Been There, Dean That: Guatemala

Hello, everybody, Welcome to episode six. I've been there, Dean that.

I love that name.

Today we got a great episode for you because my wife joins me back in studio.

I was about to put myself up yep, thanks for doing it for me and what I was going to say. And you've got a great guest.

And we've got a great guest today. It's weighing in at a whopping ninety six pounds hailing from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Kaylin Bell.

Are we one hundred and ten pounds?

But thank you six pounds?

I only weigh eighty two pounds.

We got a really great episode for you guys today. Not only is my wife joining us, but that's actually really the only reason it's going to be good episode today.

So where are we going? Where are we traveling to?

Last week we talked about photography, well, I talked about it by myself because I don't want to burden you with coming in here and recording these things with me.

Oh I'm so burdened, yep, I know you are.

This week, I want to talk about one of my personally personal favorite trips. Yeah, do you know which one it is?

If you had a guess, well, for me it's Italy, but I bet for you it's Japan.

Nope, it's a trip we went on to Gamala, Guatamol.

Ladies, gentlemen, Upton, what is it? Altallan like?

At it Lon is what you're thinking of. So how long ago was that, Kaylen gosh Dang?

Maybe three three years October three years ago.

I think it was more than that, because I think it was before my.

Leg four years accident.

I want to say it was fifty months ago.

Okay, it was October four years.

Ago, October twenty twenty nineteen.

Twenty nineteen, for sure.

So what Kaylen and I did when we were trying to spice up our relationship a little bit, we we decided we wanted to bring the other person on a surprise trip to the to a destination. So I would book a trip bring Kaylen. She wouldn't know where we're going until we get there ideally. And then she book a trip and same thing. I wouldn't know where we're going until we get there ideally. Both of those did kind of fail. Before we even left the airport. We got to lax and she still had no idea whe

We liked, do you remember correctly what happened?

I'm trying to remember. We like went to with terminal that wasn't the right terminal, Like we had to check in at terminal three, but then we flewed a terminal four.

Yeah, but we were at the Influencer Awards, the American Influencer Awards. First I had to present. We left the second I presented, and then got to the airport as soon as we possibly could. And then we're like super stress. We're like, we're gona miss our flight. We're in terminal three, and the guys like, oh, yeah, you check in here.

How many times have you had to sprint through the airport do you think in your life? Maybe like twice, that being one of them. Yeah, and the other one just some other time that you can't think of right now, but you know it probably happened in another time.

Yeah. Well, like you know when layovers, you have a layover and then your first flight's delayed and you almost missed your second flight, probably a couple Oh oh yeah, South Africa, Yeah, Germany.

Well, we were in Germany, Amsterdam, Amsterdam on a layover.

But the whole point of that story was because the guy's like, if you're trying to get to Guatemala, you better sprint. And that was the first time I heard we were.

Going to Guatemala, right, so he spilt the beans.

I was so pissed. Not only was I pissed that we were like about to miss our flight, I was like, do you know what you just did?

And there's one thing about Kaylin. When she gets under a little bit of stress, she can turn real mean, real fast, mean until the stress is gone.

Mean yeah, not mean, but you yeah, not mean, Thank you, not me?

Can you stick with me? No, you're very sure.

Sassy and sassy, I'll take sassy.

And so you were sassy because we were running late, not because of my doing, by the way, because you're doing. You just had to present at the American Influencer Awards.

And I got my makeup done for that and I had to take my clear photo that day on that Guatemala trip, and great photo. For four years, I had a great photo.

Great photo. So, yeah, so we're running late for this flight. Caylen just finds out where we're going. We're going to Guatemala. She it instantly jumps on Google and she's like, oh, Guatemala. That can't be safe. Do you remember that.

No, I didn't say Guatemala that can't be safe. I just looked up Guatemala and the first thing that comes up is something ridiculous, like it's the most dangerous country in the world or something like that.

Yes, and so not only were you stressed about running late for our flight, but then you're also learning information at the time about how dangerous this country was, and it was it took a couple of days for you to warm up.

I kind of remember it differently. I kind of remember like a few days in me googling that because I felt kind of safe, and then I was a little trepidacious.

I think what you're thinking of is you google it again a few days into the trip after there was no danger ever, and you're like googling it more to like maybe cite the source and see like who's writing this, because it didn't feel like it was right or something. You know.

