my go-to breakfast food) for about $5. Afterwards we decided to hike up to Cerro de la Cruz, a cross on the side of the mountain with a beautiful view on Antigua. I was kind of in charge of getting us there, but the directions given to us by a friendly and incredibly fast talking local were not very specific (i.e. go down there all the way, then turn left and go all the way down there and you will be at the cross). We ended up wandering into a part of Antigua we had never seen before, with me and Abby leading a group of about 10 nervous, hot, exhausted people. We asked for directions about 10 times and finallyyy found the foot of the hike. Everyone we had encountered said that it was "muy facil" so when we saw a very steep, straight up climb we were a little bit hocked. Matt had recently his ACL (about a week before), so he was trailing behind, having to fend off stray dogs with a stick. We finally got to the top of the gigantic climb but sadly there was no cross...only a horse statue and a mediocre view. We asked a policeman near the statue (he was on lunch break?) if the cross was nearby and he pointed the way...right back down a hill. We finally got to the cross, and the view was just as beautiful as we had imagined (pictures to come). Some other kids in our group were already up there, and they told us that there was a set of stairs that took about 10 minutes to climb.. whoops! So much for facil. That night, we had dinner at the SEC office and met the UConn kids. The leaders ordered Domino’s pizza, which was amazing, but the Cinnastix were definitely not up to par with Cinnastix at home/Duke (Abby was quite disappointed). Later on, we went out to a salsa bar. There were some of the best dancers I had seen in my life, and some of the shortest men I had seen in my life (all Guatemalans are very short, btw). Abby and Taylor tried salsa dancing with some locals. Abby danced with a Guatemalan named Renee (...?) and Taylor was dancing with an American man that we had met the night before that we discovered was a pathological liar (he worked at a hedge fund, quit his job to become a dancer, lived on times square but also lived 2 blocks from Juliard...whoops). All in all, a great day.