Colonial Gem

Flores to Guatemala City, our home for 11 hours
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After a grueling 11 hour journey we arrived in Antigua, a beautiful colonial city in the south of Guatemala. On the way we experienced the capital, Guatemala City. An overcrowded, chaotic and gridlocked central american metropolis. We got stuck in a traffic jam approaching the city, at which point the driver put on a DVD of some dodgy Mexican with a ponytail singing love ballads. Not a good sign! After too many similar love ballads we finally arrived at the bus station in GC. We had to change to a minibus here to travel onto Antigua, the usual crowd of screaming, hustling taxi/coach/randoms vied for attention. Luckily the minibus driver had our names on a card so we got through safely. On the way out of the city and on to Antigua we happened to stop next to a city bus, it was packed but the strangest thing was the signs on the doors.....no smoking, ok fair enough......no guns, interesting! We also had a fun experience at stopping at a drive through cash machine, Callum had to lean out of the window to quickly make the transaction, things must be bad in the city!

Claire absorbed in Ian Rankin
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Finally we made it to Antigua about 7pm and found a really nice hostel called Yellow House, Seth, Thurstan and Etienne also stayed here too. We dumped our stuff and on a recommendation went for a really nice Guatemalan meal and a few beers to celebrate our safe arrival! We could hear really loud snoring that night and found out later that it was the dog, Blackie. Incredible noise!

We walked over the cooler bits being careful not to melt our shoes

A bit of Bull, an unusual sight on our journey
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The next day we wasted no time in booking on a tour to Pacaya Volcano for that afternoon with Seth. Unfortunately Etienne was suffering from a stomach upset and didn´t feel up to coming so his loving brother stayed with him to nurse him through! Pacaya is an active volcano with real lava flow and we were told that we would be able to get up close, exciting. The journey to the volcano was about an hour and a half most of which was climbing the base of the volcano on very steep and narrow roads. As the bus reached the end of the road we were greeted with lots of local kids selling sticks and torches, we thought the sticks were for walking with and as we are fit we thought we didn´t need a stick, wrong!

Some more Bull
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The walk to the top was about an hour of steep uphill through cloud forest, at the top we had our first view of the smoking cone. We then descended in to the lava plains which looked like an alien landscape, formed from cooled lava flows some still glowing beneath the surface. We walked over the cooler bits being careful not to melt our shoes to reach the active lava flows. The temperature at this stage was intense, infact I think that the hairs on our arms started to singe! It was at this point that we realised what the sticks were for......poking the lava, obviously!! So we had to borrow a lava stick to have a go. One very nice man remembered to bring marshmallows and as he had a huge bag full he shared them with everyone, umm tasty toasted marshmallows! As night fell the lava looked even more impressive, moving like a slow glowing stream. After we had all had enough of the heat we made our way back through the steep forest in the dark and now heavy rain, oh well it was worth it!

A bus in Guatemala City. Safe or what?
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Later that night we went for excellent Tacos at Fridas, I think Seth had already sampled these for lunch so he knew they were good. Frida herself was no looker but still they insisted on hanging pictures of her all over the walls, you could even buy a t shirt with her portrait on....nice. It turns out that she was some  historical revolutionary type, is this right Seth? Disturbingly one of the waitresses looked just like her, maybe a descendant?

All night and the next day Callum had a bad stomach bug, maybe Etienne´s or maybe from Fridas as Callum was making rude comments about the ugly portraits! So that day we chilled with some more hammock and book time. We also made friends with an Aussie couple Phil and Lou, they were on their way back to Oz from the UK in a round about sort of way! That day Seth randomly bumped in to an exhausted Agnes and Aimee, they were also coming to stay at Yellow House, yippee. As Callum was feeling better by the evening and nothing really gets in the way of Callum and eating we went back to Fridas, this time with Phil and Lou as well. Seth overdosed on caffeine and was crazily hyper, after 20 press ups and a few more with Phil helping he took himself off for a late night jog around the city!

The view from our hostel terrace, Yellow House
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Thursday we were supposed to be heading of to Lake Atitlan but unfortunately we were told the wrong time for the bus, so we missed our chance and this was our last day in Guatemala. So we spent the day shopping, internetting and sending a parcel back home. The parcel took most of the afternoon to sort as we had to lick and stick 373 Quetzals worth of stamps on, that´s 75 stamps in total, we deserved a beer after that! That evening we headed back to the original Guatemalan restaurant this time with Aimee and Agnes, oh and Seth too. We also picked up a couple of guys also from the hostel and dragged them along with us. After a fab meal we headed out to meet Etienne and Thurstan as it was Etiennes 20th birthday, our first experience of a Guatemalan Salsa bar. Drinks were very cheap for Ladies so an elaborate swindle was improvised so the fellas could get drinks on the cheap. It didn´t fool the bar staff and the ladies had to pay full price as a result! Exhausted we headed home at the crazy hour of 11pm. Party animals we are not anymore... and also we had to be up at 3am to make our connection to Guatemala city airport. Our flight was to Lima in Peru but we had to go via Miami of course, makes perfect sense....

Claire in the Yellow House
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Next blog Peru!!