Casa Guatemala

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July 31st 2012

Published: August 1st 2012

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RosieandStevexx

Sardines in a bus!

Heading into Guatemala

After being piled into Rapiditos (mini buses), literally feeling like sardines in a tin, we arrived at Hotel Backpackers which is the accomadation given to the volunteers of Casa Guatemala. We filled out a few forms, tasted our first Guatemalan beer, Gallo and got shown our dorm before we enjoyed a nice meal looking over the waters edge at Hotel Backpackers. We were located right on the water, under the longest bridge in Central America, unfortuantley due to the amount of rain having a swim in the water wasnt advised! Early nights were in store for us all week as we had to get up, have breakfast and be ready to leave by boat for the orphanage at 730am.

Our week at the orphanage wasnt quite what we expected but very rewarding all the same. When we arrived we were given the responsibility of reorganizing the books and games room, helping out with P.E, serving lunch to the children and interacting with them during break times. We were expecting to be able to observe and maybe even help out during classes but this was not an option unfortunatley as they had a strict curiculum to stick to. But when we

Rio Dulce

The view from the bridge

did help out with P.E and library we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!The volunteering was something we are very glad we experienced and we are pleased we got to help out and hopefully helped make a difference within the community! We were not supposed to take pictures within the orphanage/school, but we managed to sneek a few!

We are now on our last night in Antigua having spent a long weekend here before jetting off to the great Lake Atitlan. Here we planned to hike Volcano Pacaya which we completed today! We set of at 6am this morning along with other travellers and headed towards the base of the volcano. Once we got there we paid our entrance fee got introduced to our guide and started to head up the black volcanic rock trail. Instead of the locals encouraging you on this 2 hour hike up, what was quite comical was that we had a trail of locals on horses yelling ´taxi taxi!!! natural taxii!!!!´obviously wanting you to feel unfit and ready to take one expensive taxi up to the top. With a few rests to take pictures of the surrounding volcanos we finally reached the top, which i must say

The surrounding view from the top!

Pacaya Volcano

although it was a short hike it was quite a steep one! The top of the volcano was just black rock and sand everywhere, it actually felt like you were on another planet! The volcano actually erupted in 2010 destroying parts of the volcano and is still active today! Unfortunatley we didnt get to see any lava but we did toast marshmellows in vents leading up to the mouth of the volcano. The views from this point were fantastic, looking over the whole of Antigua and the climate was refreshing at the high altitude. After marshmellows and lunch we had a nice stroll back down to the bottom and headed back into the town of Antigua.

We have really enoyed our 4 days in Antigua includng site seeing, shopping, a night out with local bar owners and our highlight of the stay, hiking the volcano! Tomorrow we are off to Lago Atitlan to enjoy and see a lake surrounded by yes, more volcanos!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Can you believe we are on our last 3 weeks til we return to America !!!!

See you all soon x

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