Antigua

This beautiful little city used to be the capital of Guatemala until half of it was demolished by an earthquake in 1717. They then moved the capital city 30km away and called it Guatemala City!


Surrounding Antigua are three volcanoes,( Volcan de Agua, Volcan de Fuego and Acatenago) the tops of which are generally shrouded in cloud, or little puffs of smoke and steam rising from the crater.

Neat cobbled streets, brightly coloured buildings, half-destroyed churches (Many of the towns cathedrals were not repaired after the earthquake and remain in ruins) and a healthy restaurant, bar and cafe culture, make Antigua the perfect place to take a break from the rapid traveling.

We plan to stop in Antigua for a few weeks to wind down, relax and learn Spanish.

We have found a very relaxed and comfortable Spanish Language School to study and stay at - Centro Linguistico Latino!

Chicken bus :)

Rum, the cause of many hours not studying!

Hitting the town with the locals ... not long after this we were made to drink a rum based drink called "Rosa de Jamaica" (they said: "you haven't been to Guatemala unless you have had this drink" ... clearly we had to try it!).... ... salsa dancing!

Semuc Champey - A Limestone Paradise ...

The road from Flores to the small town of Lanquin was one of the worst we have ever been on! The vans (stacked full of travelers, with luggage piled high on their roofs) travel in a convoy down steep rocky roads that are barely wide-enough in some areas, with chicken-buses coming around blind corners at any minute.They travel together for good reason, as there were two flat tyers on our 8hort journey south.

Lanquin is a small village in the middle of a spectacular valley. All the women wear beautifully embroidered traditional clothing, while the men wear jeans and tees.  To our surprise there were small games-arcades everywhere!

Foosball anyone?

10km from Lanquin is a unique geological formation called Semuc Champey. In this little paradise, the limestone rock has caused a river to split in two, with part of the river running underground through caves, and part of the river trickling idly over the surface.

We swam for hours inside a small cave which emerged from the mountains perpendicular to the river, each of us holding a candle ... climbing up internal waterfalls into utter darkness with just a rope and some trust ... jumping off internal cliffs into deeper pools inside the cave network ... swimming past huge stalactites and stalagmites ... and frequently helping someone to relight their drenched candle after they swam clumsily along ...

One of the BEST experiences we have had so far!!!

The surface-river at Semuc Champey, forms terraced lagoons to swim lazily in...

Where the river flows underground.

Our guide also took us down through the terraced pools to where the underground river re-emerges at a waterfall which reunites the two. Here we climbed down the face of the waterfall by a dubious, slippery ladder, in order to reach the terrace which separates the underground and overground rivers.  From this vantage point inside a cave above the place where the underground river emerges you truely understand the force of the water flowing past violently over the edge of the cliff.

Our guide had a great time getting us to slide down small, bumpy, naturally made, moss-covered rock slides from one pool to the next!

Tikal!!

Tikal!  This place and surrounding rainforest is spectacular in a way that I cannot describe.  Wildlife around every corner, more than 3000 ruined temples and buildings over an area of nearly 2000 hectares.  There is no need to be surrounded by tourists here due to the sheer scale of the reserve.  Hummingbirds, aguti's, coati's/pizote's, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, toucans, toucanets, to name a few.

The ruins of tikal are so vast and detailed that several of the large temples clearly involved the excavation of entire hills.

The best representation of Myan architecture we have seen by a long shot.

Large matriarchal groups of Pizotes roam the forest foraging and take little notice of passing tourists.

An aguti ... kind of like a large skitty ginger guinea-pig ...

One of the many ruins that we had all to ourselves to explore.

The grand plaza of Tikal - each temple towering above the surrounding jungle.

Isla de Flores, Guatemala

Isla de Flores is a small island on Lake Peten Itza. Only 400m wide, this tiny island is almost entirely dedicated to tourism. Despite that, we were able to find cheap accommodation, food and beers with a view of the sunset over the lake.

A Guatemalan school bus!!!