Yesterday morning at 6am I left my homestay family to travel across the border to Guatemala. Trying to say goodbye to a family that speak no English is not easy especially when my Spanish hasn´t advanced enough to hold a conversation. My conversations with the family were often interupted by my use of the dictionary, which kid of puts a dampener on things, however I had progressed from please and thank you by the end of the week. Whilst I don´t think the Spanish has improved that much it has given me more confidence to give it a go, which can only be a good thing.
Now in Panajachel and it took most of the day yesterday to get here, the border crossing was simple enough and I´ve discovered that Guatemala is quite scenic although some towns look a right dump, its sad. In general the place is a lot greener than I expected and I´ve uploaded a video clip of lake Atitilan, the last time I saw such an amazing lake would have been in Canada (turned out to be a river too!).
Pana (as the gringo´s call it) is on Lake Atitilan and you can take a boat to any one of about 12 villages around the lake shore, which I might do tomorrow before heading to Antigua for Chrsitmas. Also uploaded a photo of the boats that leave the shore in Pana, not sure you´ll be able to tell but they are/have loaded a fridge freezer on board! This afternoon met a mad American who runs a little Coffee Shop who is clearly besotted with coffee, as with anyone that drinks too much coffee he runs around like he´s on speed. Anyway he gave me an impromptu background to coffee and coffee buying, which was really interesting, he even showed me his coffee lab - surely thats going too far.
So safe and sound in Guatemala, have a private room but shared bathroom for 35 Quetzals, about $5, and my lunch cost me about $3, pretty expensive hey.
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