Beautiful Antigua - Coban

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Hola... I hope all is well. Bit of catching up to do with the old blog. so much has happened since my last post!

We had just arrived at the Language school for our weeks tuition which was brillo...my Spanish is no longer limited to ten or so words, and we are learning more and more every day...the 15,000 verbs in the Spanish language are a pain in the backside but its all a learning process!

Whilst in Guatemala we didnt get up to much except for some exploring of the town and consuming lots of cake. After my 4 hours of learning per day I needed a nice snooze before heading out.

We met Betsi who was an American girl from Boston who became our buddy for the week.

Cafe sky was the highlight for me there - sitting on the roof terrace with the best view of the town, with volcanoes and jungle surrounding us, watching the sun set with cocktails in hand. As night closed in so did the clouds but I think that Antigua is blessed because we were treated to an incredible lightning storm - no rain for us though - Shorts and T-Shirts and silhouetted volcanoes lit up by the distant hurricane...We also met some of the rich elite of Guatemala who also owned a bar in Antigua that we went to for some more drinks. It tuned out to be a great night except for our return to the hostel in which some dogs came and barked at us...not much of a story except Betsi started screaming which sent Sarah screaming for no reason. Still not too much of a story but it was strange that Betsi started clawing MY arms off (leaving the dogs alone) and Sarah, choosing flight over fight as her reaction, just decided to run straight into the wall...I do wonder about her sometimes!

The next day we watched England crash and burn against Germany with some Germans...not the most fun in the world but good old England lived up to form and messed it up at the last minute.

We said goodbye to Betsi as we were bound for Coban for the evening before our bus to Lanquin the next day.

Coban is a strange place...its a kind of transit town for travellers heading up to Lanquin for the caves and limestone pools of Semuc Champey... theres not much there and it was raining so we stayed in a pretty basic hostel ran by a very wierd guy who loved singing strange ballads in his Spanish accented English at sporadic intervals all night. We ate at a local Guatemalan restaurant which cost us about 5 pounds for both of us for a big old plate of eggs and sausage, with frioles (beans - guatemalan staple food) soured cream and fried plantains and corn tortillas. We also had lots of coca-cola - it was great.

We were up early for our bus to Semuc Champey and after walking around trying to find the station, we asked a local, who sent us in completely the wrong direction. After eventually finding it, we took the 2 hour ride to Lanquin - a small town 60km away that, for the last 11km was just a small gravel path down the side of some of the steepest mountains I´ve ever seen. It was exciting though.

Lanquin and Semuc Champey shall be my next entry but derves its own post as it has been the Highlight of the trip so far!

Cheers for reading.

Steve

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