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Published: July 18th 2010
As I'm now a few days from leaving Guatemala for Honduras, I thought I'd give an update and a few pictures - the scenery has been amazing, much more so than I expected.
So, flew into Guatemala City airport on Tuesday and due to the general opinion that Guatemala City is not a place you want to go, I planned to go straight to Antigua, a small colonial town 45 miles away. However, due to delays leaving Dallas I arrived too late and the buses to Antigua had stopped. Luckily two people I met on the plane were part of a tour and I paid their driver and got a lift to Antigua.
Antigua is a really nice, small town surrounded by mountainous scenery. The weather was great, and I spent the morning finding my way around and seeing the sights - a cathedral and a central park being the main ones. Then in the afternoon I went on a hike up Pacaya Volcano, which is near to Antigua. Took about an hour to climb to the top of a hill next to the Volcano - its still very active so you cant climb the actual volcano, the last big eruption
happened in May, damaging the houses nearby, and killing one journalist... luckily there was no activity the day we went up. Because of the recent eruption, the place was lifeless, grey ash covered the ground and all the trees were stripped of their leaves. Still, good views of the volcano and the nearby lake so it was worth it.
On day 3 I took a bus at 8am to a town called San Pedro La Laguna on the shore of the incredible Lake Atitlan in the Western Highlands. As the journey went on the scenery got more impressive, and when we first saw the lake it was amazing how huge it was. When the weather is good it looks amazing. It tends to be hot here until 2 or 3pm and then rain heavily for three hours, then clear up again. Got a really nice hotel room, much better value then Antigua, right near the lake. The next morning at 6am we set off in the sunshine to climb San Pedro Volcano, 3020m. This one we were on foot all the way up it from 1500m at the lake. We started off on a road, then up through maize plantations,
the into pretty dense rainforest up the volcano. It was very steep in places and I found it a really difficult trek because I'm pretty unfit, but eventually got up to the top at 9am. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, the view was just incredible and combined with how difficult I found it to get to the top, I was seriously blown away. We sat up in the blazing sunshine recuperating and taking it all in for an hour, and after that the descent took about an hour and a half. All in all an amazing experience. That afternoon I'd planned to take a boat across to a town on the other side of the river with a dutch guy from the trek, but I was completely whacked from the trek and slept most of the afternoon. I'm staying in a hotel at the mo with two other guys from England and last night we went out to a few bars around town, and we met plenty of other people, westerners and locals.
It's absolutely fantastic for my spanish here because not many people speak English so you have to speak spanish and
my confidence is increasing every day. The guide on the trek didnt speak any english but we still talked a lot. I'm really loving it so far.
Tomorrow I'm planning to take a bus back to Antigua and then a bus to Copan in Honduras, and then do a diving course on one of the islands north of the country which I'm really looking forward to. Then the plan is to go up into Belize, over to a Mayan ruins site called Tikal in Northern Guatemala and then on up to see Uncle Andrew in Playa Del Carmen in Mexico. I'll update when there's more to tell!!
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Toby Greene
non-member comment
WOW!
Hi Will, Great pictures, glad you are having a good time! love xxxxx Toby