Rancho Grande Inn Panajachel

... the dock we walked alongside the waterfront and found this great place, where we could enjoy a lemonade right by the water.

After having had lunch at Zoola's, I took a lancha back to Panajachel. We were right out on the middle of the lake, when it just started pouring down! And it kept raining from then on. If I return to Atitlan - which I might be doing in two weeks - I have to remember to bring my raincover.

The drive back to Antigua was quiet ...

... you cant see anything because the coulds will come in. We finally got to the trail head via taxi and started walking, I was with the women whose house I am staying at and the other boy who is staying there, Theo, an very enthusiastic Dutch boy with way too much energy. My flashlight batteries were dead, so my path was being lit with the light of a cellphone, not ideal. We had to walk a few miles through rocky country hills to reach the base. It was very ...

Today was our second and last day in Panajachel. As we would be leaving back to Antigua in the late afternoon we decided that we would take it easy today and just do a little walking around the neighborhood and check out the lake. Being that it seemed to be a very clear day we spent much time just sitting by the shores of Lake Atitlan and enjoying the views. While there we ...

... my head was pounding so I opted out of the hike up to the Mirador to view Lago de Atitlan and hit the floor. The next morning, having had little to no sleep, I was so grateful that I had managed to get some kip for those few hours. When the others returned the owner invited them to partake in a sauna in the sweat room at the back of the house. I really wanted to as my legs were now as stiff as two planks of wood, but my head was still pounding despite the doses paracetamol ...

... hiking, and had some water, then gathered into a big circle, and one of our guides, an Israeli named Leor (Lili for short) had us do the meet-and-greet. We had to state our name, where we're from, how old we are, what our favorite food in Guatemala is, and what animal we would choose to be. This was the first sign that the guides were all a bunch of crazy hiking hippies... which couldn't have been more perfect for the surroundings.

We then continued for another 3 ...

Today most things went wrong. Except for the most important ones. Lauren speaking.

The most successful part of our day was the very beginning, when we crossed the border from Honduras to Guatemala. When Selvin picked us up, he told us that the border was closed. Despite previous reassurances that "foreigners always get out", we were a bit nervous as we approached the checkpoint. Fortunately, Selvin was wrong - the border was open. The guards were ...

Crossing the border into Guatemala was the wake up call that we were actually doing this trip and not on some extended Holiday as there had been parts in Mexico and especially in the states when we might have gotten a bit too used to the luxury and forgotten that at some point we would actually be backpacking through 3rd world countries… and the that time was now. The border in between Mexico and Guatemala is, for want of a better word, a circus and probably only really deserves the ...

... from an ancient volcano. Walking the streets of Pana, I was amused that some vendors were selling bongs and crack pipes...this was a direct result of the towns history as the premier Central American hippie hangout during the 1960s and 1970s. Although the city now caters to more of the mainstream tourist industry, Pana still maintained its counter-culture heritage.

Precisely at 8 am, I was meet at Adrenalina ...

... the silence perforated only by the throaty growl of unseen howler monkeys. It was yet another magical memory we wished we could bottle and keep.






With the sun hanging low in the sky, we made the hour-long hike back to the parque entrance and caught a shuttle back to Flores, where we hopped on an overnight bus to Guatemala City.







Now, we have caught dozens of ...