Yeah, you know when you ask a question on Google, and then the first thing that pops up, it's like that might not even be a legitimate source, but you look at it and you're like, there's my answer. Yeah, goodbye.

So then here I am having to explain to her it's not as dangerous as some random person on the Internet says. Just because people get murdered there doesn't make it dangerous.

People get murdered everywhere.

People get murdered Chicago, we still go there, never been, but yes, most people get murdered in Colorado. We live here.

True, I will say I felt incredibly safe.

It is.

I mean, I know we're going to get to this, but it's such an incredible, beautiful country with great people and great food, and I never once felt him safe.

The food was really good. So what did we do? We flew into Guatemala City, I believe where you rented a car, which, if you're going to spend an extended amount of time in Guatemala, highly suggests renting a car. It's it's pretty necessary to get around. You could definitely like bus and do it that way, but just for convenience sake, I think the car rental was probably only like fifteen bucks a day. Too, or something like that.

You're a little burbie.

Yeah, I just took a sip of coffee. If you guys go and read car and you find a purple hydro flask in the back seat, please return it to me.

Oh my gosh, that was just devastating for you.

And I love that hydroflask so much. So we got to Watamala City, Guatemala, shilly, silly city, and what did we do from there? We stayed the night in Guatemala City, but then we drove out.

To We stayed at this like cool boutique hotel. We stayed at the very front, right next to the reception. It was a beautiful hotel with great breakfast, and then we were just right by reception, so we kind of like heard people talking all night.

I wanted to in preparation for this, I wanted to pull up some pictures and videos and to kind of like relive it with you.

And this is like what three months into us stating four months into as stating, So I'm new to hiking, new to all these things, and Dune just was like, let's jump right into it.

We had just done just before the trip, we had done have a Suphie.

Okay, so I'm not totally in novice, but still, you.

Like ten miles into have a supie. We should actually make I have a supery episode at some point.

Yeah, and I didn't hike out. Yeah, but that's how she returned. He's a mystery.

They that for that. I have a supery episode. So I'm going through some Do you remember these photos we hiked actually.

Oh, it was one of my favorite trips in my entire life. Of course I remember.

So we drove in. I was hoping that I was going to have the locations on these.

If you shot them on your camera, you don't have the location. If it's on your iPhone, you do.

That's probably right, That is right. Yeah. Yeah, so we don't have city names, which is such a bummer because this very beautiful city.

Yeah, prepared more gosh darn it.

Well, I this is already. I'm recording this later than I then I would normally record. So that's why I'm doing it this way. Look at this beautiful part of the city.

Yeah, it was gorgeous. I forgot about that day. We just walked around town.

So we drove this beautiful little town, just walked around. It was amazing.

And then no, it's easy to find because there's that we hiked, I mean baby baby hike to that huge cross. Yeah, so if you just look up like huge cross and Malla's city, it's easy to find that cute little town we walked through.

Oh, Antigua, Antigua Antiga, Guatemala is the name.

That's where we stayed.

Yes, I highly recommend going to Antigua. You could spend probably two days there. And I remember after walking around, we did struggle to like find touristy things to do.

But we but also they remember I think that was that time there were like cute, little like healthy restaurants. It was very like yoga hippie.

Yesque As Guatemala. I think just kind of threw them through. It is like that.

I loved it.

And then what did we do with Then we did a little mini hike up a volcano. We found a tour guide.

Many that was brutal or no.

We drove to the trailhead right and we wanted to hike, but they wouldn't let you hike without a tour guy.

So we found one.

So we just yeah, it'll be like bumped into one there that was like obviously willing to do it because we have to pay him, so then that's probably his job. So he showed us up this volcano. It's pretty cool. Is the first time in my life I'd ever seen Magma.

Yeah, also, I'm glad that we did, and because I mean, these guys do it all the time. They're prepared. They bring marshmallows, you roast marshmallows. I know, some people bring pizza and you like cook a pizza up there, So it's really cool. And getting to roast marshmallows on Magma that's probably a once in a lifetime thing.

Yeah. So then we According to my phone it's called San Vicente Pakaya, but I don't remember that being the name of this volcano. But anyways, we just did a day trip up on this volcano. It's like a pretty easy hike, maybe an hour up, an hour down or something like that. And that was in preparation for the next adventure that we were going on. That was preparing us for the next adventure that we were going on.

