Blogs from Western Highlands, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 4

Distance driven today: 165 miles / 266 km Cumulative distance driven: 6,292 miles / 10,126 km Today’s trip: San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico to Huehuetenango, Guatemala Border crossings: 1 In the morning we left San Cristóbal, in Chiapas Mexico, and both of us felt that we could have easily spent at least three more days exploring the city, eating our way through various restaurants, coffee places, and generally walking around the pedestrian streets. However, it was time to move on south, and so we started riding towards the Guatemalan border. We drove through a multitude of indigenous villages, and descended close to 1,500m/5,000ft over the next hour. As the temperature rose significantly, we had to make several hydration and clothing “easing” stops. Just before 2pm we reached the Guatemalan border, in a rather small and ... read more

Crossing the border from Mexico to Guatemala was an experience! The plan on arriving in San Cristobal was book a bus to the border and work it out from there. After the ease of traveling around Mexico I guess I didn't figure that the border town in Guatemala wouldn't have a ticket office or information at the bus station, luckily a chicken bus was about to leave when we arrived, without a clear destination or even a clear understanding of the destination of the bus we embarked on a journey that would cover 160km in 6hrs on two buses to arrive at 10pm at a bus 'station' (i.e just a bunch of buses parked just outside town) as we disembarked the bus one of the four schechy men turned the overhead lights off, we asked ... read more

From Lanquin I took a shuttle to Antigua and stopped there for a night before heading to Xela, which I took a chicken bus. Xela is the second biggest city in Guatemala and is famed by tourists for its hiking and Spanish Schools. People usually come here longer term To do Spanish lessons and stay with host families. Xela had really good vibes and felt really safe. It is set in the middle of the western highlands and has the culture of Antigua but the more modern feeling of a Guatemalan city. In other ways, it's just seemed like a more mature, less touristy Antigua and doesn't have some of the colonial feel surrounding it. I stayed in the Black Cat hostel near to the Parque Central for 2 nights. This was a nice hostel which ... read more

We found food in San Pedro to be very reasonably priced. There are definitely a full range of prices to be had but we were very satisfied with the fare in the 30GTQ to 60GTQ price range, less for the street vendors. A couple of our favourite places were 'Idea Connections' (on the way to the Santiago dock) near our Spanish school where Ashley ate drool inducing pan au chocolates everyday during the school break, and 'd'Juice Girls' which made a huge variety of licuados, smoothies, and juices for on the cheap (and they were the size of a fishbowl). Friday nights we hit up Hostel Fe for quiz nights and for the week that we were in school we would partake in 'Conversation Club' at our school in the evenings for 45min. Spanish School was ... read more

While in Quetzaltenango (Xela) we weren't really sure what to do. It seemed like a good place to cross the border to, but we hadn't really done any research; and neither had anyone we traveled with. It was a city: big and busy. We wandered on our first day, as we often do, looking for interesting things: markets, Spanish schools, a hat for Dan. We had good luck on the first two, not so good on the last one. Upon recommendation from another traveler we looked into Celas Maya Spanish school and it seemed really good. Lots of activities in the afternoon to practice Spanish and get a better feel for Xela. They went on excursions to textile cooperatives, coffee plantations, the Fuentes Georginas (more below), and many other things you might not be able to ... read more