San Sebastian Hotel Panajachel

... it rained a lot. Upon arriving in Antigua, the city seemed very dark to me until I discovered that all electricity had gone. Naturally, I still managed to find my place, although it was somewhat difficult navigating in the dark. The electricity came backaround 20:30 after having been gone for 2 hours. So now I've tried to do my homework by candlelight!

All in all, it was just a great weekend at a beautiful place, and a great way to spend the weekend!

... walking at night, past farms and not being able to see anything, but smelling the animals and the crops, the whole path smelled of cilantro.

We finally reached the base and it seemed like Theo was practically running up the mountian, I was going at a much slower pace, mostly because I don{t see anything and anyone as clumsy as me really has not buisness climbing moutians anyhow, especially not in the dark. Jeni was walking behind me.

Queteneltengo, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala katywade

... another traveler named Renee from Arizona. After chatting it up for a while we invited her to come to lunch with us and had an enjoyable meal with some company.

Of course, as lunch was ending the rains came. This time we were prepared with our rain gear, however, we were still drenched by the time we got to our shuttle who found us on the road to our hotel. The ...

... advil, so I took a rain check.

That evening we had been promised dinner in a local restaurant which turned out to be a local cantina, but the food was great and Dave with some help from Troy managed to eat them out of tortillas. With not much to do in town, despite it being a Friday night, we went back to our ‘luxury’ accommodation and played drinking games until someone reminded us all that we had to get up at 5 am to see the sunrise.

The Final Day ...

... a half hours until we got to the top of the hill, and we could see all of Xela, the surrounding volcanoes, and learned that this whole area is pretty much a caldera. Very cool!

The boys from the Hogar that we brought with us were Luis (aka Guicho) and José Arturo (aka Chepe). These boys love to give me trouble on our trips to and from school, but on this trip, it seemed as if they were on my side. (I think this is partly because I was one of the very few people who ...

... that they give to you as there are basically 2 points on either side of a bridge of where you have to obtain a stamp out and in respectively, The thing is though that there are no kind of restrictions of who can be on the bridge or hanging around the entrances so as most places like these where there are tourists there is usually money hence there is every vendor and scammer there that you can imagine. I had read about the boarders before so it was not a massive surprise but still ...

... Pana office by my guide for today, Pablo. Pablo drove me to the town pier where we boarded the boat, which will be our main source of transportation today. We were joined by various other people, most of whom sat topside to enjoy the morning cruise. Our first destination on the lake was the town of San Pedro. As we approached the town, you could not help but notice this striking white building which at first I assumed ...

... buses in the past year. They have been freezing cold, boiling hot, smelly, stuffy, nauseating and – as with the bus from La Paz to Uyuni in Bolivia – spine-shattering. But possibly this bus took the cake. Flicking aside the cockroach that had taken up residence in our seats, we settled in for the 10-hour trip.







The bus took off – and then the music started. Not the ...

... central Mexico. Such is evolution- selective, enduring, and imperfect. Only Quezaltenango maintains its substrata name of Xelaju’. Finally Lake Atitlan comes into view big and blue over to the west, volcanoes rimming its edges lovingly. The turn-off to Chichicastenango and the rest of El Quiche’ comes at Los Encuentros, a former stage-stop now pretty much become a full-fledged town high along the continental divide with no apparent ...