So then what we did was I just want to say too that I have no idea on this trip what we're doing, what is being planned, Dean said. He prefaced with You're gonna not really enjoy the first half of the trip, but you're really going to enjoy the second half.

Of the trip, And you enjoyed it all I did.

I mean, if I were to do that again, I would definitely enjoy the first half more now because I'm more fit.

So then what do we do? We checked into a hostel and my first ever it was your first ever hostile experience, and it's kind of frustrating because I booked a private room, or at least like a queen's size bed in a room that was supposed to be private, at least how I understood it. And so we're laying in bed after our briefing on what we're going to be doing the next day, which was hiking Bulkan Fuego.

Steep, ten miles up, ten miles down.

Yeah. Kaylyn keeps looking over at me like, what the hell are you about to make me do? So we go through the briefing, we stay the night in the hostel, We get into our room, we're like kind of snuggling on the bed watching a show or something.

We're in bunk beds. I'm up top, you're on the bottom, and then a man walks in and I jump into bed with you.

Yeah, French guy walks in and she goes, why is this guy in our room? I was like, well, it's a hostel, that's how hostles work. And she was like, what, people just share rooms. I was like, yeah, it's a cheap no, no, no, no, I'm sorry.

I understood the sharing of the room. What I didn't understand is this guy just getting naked barely saying hi. And I was like, oh, my virgin, I can't see this.

Yeah, get he did take his pants off.

I remember, Yeah, there's bathrooms.

And at this point in life, you hadn't really traveled much, even though traveling was sort of your thing, you hadn't really traveled much. Had you. You'd been to Asia? Yeah, that's it, we had been.

I think we went on my trip clingha.

No, that was after this trip. I was a spoiler alert for next episode, Caylen, come on, beep, just peep it out. And so yeah, so then we had to deal with the French guy that was gettingnked in the room. It really was not an issue. It was just kind of funny to see kill in the reaction. And we woke up early the next day, took the bus up to the trailhead for the volcano with a group of probably what like fourteen other people.

I don't really remember the bus up there at all.

It was well, I mean, obviously we had to take something to get to the trailhead.

Yeah, but I don't remember it.

I remember it. It was a beautiful drive, maybe like an hour or two drive. But the group was big, right, it was like fourteen people.

Yes, I do know. Yeah, yeah, we had to split up into like two vans.

Do you remember the group being big?

I would say it was like fifteen people.

Yeah, that's exactly what I just said. Well one more than what I just said. So we get to the trailhead start hiking. It's a beautiful right out of the gates. We hiked for I want to say, like six or seven or eight hours, probably.

A long time, and I thought I would be the weakest. I was maybe the second or third weakest.

You were in the middle of the pack, Yeah, which is good. And that's kind of a testament to this type of stuff too, with these guided tours. Is you don't even necessarily have to be the strongest or the fastest or whatever. I talk about that all the time, like, you'll get to where you're going eventually. So if you think that you're not in good enough shape to do something like this, I mean, obviously still train and prepare

And they divvied up our food and our packs, like they divvied everything up amongst everyone. And Dean was so kind, and because we had just hiked have a soup by he knew that I struggled and it's hard for me to carry away and hike, so he carried everything and I had to carry nothing, which is very sweet of you.

Just such a lucky girl I am. So we hiked up on the hike up, I remember there was like halfway up there was like a food not a food truck, but like a food tent and they would serve you coffee and stuff.

Oh, it was amazing. It was great coffee.

It was really cool. And then we got to our campsite for the night, which is adjacent to directly to an erupting volcano. So this volcano erupts every I want to say, like every ten minutes, to varying degrees. Sometimes they're massive, sometimes they're kind of smaller. But it's amazing.

And it had erupted and tragically killed a lot of people a year prior.

It wasn't in a year, it was like twenty years prior.

No, no, no, no, yes, it was. I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Okay, I don't know, I believe you. Maybe I'm wrong, but yeah, I mean, to your point, it does erupt semi frequently and causes destruction.

But also so all the tents were set up, I don't know if we had people hiking ahead of us to set up our tents.

Do you remember I think that we had some sort of porters.

