Some photos from southern Mexico [View Full Entry]

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The road from Guate down towards Reu is a fairly attractive one. The smog clears, the road descends down hill, and the environment turns tropical with lush vegetation, palm trees and a increase in temperature. The land flattens out as we head to the coast, zooming past chicken buses in a cousin's car. No more endless turns like on the road, between Xela and Guate but a road where it's possible to seat in comfortable and gaze out of the window as the girlfriend's family argue about the normal topics of conversation: family, religion and money. After a stop to drink [View Full Entry]

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Religion is big in central America, very big. So it came as no surprise that a event like Easter (for christianity based faiths) would be a big event. The week leading up to Easter Sunday is called Semana Santa, are many places here celebrate it. The biggest celebrations are in Antigua where hotels are booked up well in advance. Subsquently I went to Santiago Atitlan for Good Friday where I was told they also go fairly crazy. I arrived fairly early in the day and made my way up to the centre of town, I realised I had possibly arrived a [View Full Entry]

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At 4:30am the alarm starting ringing. I jumped out of bed more enthuastically than normal while my brother rolled over and tried to ignore my attempts at early morning conversation. We put a few things together and prepared to leave the room. I didn't feel as fresh I was making out but I was looking forward to the day ahead, Rich still looked asleep although his eyes were open and he was standing up and moving about the place. There seemed a suprisingly large number of people moving around the hostel for this time in the morning, either about to start [View Full Entry]

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With my brother arriving from the UK just a couple of days previously, I decided to make my long-awaited visit to Antigua after dealing with visa formalities in the capital to extend my stay. Antigua is well-known as a beautiful colonial style city with a large junk of tourists lining the streets. Because of it's reputation it was in many ways everything I expected, which basically means it is unlike anyway else in Guatemala. Antigua has a monopoly on attractive buildings, churches, streets and restaurants. It also has higher prices and a more westernised feel to it. I felt I could [View Full Entry]

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Whenever I plan to rise early on a free day somehow the alarm keeps moving on a little later until it's not so early. Saturday was no exception. Once I got going, I found myself on a route I had travelled before with a choppy boat ride to Santiago followed by a pick-up to San Lucas. From here some inprecise pronunciation on my part (or too many names beginning with San) meant the next journey was a short (but free) one on discover of the misunderstanding. By this point I was stuck at one of those nothingy places where roads meet [View Full Entry]

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With my girlfriend finally granted some time off work we somehow decided upon doing a mad trip to Antigua, Volcan Pacaya and Guatemala City: all in the one day. We had to start early, and early in this case meant rising at 2:30am for the 3am Chicken bus. This bounced along uneven roads for a couple of hours as I drifted in and out of conciousness. We changed buses...somewhere... to get to Antigua (Maggie was doing the navigating). Feeling fairly nautious and exhausted the prospect of climbing a Volcanoe wasn't seeming as exciting as it did the previous day. The attractive [View Full Entry]

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Last Sunday I had the urge to do something a little different. I felt like moving around just for it's own sake. Trying to find a good loop or route is something often installed in a travellers' mind. Bearing in mind I only had a day, I decided to set myself the target of trying to work my way around the lake stopping at every town along the way. I started off with the ferry to Santiago. On arrival I moved through town fairly quickly, asking around in the market where pick-ups left from. On a relatively uncrowded pick-up, locals gave [View Full Entry]

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A few days ago I had two interesting discussions, both, coincedentally, with Dutch Girls about voluntary work and development projects. I explained how I was trying to get going an English school with the idea of passing on the reins once it had got going and eventually trying to move the idea onwards and upwards. I have encountered more problems than I had anticipated, mainly a mixture of the Mañana culture of the people and unreliability of my partner in business. The first Dutch girl saw the benefit of what I was trying to do, but generally had a negative attitude [View Full Entry]

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Several weeks ago on what appeared my last night in San Pedro, I took what seemed my last walk around the place. The hippy pathways leading to all sorts of weird and wonderful bars, the kids cloaked in traditional Mayan dress selling "pan de banan, pan de chocalate....", the semi-permenant gringo residents selling jewellery in the street, old men in full traditional dress armed with machetes etc etc. Seeing the same faces in the street, gives a sense of being in the town, a part of it, not just like looking through unintentially superficial and misleading tourist eyes. As it turned [View Full Entry]

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