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Published: September 29th 2006
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The magic bus
Slightly more colourful than the buses grandad used to drive!! But not nearly as reliable!! We saw both extremes of Guatemala´s bus network travelling down from Flores to Antigua: the typical air conditioned coach for the first (and longer) potion of the journey. We travelled with a very cool Swiss couple, Paulo & Anja. It was doubly good to have a few of us together when we had to change buses in Guatemala City as we had not heard good things about it from either locals or tourists so quickly hopped in a taxi across town to get on the other extreme of Guatemalan public transport, the chicken bus.
Chicken buses are so called because of the way the people get crammed in like livestock: sitting 3 people on seats made for two and having people lining the aisle thats barely wide enough to walk down. These buses also typically have a conductor, who clambers over people to get through the bus and take peoples fares and hangs out the front door of the bus shouting its destination at anyone who looks like they need to go somewhere. He´s also responsible for peoples´ luggage and was quite often on top of the moving bus, as it left the stop, still securing things to the roof!!
The chicken bus ride was only about an hour from GC to Antigua and our conductor had grabbed all our bags and chucked them on top of his bus before they had barely touched the ground out of the taxi! We ended up having to run after him as we were still trying to get out of our taxi and pay the driver! The ride was a little cramped but was much more sociable thn the coach with people saying good morning to you (before they pretty much sat on your lap!!) The buses themselves were also a lot more cheerful than the average coach, painted loads of bright colours and with lots of cool chrome trim. They looked kind of like the magic bus for anyone who remembers that kid´s book!!
On arrival in Antigua we were greeted by one of the locals who very kindly showed us round a few local hotels and also recommended us a Spanish school: I think there are a lot of businesses owned by foreigners in Antigua so the locals have grouped together to try and encourage tourists to their places, which is fair enough. Our hotel was nice and there were
The Volcanic Cows
We thought we'd use the photo of the white one!! rooms for us and our Swiss friends. We signed up with the Spanish school we were recommended that afternoon as the director seemed very serious about his spanish and promised us "we would speak excellent Spanish" after studying with them. He also recommended a rather unusual cure for Tash´s many mossie bites: Vicks Vapour Rub! This has turned out to be the best cure we have been recommended, Tash is still getting bitten so I think Vick´s will do well out of us!!
We passed the rest of the afternoon looking round the market, only window shopping this time, which was pretty difficult with everyone trying their hardest to sell you their wares! We earmarked a few things to go back later on the week.
Volcan Pacaya
On our second day in the afternoon we organised to visit one of the volcanos that surround Antigua. We had the option of going during the day but we had heard that it was particularly good at night when you could see the lava of this active volcan glowing in the dark. We left Antigua about 5ish to drive up to the village where you started the climb from. There was
no easing into it as the slope was steep right from the start, a couple of people from our group got a bit left behind which made quite hard work for our guide having to run between the two halves of his group!
We had a couple of stops on the way up to give our legs a break and take in the view. The first was a view out over a lake with what looked like a big plume of white smoke coming up over the trees. We later found out that this was a Geothermal powerstation and that the smoke was actually steam, which made the view slightly more pleasing!! Our second stop was just before the sun went down looking out across a different valley between the volcanos then from here we made our way up to the lava fields nearer the top of the volcano.
Despite our hour and a half walk we were still not that close to the summit of the volcano, but our guide said that this was about as safe as it was possible to go. The landscape changed very suddenly fom leafy green to black dust with sparse vegetation
The red mist part 1
We put these both on because the monitor we're looking at is crap and we can't tell which one is better!! and what looked like the burrows of those giant worm things from Tremors!! The giant burrow-like-things were the solidified lava flows that had (almost) cooled off. We went over to the first one we saw and it was still pretty warm, but not glowing or anything. We carried on walking up and crossed over another lava flow, on the otherside the landscape was pretty much entirely black and you could see the orange glow of nearby lava and the cone of the volcano glowing red in the clouds as the sun had gone down. Our guide pointed us in the direction of one of the orange glowing areas and we climbed over some of the crumbly volcanic rock and could stand about a meter away from the red hot rocks. We only stayed for about 15 minutes watching the really really hot rocks melting and falling down the hillside because where we were standing also had molten rock underneath and it felt like our shoes might start to melt if we stayed for too much longer!!
Whilst we were waiting in the dark for our guide to come back Tash noticed that we had been joined near the lava
The red mist part 2
We put these both on because the monitor we're looking at is crap and we can't tell which one is better!! by some cows and proceeded to chase them round in the dark trying to take a picture. After several attempts trying to photograph a black cow, on the black mountain, in the dark with limited sucess she realised that the white cow might be more photogenic! When our guide came back he informed us that the cows like to come up the volcano at night because its nice and warm. Makes sense really!
The walk back down was much quicker then on the way up: 40 minutes compared to 1 1/2 hours and we were soon back in Antigua in time to get some sleep before our first day at school!
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