Our bus to Guatemala was meant to leave at 2:30am and go straight through without changing, arriving at 6:30pm to Guatemala City, from where we could catch a taxi to Antigua. Guatemala City is pretty dangerous and we wanted to spend as little time there as possible. What actually happened was the bus didn't leave until 3:15am, we had really slow border crossings (especially into Honduras - and we only spent 4 hours there!), we changed buses in San Salvador and had to wait for 2 hours there and arrived into Guatemala City at 10:30pm at night. Luckily the security guard was really helpful and organised us a bus company authorised taxi that took us to Antigua without any trouble but it was a long and stressful trip.
On Tuesday we walked around the town looking at the beautiful old buildings and churches. Some only have the facade left and are just ruins inside, which looks very cool. We organised a trip to Lake Atitlan for the next day.
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| Building on the main plaza |
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| Arco de Santa Catalina |
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| Iglesia de la Merced |
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| La Merced from the front |
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| Arco de Santa Catalina from the other side |
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| Outside of Las Capuchinas |
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| Old front of las Capuchinas |
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| Inside the chapel |
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| Main courtyard |
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| Fountain in las Capuchinas |
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| Lovely gardens |
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| The cells |
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| Garden and main part of convent |
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| Domes in the chapel |
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| Another beautiful ruined building |
Lake Atitlan is a lake situated in the caldera of a really old volcano, with new volcanos surrounding it. It is incredible beautiful. We stayed at an ecolodge on the shores of the lake at Santa Cruz and had a chilled afternoon playing darts and pool.
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| Volcano and lake by night |
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| Volcano and lake by day |
The next morning we got up early and went kayaking in the lake to San Marcos, where we had breakfast, jumped off a huge platform and bought some artesanías. We walked back to Santa Cruz but the region is known for armed robberies so it wasn't the most relaxing walk ever. We packed up our stuff, caught a ferry back to Panajachel and a minibus back to Antigua.
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| Kitty in the kayak |
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| Lawrie jumping off the platform |
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| Flying high with a volcano background |
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| A different perspective. |
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| Lawrie didn't trust his flipping skills from 8.5m |
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| Fisherman enjoying the show. |
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| Farmland on the walk back |
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| This hotels decks are now underwater. |
The highlight of our time around Antigua was the overnight trip to Volcan Pacaya. We left Antigua at 2pm on the Friday and hiked for an hour and a half up to our campsite. We left our stuff and walked up to the lava fields. Volcan Pacaya used to have rivers of lava flowing down its sides but exploded in the beginning of 2010 and the lava is no longer there. There are still heat vents on the sides and smoke coming from the top. We roasted marshmallows on the heat vents - volcano roasting is definitely the optimal method for cooking marshmallows. We then pulled up a seat near a heat vent - hmmm, toasty - opened the box wine and watched the sun go down behind Volcanes Fuego, Acatenango and Agua. Just amazing. Just as we thought that it couldn't get any better we saw Fuego belch lava from the top. Back at the campsite we had dinner, finished off our Flor de Caña (awesome Nicaraguan rum) and went to bed.
The next morning we spent some more time on the volcano, hiked down and went back to Antigua.
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| Volcan Agua |
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| Life here is returning, it's much greener than before the eruption. |
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| Looking at Pacayas blown out cone. |
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| Around our camp site. |
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| Us backed by volcanoes |
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| Lawrie on the old lava field |
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| The volcanoes pet dogs, enjoying marshmallows |
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| The heat vent, SERIOUSLY hot... |
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| Kitty enjoying the tasty results |
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| They were very tasty |
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| Lucky, this one almost got away |
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| Group photo before sunset |
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| Just before Fuego (left) belched some lava |
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| Ghosting |
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| A beautiful morning view. |
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| A flash of gold drew our attention to this guy. |
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