McBerkoBlog

We started our morning by packing up and walking over to breakfast at Kava's Pancake House, where Zadie again was excited to see that she could get bacon with her kid's breakfast meal. (Not a vegetarian, that one.) Next, we visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center . This place was very cool and informative, with a stage in the center, a movie theater, a lake surrounded by replicas of native homes, and a "hall of cultures" with artists, vendors, and artifacts. We arrived right as a dance performance had started, with singing, drums, and about 7 dancers, mostly young women. While everyone else watched that full performance (which Zadie tired of after a few songs), Zadie and I watched a movie about how kayaks and canoes were made by hand (wow). We then all toured the villages outside to walk through the six replica homes showing how various native people lived in the different environments and cultures of Alaska. Before we left, we watched a final movie together called ...

Next up, we headed to Alaska! This trip was a lifelong dream of Bill's dad, Jim, and we were excited to experience Alaska with him and Bill's sister, Mary. Major props to Mary for organizing so much of this trip! 👏👏👏 Our travel day happened to fall on Zadie's 6th birthday! We'd celebrated with family over the weekend so she wasn't feeling super "birthday girl" this day. Or maybe she was just tired - my cheap flights had us waking up at 2:45 a.m. for an early departure. We ended up scrambling when several ride share attempts fell through, eventually driving ourselves to the airport. Apparently not many drivers on the road that early (/late?) on a Monday morning! We landed in Dallas just after 7:00 a.m. and then had about 9 hours to kill before our next flight. Bill and the girls had never been to Texas, so we spent the day in downtown Dallas. The DART train took us directly from the airport to downtown Dallas, very convenient. We had lots o' coffee a...

Now that we've been home from Guatemala for several weeks, we sat down over sushi and discussed what we missed (food, culture, environment) vs. what we weren't as sad to leave behind (some convenience and health factors). Things We Miss Food! We ate so much great food on our trip. The prices were low enough that we could eat out frequently, and there were so many options that we didn't even visit all the restaurants we hoped to. For such a small town, there was a wide variety of international cuisine, and we mixed those with plenty of traditional Guatemalan options. We enjoyed a lot of Guatemalan coffee too, and I know Ruth will miss the frequent stops for flavored iced coffee. Our favorites were mostly simple things - super ripe fruit (mango!), being able to buy fresh cut fruit as a snack in the park, the handmade hot tortillas with "squeezy beans", and our near-daily avocado toast with always perfectly ripe avocado. The girls loved that cheap smoothies were offe...

We spent the first weekend in July on "a vacation from our vacation," swapping our normal Antigua routines for a visit to Lake Atitlan. The lake is the deepest lake in Central America, a huge volcanic crater. The majority of the population here is Maya and many different Maya languages are spoken, with Spanish as their second language. Saturday Our shuttle picked us up around 9 a.m. for our ~2.5-3 hr drive to Panachel, a larger town (~15K ppl) on one end of the lake. Pana was the first place where we saw older Guatemalan men in traditional clothing. (In Antigua, many women wear the beautiful traditional clothes but we never saw any men.)  We ate lunch at a traditional Guatemalan place where Bill had a fish fried whole, then walked to the dock to catch a boat taxi over to the small village of San Marcos. Boats are the easiest way to get around the lake because it's surrounded by so many volcanos and other mountains that there aren't really any big roads circling it. Pe...

This was one of our most anticipated activities while researching our trip, because come on, how cool is roasting marshmallows on an active volcano? Pacaya's last big eruption was in 2010, sending ash raining all the way to the capital 30 miles away. Lava rivers flowed even last year. We weren't expecting to see any lava (and didn't), but weren't sure what it would be like exactly. This was one case where we didn't want to research too much and spoil the surprise of the experience. We had a 6 a.m. shuttle pickup, bumped around the town's cobblestone streets for a while picking up other passengers, then started the hour-long ride to the national park. We passed through smaller villages on the ride and got some peeks into life there: horses carrying cargo, guys packed like sardines into the back of a truck headed to work, women hand washing clothes at a central public laundry pool.  At the entrance to the park, we had a quick bathroom break (water at sink but not ...

