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Published: January 3rd 2016
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Christmas began with our Spanish school party. This was held in the school. We had a great time with tasty food and many rum cocktails. The Guatemalan teachers only needed one drink to begin the party of dancing 😊!! During the lead up to xmas we also took part in a posada. This is to remember Mary and Joseph on their journey. We walked the streets with the local community holding lanterns and singing xmas songs. At the end we knocked on a place and sang a song, the house then sang the song back to us. It was lovely, they invited us in and we were given punch and food.
Christmas is celebrated on the 24th here. We were lucky to be invited to spend this with our Guatemalan family. We started the night with dinner. After this we had lots of wine and danced around the tables....no matter what age you were you had to join in the hey,hey,hey chant!! We also visited Mindnight mass, quite a spectacular setting in the church and made us feel really christmassy. As it turned midnight the town went mental! There were firecrackers and fireworks everywhere, the sky was just gunpowder. Matt
also joined in this and was very happy with his 5p fireworks!! At midnight they then eat their christmas dinner, this included timales. Timales are banana leaves with rice, chicken, tomato and olive inside. These were pretty tasty. They also have chocolate ones which werent so tasty!!
Christmas day myself and Matt headed to a place called Earthlodge, a beautiful quiet location overlooking the mountains. This was outside of Antigua. We were so happy to have an extremely delicious Christmas dinner that evening with cocktails 😉. During our stay here we were lucky enough to have one night in the tree house. I have always wanted to stay in one and this was a real one for only 25 pound!! The views were incredible, at 4am in the mroning I woke to go to the toilet and saw lava flowing from the active volcano named Fuego.
I had such a brilliant Christmas in Guatemala, its never the same away from home but I felt so lucky to have had such a great time here! I also liked that the meaning of Christmas is not lost here, its not about who gets the best and biggest presents, splashing all
your cash. Its about remembering the meaning of christmas, eating and drinking lots, giving one meaningful gift and spending time with your community 😊.
To end what has been a brilliant year I decided to give myself a challenge and climb Volcan Acatenango! This is the 3rd largest in Central America making it 4000m above sea level! Having not climbed in ALtitude before I knew this could be a challenge. The hike was a real challenge, for the first 2 hours it was continuously up hill! I was pretty impressed that I managed to keep the pace of the 3 guys on the trip. We walked through beautiful forests and arrived above the clouds. It was amazing to see the volcanoes in the distance through the clouds. On arrival to base camp we set up our tent......this tent faced Fuego a highly active volcano, Agua and Pacaya, I could see 3 volcanoes whilst being on the top of one!!! After dinner, myself and Lori sat around a fire roasting marshmellows and watching continuous extremely loud bangs and flows of lava from Volcan Fuego. This was absolutely incredible eventhough it was around minus 1 deg!! I have never seen anything
like it. We camped opposite this volcan and throughout the night were woken up by shakes and bangs of this volcan errupting!! AMAZING!!! At 4am the guide woke us up to climb to the summit of Alcatenango. We needed our head torches due to being pitch black. This was so so so hard, ive never walked something so hard in my life! So many people gave up but I was determined to get to the top, even if I could barely breath due to altitude.......I did it though and wow what a sunrise on top of those clouds! This was by far the hardest hike I have EVER done but it was one of the best things ive ever done in my life! What a way to see out the year. For days after I felt stunned by what I had seen and feel so lucky to have experienced camping at an active volcano, words can't describe how incredible the atmosphere, noise and fire shows were but all I can say it was spectacular!! More volcano pictures to come soon 😉.
So New Years eve did not involve much alcohol. We just had a nice meal and watched the
fireworks 😊. So happy new Year everyone. I wish you a great year 😊 😊. Thank you for following my trip and I hope you are enjoying the photos and stories 😊!! Lets see what this year brings......
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