Chichi - Antigua - Copan Ruinas

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Hi everyone,

First of all massive apologies for not writing anything in ages, between bad computers and major lack of places with internet recently we have struggled. Anyway, we left Chichi on the Friday morning and headed for Antigua, where we found a really cool little hostel called Posada Ruiz 2 that had a lot of dogs and hippies that looked like they'd been there since the beginning of time. Having not really made any plans, we thought we would check out potential tours to the vocanoes and managed to get one leaving the following morning at 6 to visit Volcan Pacaya. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get there and as soon as we got out of the minibus we were ambushed by children selling hiking sticks and men trying to sell "taxi horse", which is pretty self-explanatory. We had a crazy guide who let us run down the side of the volcano and finally reached the lava after about 1 1/2 hours walking. I knew we were going to get close to the lava but we could literally poke it with a stick and some kid cooked marshmallows on it. We were fortune enough to be the first to reach the top, but within half an hour about 20 other tourists had scrambled up and were trying to photograph it, etc and it was quite suprising that no one fell in (health and safety isn't exactly top priority iver here). The whole experience was fantastic though and the walk down a lot less strenuous! That evening there was a lot going on in the city centre as it was the start of the Xmas celebrations. All the lights were fantastic and there were carols being sung by a brilliant group with Spanish guitars and a brass ochestra that, despite being very out of tune, had a lot of character. Antigua is a really spectacular city, though it feel far more European and is clearly far wealthier than most of the regions we have visisted so far.

The following day we set off to Guatemala City bright and early to head to the Honduran border. We had heard that there was a shuttle bus leaving at lunch time that went directly to Copan (takes about 6 hours) for the same price but we decided we would set off there and then. Bit of a mistake! Changing buses in Guate was quite stressful and it took about 4 1/2 hours just to get from there to the next place where we still had to jump in a mininbus to the border! By the time we reached there we had about 2 dollars left each but some friendly locals still let us on the minibus! We finally crossed the border at 6.10 pm (having left Antigua at 9am) and had to hitch a ride to Copan as buses had stopped running. Fortunately a school bus full of youn musical artists passed by and let us jump on board with them no charge! Copan was really beautiful though by the time we arrived we needed our beds.

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