Lake Atitlan and Lanquin

Hi again...
it seems like ages (again!) since we wrote, but our days are just so action-packed that time flies by! It's a hard life...

So, after Rob last wrote we bid farewell to our host family in Antigua and took a long bus ride to Lake Atitlan. Consequences of the mudslides were evident in the hills with parts of the road having collapsed completely due to the hillside having collapsed underneath them. To get the last few kilometres to Panajachel we had to get off the big coach and were piled on (standing) to the back of a pick-up truck, yes a pick-up truck to go across a kind of make-shift bridge (which was in place of the road that collapsed) that the coach would have been too big and heavy for. Slightly unnerving! Once we made it to the jetty to get across to our destination, we saw that half of that had collapsed too...

Anyway, we made it to Santa Cruz safely on a ‘lancha’ and our hostel was luckily right in front of us when we arrived. Great place, and we spent a very relaxed few days there. Our first night was the ‘legendary’ BarBQ, the legendary bit being that you had to dress in drag... we’ll post the pics asap, Rob looking ravishing though.
We walked to a nearby town, San Marcos (Gwen!). This took a while, and took us through to small villages on the way. Again, the devastation from the hurricane and consequent mudslides was pretty awful. Seems that people don’t have much to do but wait for help, and these villages are only accessible by boat or foot which doesn’t help. Hardly any tourists about due to the mudslides and at the time another hurricane was on its way...
Other than that I don’t think we did much, but the place we stayed was fantastic and the lake extremely beautiful. We didn’t have electricity or hot water but that made it even more fun!

On Tuesday we spent all day on another very long bus ride (total of about 10 hours) via Antigua and Guatemala City to Coban, where we stayed for the night and got up first thing the next morning to get the bus to Lanquin. The following day we went to Semuc Champey (Gwen again!), a natural limestone bridge of turquoise pools and waterfalls, with a river running underneath. Stunning, just like paradise. But the best part of that day was the caves we went to first. Stripped down to our swimming things and were each handed a candle (our only light) before we proceeded to swim though pools, climb up and down ladders, jump into pools and climb through a very small hole in these amazing caves. A fantastic experience, probably my favourite so far.

After another few relaxing days we decided it was time to move on, and this morning got the bus back to Coban and up here to Flores. Was absolutely boiling when we arrived and then proceeded to bucket down with rain – I don’t think I have ever seen so much rain in so little time. But it’s ok, coz it’s kind of an island so hopefully doesn’t flood!

We will take a trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal tomorrow before taking a bus to Belize on Monday. Phew!

Oh, and to answer a much-asked question, yes I am using the hairdryer when electricity is available, cheers Em!