Here We Go

So here is the promised Blog. A few months ago my friend Ben approached me about traveling, and I'm not one to say no to that.  So we decided to head to Central America.  About a month ago Kale was undecided about what he wanted to do, so we offered him a spot to come with us. He took it.  As so here we are.  Leaving for Central America on Wednesday, January 6th!  So, 7 weeks with friends, and 7 weeks alone, and a whole lot of fun.
I will give you all a bit of an outline as to what I will be doing and where I will be going.  I'm going to be traveling to Central America for 3 1/2 months with my friends Ben and Kale.  We will be backpacking on this adventure, seeing and experiencing one of the greatest places on earth.  After last year, I loved Central America so much that I thought it would be awesome to return and see more of the area.  The planning for this trip has been a lot of fun and welcomed challenge.  I am so glad to have the opportunity to go back. To begin our journey we are going to be flying into Guatemala City, and then leaving for the tourist town of Antigua. There we will be taking some Spanish school so that I can get a  little more comfortable with my Spanish and so that Kale and Ben can learn a little bit of the language.  During this time we will be living with families, which is such a good time and great experience.
When I was in Guatemala last time, I wanted to go to Tikal.  Tikal is a beautiful site with some awesome Mayan Ruins, but that didn't materialize for me on the last trip.  So this time I hope to get there, and don't worry, I will make sure to take pictures.  Other than that Guatemala is going to be a good place for us to acclimatize Central American culture and experience some of what the place has to offer.  
Hopefully I will be able to see some of the people I met and lived with last year. It would be great to see some old friends that meant a lot to me.  Also, while I am down there the Discover group will be in the area.  It will be nice to see them and catch up on things over a nice cup of coffee at Higher Grounds.
After our time in Guatemala we hope to move down to to Nicaragua.  There we hope to meet up with a group from Canada who is building a school in a village down there. It will be nice to add some volunteer efforts to the trip as a value added piece of the trip. After our work with them we are open to explore more of Nicaragua. Following our time there we will head down to Costa Rica. Costa Rica should be a good time.  I hope to take in a lot of the natural beauty that the country has to offer.  Hopefully a chance to see the rain forest, and possibly give surfing a try, and enjoy the beautiful beaches the country has to offer.  Again we are going to try and do some volunteer work with a youth centre outside of the capital, San Jose. After that is going to be Panama.  At this point the only thing that I really want to see there is the Panama Canal.  I'm sure that things will come up that we can do there, but that remains open ended for me. At this point I will probably end up alone, as Ben and Kale will be heading back to Guatemala City to return to Canada. From there I hope to get to Honduras, at which point i would like to see some more Mayan sites and such.  However, this to is going to be an open area for me, and plan can easily change as I find things to do.After that I plan to return Antigua in Guatemala for the Semana Santa celebration.  This is said to be the second largest Holy Week celebration out side if the Vatican City.  So I thought this would be something sweet to see and experience.  Following that I will return to Canada on the 13th of April. I'm sorry that this was such a long post but I wanted to give an outline as to what will be going on.  I promise that the following posts will not be as long. I am going to try and update this blog giving you all some information on what is going on and the adventures that I'm going to have.  I will try to do this at least once a week, but I cant make any promises due to the unknown access to the internet while I'm gone.
I hope that you will leave me comments or emails and read along as I go on the adventure of a lifetime.

Bye for now.

Mike