15th August - 17th August 2009

It took a long time for us to get to Monterrico but two buses, a tuk tuk and a boat trip later we arrived at the black sand beach. We were greeted as we walked into town by a nice local who helped us find some accommodation on the busy Saturday night. A lot of Guatemalans travel to the beach for the weekend so it would have been a lot harder to find accommodation had we not had his help. There was a catch though as he wanted us to go turtle watching and on a mangrove trip with him. We decided we might as well so that night we were off walking along the beach looking for turtles. There were about eight of us and one lady with two small children. We ended up walking about 4kms down the beach in search of the turtle and couldn't find any. The poor kids got really tired so the lady carried one the whole way and Sammy and I took turns carrying the older boy (5 years) he was so heavy and it was really tiring but we were both happy to help her. The next day we got up at 5am and went on the mangrove trip which we didn't regret. We got to see some amazing wildlife, a beautiful sunrise and some really cute baby birds.

When we got back we had some breakfast, a little nap and then headed to the beach. The waves weren't suitable for surfing but we enjoyed playing in the water anyway. The waves were a lot stronger than the ones back home and we could easily get dunked if we weren't careful. We enjoyed a few beers on the beach and the sunshine and watched a lot of 4 wheel motorbikes travel along the sand. We were pretty keen to find some surf so the next day we headed off to Sipicate, the surf capital of Guatemala.