After having woken up at 2.00am in Washington in order to make our early flight to Guatemala (via Miami), we arrived in Guatemala City completely disoriented and exhausted. It seemed as if the whole of Guatemala City was at the airport and if we hadn't been met by someone we may have turned around and gone home right then! We were taken back to a little bed and breakfast not too far from the airport and we spent most of our first afternoon in Guatemala sleeping. The following morning we got up early again and were put on a bus headed to Xela. The trip took 5 hrs and was all of 210km but at least the trip offered some interesting sites and was a good first glimpse of life in Guatemala. We arrived in Xela ... read more

This was it! The moment we had been waiting for - we’d saved our hard earned cash, dreamt about it for years and Al had even put together a few gant charts of our progress. Lara had spent years reading guidebooks and planning possible routes and talking incessantly about which Spanish school we should be going to, whether we should we spend 3 or 4 days in this place, and discussing whether Galapagos would be worth going to or if it would be too expensive. We were ready....we wanted to be on our way to a life of sipping cocktails in hammocks tied between palm trees. But its never quite that easy. After frantically packing up our apartment of 4 1/2 years, and pretty much only getting about two-thirds through it we had to give up ... read more