Big fire spitting volcanoes and stuff

Firstly, HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!! we hope you all had a great one - we spent the christmas period at a hippy eco-lodge type thing in the mountains above Antigua - hence the absence of phone calls on the day.

So, here we are in Antigua, Guatemala for a month trying to learn a bit of spanish but, especially on my part, failing quite miserably. I think i'm gonna have to leave the spanish to Jenny who is already speaking it like a native. A slow native but a native none the less.

We have been in our apartment for about a week and a half now so about 2 and a half left. Antigua is a welcome slice of western culture - we can get cheese, good bread and oreo's at the local supermarket. Corn tortillas and refried beans are ok but there's only so many you can eat.......

Last week we climbed a volcano called acatenango just outside Antigua. Acatenango has a very angry and quite antisocial neighbour called Volcan Fuego who was in an especially bad mood when we climbed. We were told that we were 'lucky' as it was the most active it had been for over a year. The climb was a hellish 8 hour uphill slog to 4,000 metres followed by a freezing overnight camp inside the caldera - especially for Scott as he forgot his warm jacket so had to go into ray mears mode and double my sleeping bag as an emergency survival wraparound life preserver. It was horribly cold up there so as soon as the sun set we all retreated to the relative warmth of our tents for an early night (at about 6pm). The erupting volcano sounded like a jumbo jet during takeoff so we didn't have the greatest nights sleep and after watching the sunrise the next morning we cane back down.

Luckily Scott survived with nothing more than a sore nose.

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