Yeah, yeah, I think we did have porters as well. So we go there, our tents are set up, and then the guide is like who wants this one? And it's like front facing directly, it's like the best spot to see the volcano erupting all night. And Dean is never one to like, I don't know, You're like kind of passive and you'll let anyone like have the best experience. But Deane was like, nope, we'll take it. And someone was already someone wanted it, and then Deane was like,

I just when it comes to that kind of stuff, I know that I'm going to have a good experience no matter what, and so if someone needs to be in a better position for them to enjoy it more, then I'm happy to give it to them because I know either way, I'm going to have a really good time.

I think you kind of did it more so for me and maybe the photo too.

I think I was setting my camera up for the night shots or something and I wanted to be close to it. Maybe is why. But yeah, so then we you know, we had a delicious dinner with this tour guide. I wish I could. I probably can figure out the name of the tour group, just in case you're thinking about booking a trip out to Guatemala and you want to. Oh yeah, Ox Expeditions. We'll found that really fast.

Our guide was wonderful. I don't remember his name, but he was amazing.

I don't remember him being especially good, but I don't remember him being bad at all.

Oh. We enjoyed his company because we both are people that like to be to ourselves and don't love big group things. But we both had a great time, me more so than you.

You had a better time than I did.

No, like, I like to be alone more than you do. I don't really like big groups.

I think that we dislike it equally. I just can cope with it better. Yeah, it's maybe be a better way to put it. But yeah, So we stayed the night. Oh gosh, it was so cool. They cooked us a delicious dinner. We played games with the group, like under the tent watching this volcano or ups consistently every ten minutes, and they give you an option for the next morning. You can wake up at like what was it like four or five in the morning, hike up to the

No?

Do you have any guesses? No? Well, I'll tell you right now. It is three and three seven hundred and sixty three meters, which is about twelve thousand feet a little over twel thousand feet. So that's pretty tall. Yeah, not as tall as the fourteen ers that I climbed, but you know, still very very tall. And so we were up there for a little bit watching it erupt, came back down, packed up our tents, and then went back down to Antigua. From Antigua, we went to like

It was. I gotta spent a whole week there. It was amazing. The Hotel Jean Shows was incredible.

Thank you. Yeah. So we got into the lake at at Lawn Town. I can't remember what Lake Atlan is huge.

By the way, I feel like we I don't know why. I feel like we were on the east side.

We were good job.

I don't know how I knew that.

I want to I want to say we were in a pana pana hochel.

Because someone was talking about how like Atolon can be dangerous, like I don't know if it was the northwest side or something, there's parts of it that are dangerous. Yeah, is what like our boat driver I think said.

To us, Yep, that's right. But still I mean I never felt dangerous.

No, No, that's why I'm saying. That's why at the side we were on, that's where I see.

I see. Yeah, So what we did? We drove the road there. I remember it got kind of scary near the end or do you remember this? It was like a highway for ninety percent of it, but the last ten percent of it. I don't know if it was a Google Maps issue or what, but it takes us down these like single track dirt roads.

Winding round like a stopoint or something.

Winding around the mountain. There was like a the river was higher than it normally is, and so we had like drive through moving water, you know, which can you never move Driving through moving water scares me because it's fun, but you never know how deep it's going to be in under the water, So it could be six feet deep,

Just know it was amazing and the food was great, and we were only there one night, but like at night it was so gorgeous, and then you wake up and they bring you breakfast and everything's really healthy. They've got green juices and smoothies and tofu. I think it was like all vegetarian maybe or vegan.

I think it was called Kasa Prano Hotel.

Sounds like a possibility, but I remember.

I booked it specifically because it was a short boat from the town. Yeah, it was cosa Prano hotel right now two hundred and fifty bucks a night, which I don't think it was nearly that much when we went there. But you get to the town, you take maybe like a twenty minute little boat over to the hotel, check in, they take your bags. It was kind of like a yoga retreat in a lot of ways that hotel at least, so we kind of like just stayed there for the

We get there and they're like, we're going to pick you up by helicopter.

Yeah, So we take the boat over there and they're like, yeah, we own a house in an how we're easty here. Do you guys want to come? And we're like well maybe. They're like yeah, we can take our helicopter and we're like yep, yep, we're in kind of site ze. So we're get in this helicopter and just take us off off the cliffs side in Guatemala.

It was on the roof of their rest their hotel.

Yeah, but the landing pad, I don't think it was on the roof. I think it was like on the mountain and they fly us and out. I think the flight was probably thirty minutes because it's a helicopter, goes a lot faster to be lost.

They also the pilot let Dean fly for a bit.

