Copan (Honduras) to Panajachel (Guatemala)

Copan gave us our first glimpse of the Maya world, the people and the archaeological sites. The Copan ruins were quite impressive, lots of carvings of late Kings in animated costume and big eagles reminding me of Cities of Gold (opening clip here).

and some of me frolicking around...

Here's Hannah dressed as Smoke Jaguar and me as Smoke Shell

Another painless border crossing, my first tamale and then we were in Antigua. A fine colonial town with cobbled streets and pastel colours.

Pimp my bus, the Guatemalans have the coolest chicken buses

Decided we were due some exercise and so made our way up Volcan Pacaya, 2552m, but more importantly active. On the climb up I thought we were going to be cursed by the volcano cloud curse that seems to have been following me recently but as the evening cooled the high level clouds dissipated and we were given fine views of other volcanoes peaking through the cloud level and were able to stand as close to the lava as was physically possible, which due to heat was only about 2 metres before it felt like your skin was singeing. And check out this dude we saw on the way up , mini cowboy boots and all.

Some of us getting singed.

Onwards and upwards to Lake Atitlan , first staying at the lakeside town of San Pedro in a hotel with nice views. The curse now being lifted we decided to climb another volcano this time Volcan San Pedro which including breaks we made it from 1700ish metres to 3020 metres in 3 hours and were rewarded with amazing views of the lake.

Me and Hannah at the top.

The following day we headed off to a local market to see how the Tz'utuhil Maya folk do business which was frenzied, lots of colours, avocados with the tackiest christmas tree in the world ever (big claim TM).

A short cruise away and we were in San Marcos and which it quickly became evident that it is almost a hippy theme park with spiritual healing, alternative therapies, meditation and yoga offered on every corner and half the population has dreadlocks. The sign at our hostel reads ”strictly no drumming“, and whilst walking down one of the narrow paths I overheard a girl say “today I am the crystal fairy, put your hand in my pocket and take a crystal, as they're broken I recommend that you return them to the ground from where they were born”. But I'm not all cynical I did get involved in some mediation, and jumped of a cliff into the lake.

We were surrounded by avocados here, falling from the trees, on every plate, streets filled ready to create truck loads and there are loads of types too, although not all edible check out the mini one.

Here's a shot of our room in a typical living out of a bag way, I'm so looking forward to not packing again, and if you ever wondered why the internet is slow here in Latin America check out the local exchange.

And Christmas isn't passing us by, Catholicism is strong thanks to the old conquistadors...

A night and some shopping in Panajachel. And then we opted for the scenic route to Coban, even though this would possibly invlove 5 buses and 9.5hrs on rough roads. After 3.5hrs we had covered 5.5hrs worth of road thanks to the roads having been surfaced since our book was written, however, things took a turn for the worse at the town of Uspantan. We had hoped to get a meal here but the driver of the bus that was waiting when we arrived told us that there was a problem with the road and therefore recommended going now, usually this sort of thing is just a line to get your business, but since he was telling the locals the same I figured it probably made sense to trust this one. So we jump into his van, the size of a vw camper, with Hannah in the back row with 4 adults and 2 kids and me a row in front with only half a seat. In total their were 20 adults and 6 children in the van, including the driver, with 2 cowboys on top looking after the baggage which seemed would even have exceeded a per person transatlantic luggage allowance. An hour and a half later and the bus comes to an abrupt stop from where we can clearly see the road up ahead is closed due to a landslide, and now we find out that this is the part the bus driver failed to tell us. Leaving the bus it becomes aparent that it is even unsafe to walk the road route, so we were forced to hike. After making a group, off we left heading down into the valley with all our luggage and knowing that the hike up was gonna be a bitch as I'm pretty sure we dropped at least 300m and our end point was higher than the start. And Hannah was in flip flops for the first half as we needed to stick with the group and had to wait for break point to pull out her shoes. After 15mins of climbing there was another landslide, luckily far enough away not to be a danger but what we were climbing was steep and deforested. So we do finally make it to the end, but an hour longer than the 30mins quoted, and up ahead I see one of the men in the group flashing around a handgun. Thankfully my fears of highway robbery was just paranoia, but a good steak and a bottle of wine was consumed in celebration of being alive.
Cheers!

Tx

Since it's the season of giving here's a parting gift...looks better in fast forward though