Marshyheloise

Hello from rainy Guatemala. What a crazy first few days we had here. After the first worldness of America Guatemala was like entering another world. We had a long long ride with one of our spanish school teachers from Guatemala City to San Pedro on Lake Attitlan. It took about 4 hours longer than usual because we got stuck in a traffic jam waiting for a protest to disperse. Never saw the protest - the traffic jam was too many miles long! The next day we were straight into learning spanish, fun and challenging but hard work! We soon discovered the mother of our host family was a brilliant cook. Had 3 square delicious guatemalan meals a day, all with tortillas of course! The second day we were there Pacaya blew its top. We knew nothing ... read more

(NB: the photos are not in order because of the brilliant uploading programme on this website, hopefully you can suss out what we mean when we describe a photo as "and more") So its been a while, we've been on the Colorado Plateau, a big piece of rock in the southwest of America. Since we last blogged we've been to Yosemite, absolutely breathtaking, jaw-droppingly beautiful. We saw the highest waterfall in America (5th highest in the world) among several others that we climbed to the top of, Heloise taking it slowly in some of the bits with sheer drop-offs. Despite bear warnings we left Yosemite safe and sound. After that we headed through gold country, small towns that probably have the best times behind them, on to Sequoia National Park where it was snowing! We were ... read more

Been travelling 6 days now and we've got as far as San Francisco, at what is essentially a car park with electric hook-ups next to an american football stadium (the san francisco 49ers). We've driven all up the pacific coast on highway 1, with some crazy scenery and really good weather until we got here. It's grey and windy here, but there's no rain at least :-) After picking up the van we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway, a beautiful stretch alongside the ocean. We stopped at Point Mugu State Park where we camped in the picturesque Sycamore Canyon, ably helped by Julie, the eccentric camp host who buzzed about on a little scooter. In the evening we watched the sunset on the beach and played frizbee, while watching small birds forage for their dinner ... read more