Oh yeah, move my first helicopter there. What a great day. And they take us to their state. It was like an estate. They were incredibly wealthy, I'm sure, and we just like spent the day out there.

It looked like a hotel itself. It was wild. There were like twenty bedrooms.

Yeah, so that I guess that was kind of a unique experien for us that we wouldn't have had unless we.

Yeah, and landed on They lived on a black sand beach, which was cool because we didn't see that where we were.

Yeah, the black sand beach was really cool. And then we flew back and got back to our hotel and drove back to Guatemala. Cily the city. I want to see how far these. This drive was from like at it long to Guatemala City because I remember it being like generally pretty far. Do you remember how far it was?

I thought it was four hours, Yeah, three.

Hours twenty minutes, but it took longer because Google Maps doesn't account for some of the road speeds, like the super slow speeds that you have to go. So, yeah, that was our trip to Guatemala. It was, in my opinion, one of the best trips I had ever gone on with you, because you got to enjoy the nice serenity of the lake afterwards. You're so funny to do things like this with because tell me what, I'm funny because you grumble the whole time.

And then then I look back and I'm like, that was the best trip of my life exactly.

Yeah, you grumble and then you do it, and you like always kind of question your own ability, which you never should because you can do anything and you always do. And then you get back and you're like smiling ear to ear, having had the best trip of your life.

Yep, that's a little bit about me.

Have a suphie Guatemala, Nepali.

Yep.

I'm trying to think what else, but yeah, I think that you do secretly really love hiking, but you just don't yourself.

Well, I've never considered myself to be strong until like I'm stronger than i've ever been, so now I'm more confident in my abilities to do things like that.

Yeah, and you should keep it up. So if you're thinking about doing a trip to Guatemala, definitely one hundred percent don't miss Valcan Fuego. That was in my opinion, and like, that's one I really want to go back to the Vulcan Fuego because I wasn't very good at photography then. I still am not good now, but I'm better than I was, and I want to like maybe devote more time to getting more like focusing more on photography.

If I was there, you know, yeah for sure. And the shot that you got while you were there, you got a sweet shot of it was like a long exposure shot of the volcano erupting. So I can't imagine what you get now four years later.

Oh yeah, I meant to say when we were talking about it earlier. So during the day you just see like plumes of dirt and smoke and dust and debris coming up, but when it gets dark, you can actually see the embers of the volcano, so.

The naked eye can't see it during the daytime.

Yeah, even though it's like this molten rock being shot out during the day, the sun overpowers it. But at night it's literally erupting magma. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, I don't think we'll ever get the chance to stand on the side of a volcano ever get and.

Even sleeping next to it and just feeling the ground like rumble all night long and you can like hear it erupt all night long. It was very cool.

And they do take you on a hike onto that volcano. You went on that one that same night. When you get up there the first night, they take you over to the volcano, and you're probably I'm going to be super wrong about it. No, I was gonna say, like five hundred feet from maybe more maybe that zero, maybe like a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet. You're a safe distance away, but you're if it was a big eruption.

Nine?

Nine? Yeah, not ten.

If I did it again, it'd be a ten. Oh, so I wouldn't grumble, But.

If you did it again, you wouldn't have the like, the novelty of doing it for the first time.

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with nine.

Okay, I think, Yeah, she's sticking with nine, folks.

What's yours?

Nine? Zero point five? Nine? No, I'm just kidding nine, because I don't think any trip ever gets a ten. Hmm. Okay if if if a trip got a.

Ten, what about our honeymoon?

Mmm?

That was a ten for me.

Nine, That was a perfect If it wasn't a twenty hour travel day, maybe it would be just signal the travel day. M Yeah, I can't do it anyways, that's gonna do it. For this week's episode of Been There, Dean. That next week, we're going to talk about Kaylen's trip that she planned secretly for me.

It was wild. It was the most dangerous trip of my entire life. We almost died. I don't know why you laugh it because we did so dramatic.

It was the most dangerous of your life. We almost died.

Yes, yeah, because of me.

It's a great cliffhanger, and I hope you guys seen him for that.

It was.

It was a great Yeah, it was. It was a trip.

It was certainly No. Nine.

It was a trip. And so be sure tune that for that next week because it's fun. Kaylen's going to be here. We all love hearing her talk, so tune in for that. Or maybe we sucked just a little bit less