I had read about this hike before our trip but was not planning to do it. Overnight backpacking is more up Bill's alley than mine. My typical camping rule is "bathroom required," and there are no bathrooms on a volcano. :) But in the end, Bill got sick, we only had a few days before we flew back home, and it just looked too cool, so I signed myself up for this adventure and hoped for the best. It was a volcano weekend - we'd just visited Volcano Pacaya the day before. View of Volcano Fuego from camp on Acatenango I booked with a tour company called Wicho & Charlie's , liked their social and eco-conscious approach which even included all plant-based food. When I arrived there at 7 a.m., they handed out little juice shots - beet, orange, and ginger - to help with the altitude (not sure if that works but it was delicious), and then we got to "shopping." Temperature at the top of the volcano can get down to 30-40 degrees F, so they recommended everyone c...

Real talk here. Why? Because it's hard to plan trips like this and accurately estimate how much you'll spend, so I always appreciate seeing details about how much it cost other people. Maybe this info will do the same for someone else. Costs of course will vary based on what you value. We wanted to try a lot of local food and experiences so weren't trying to skimp on those, but weren't throwing money around lavishly either. Volcano Pacaya We were gone for 30 days. I won't make you scroll: our total net cost for this trip for our family of 4 was ~$3,050 . That's cheaper than our typical 7-10 day trips, including our prior trips to Germany, Costa Rica, Los Angeles, and Boston/Maine. I'm specifically looking at our net costs to understand how much we spent over  a typical month at home, so am subtracting out any normal monthly costs not incurred to more accurately reflect the true additional cost of being somewhere else for the month. Let's break it down: T...

This is an assignment for my Spanish class, a presentation about a Hispanic food. ¡Vamanos! Nota: Yo no se como escribir acentos en este blog, lo siento. En mi viaje a Antigua, Guatemala, mi familia quierio probar mucha comida nueva. Nosotros probamos platos tradicionales guatemaltecos como pepian y kak'ik, los guisos (stews) con verduras y pollo, pavo, o tofu sobre arroz. Tambien probamos muchos postres: bunuelos, rellenitos, flan, y platanos en mole.  Platanos en mole (mas deliciosos que los otros postres) Bunuelos (tantos ricos como los platanos, y tan grande!) A mis hijas, se gustan mucho los licuados (una bebida con frutas y leche o agua). Todos los restaurantes sirven los licuados. Las frutas populares en licuados aqui son mora (blackberry), fresa, mango, pina, y papaya.  Estan disfrutando los licuados Para ellas, la mejor comida en Antigua no es una comida guatemalteca, es la pupusa. Las pupusas son de El Salvador, pero son muy populares en Guatemala para el almuer...

We have been eating out at least once a day, a mix of places enjoyed by the locals and more expensive touristy places. I was expecting that our food costs here would be about the same as home, and they are close, with the difference being that we're eating out at least once a day here vs. not often at home. It'd be easy to eat very cheaply here by sticking to traditional places or eating at home more, but I'd rather enjoy as many places as we can while we're here! The tourist places are a little less than US pre-pandemic prices, ~$45-50 for dinner for the 4 of us including beer or other drinks for everyone.  Local places are half that or less, breakfast ~$3 and lunch/dinner ~$5. Our best deal was probably this traditional breakfast - coffee, basket of hot tortillas, beans, scrambled eggs, cheese, sweet plantains, and watermelon, all for $2.80 (including tip): One of Ruth's early favorite meals was at a traditional Guatemalan restaurant in the middle of the market wh...

 Highlights from our second week in Antigua: Santo Domingo del Cerro museums and zip line course ChocoMuseo chocolate class Pool time with friends More great food Santo Domingo del Cerro We visited this cool art museum last Saturday, a series of small galleries in separate buildings surrounded by beautiful gardens, sculptures, and mosaics, all on the top of a hill overlooking the city. We learned about Efrain Recinos, "the Picasso of Guatemala", who created most of the work permanently exhibited here.  Side note: Are you getting sick of the iMovie "Magic Movies" yet? I am, but not so much so that I'm willing to spend the time to edit stuff together on my own. ;)  After we explored the grounds and galleries, we found the zip line course. We did the hour-long short course of 8 zip lines and 2 hanging bridges. Zadie said it was scary at first, but then "super fun after the first one". I was a little surprised both a) that she made it through the course (...