Friendly folk everywhere- Antigua, Guatemala

What a beautiful city. Antigua is set in the hills surrounded by a group of volcanoes, it's built entirely in Colonial style, and only an hour away from the dangers of Guatemala City. Despite there being many tourists, the Antiguan people are so welcoming, stopping in the street for a chat, requiring nothing in return. Such a treat.

We had the best lattes and espressos along with fabulous street food in Antigua. Tacos and tortillas were making an appearance everywhere, which was the first time we started to feel our proximity with Mexico. Lucky for us we stayed in a beautiful hostel with rooftop and free gourmet breakfast, complete with beans, roasted tomatoes and herb potatoes! Believe me this was so exciting after a year of pretty average food!

Volcanic sands, El Tunco, El Salvador

We ended up in El Salvador by accident. We'd not planned on visiting the country given all the horror stories. But we'd had some recommendations from other travellers about a surf beach town, El Tunco, close to the capital, so on our way through to Guatemala we stopped for a week to play in the waves.



It was an absolute mission to reach El Tunco, involving 5 buses and 4 taxis over 2 days with a night spent in the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. This was a rather frightening city. It seemed ok in the daylight, but as soon as the light left the sky it turned into the land of the living dead, with glue sniffers and dodgy people appearing from all directions calling out at us for money. We literally grabbed a quick bite to eat and walked speedily back to the safety of our hotel by 8pm. I hate to think what the city would be like at midnight. Lucky for us we did not have to find out as the next morning we headed to El Salvador.

Melting in Nicaragua's cities

After escaping the creepy crawlies of Isla De Ometepe, we headed straight to Granada, a beautiful colonial city a few hours north. The highlight of our time here was walking the streets and chatting to the locals as they sat in their rocking chairs in the late afternoon. Granada was hot hot hot, so doing too much in the daytime was utterly exhausting.




Like most of Nicaragua, you are never too far from a volcano, in fact there is one every 25kms or so. We'd been hoping to check out a volcano for some time but we were looking for the right one. It had to be active and not too high in altitude.....as we'd had enough of high altitude dizzines and nausea. The Masaya Volcano National Park was 45 mins away from Granada, containing 2 volcanoes and 5 craters. To save money, and have a more authentic experience, we took the local buses there and back, travelled in the back of a ute through the park and had a guide for the 2 of us. Bizarrely paying 1/3rd less than the tour with 20 tourists! Fortunately for us we had a stunningly clear evening. At sunset the sky was alive with vultures, eagles and parakeets who nest in the crater walls.


There was something truly magical about peering into the active Santiago crater as it puffed plumes of noxious sulphur dioxide into the sky, glowing red once the sky became dark. The Spaniards labelled this group of volcanoes the 'gates of hell', building a giant cross at the summit to exorcise the devil. Human skeletons found in lava tunnels support the legend that the Indigenous used to sacrifice beautiful young virgins here, by throwing them alive into the hot and furious lava to appease the goddess of fire.




Still wanting more volcano action, we headed to Laguna de Apoyo for a few days - a volcano crater lake only 30 mins away. We stayed in a locals house and due to there being very few other guests, we used the infinity pool and decking area normally dedicated exclusively for the 5 star guests. The water in the lake was deliciously warm and fresh, so many hours were spent drifting in the inner tubes and diving off the platforms that floated on the lake.




Our last week in Nicaragua was spent in Leon, another scorchingly hot city. We studied a little more Espanol and had our first homestay experience, if you can call it that, certainly not the Spanish immersion that we had hoped for. We stayed in a Doctor's home of 10 rooms, which he rented out to students. The home, was more like a chair museum - we counted over 75 chairs in the common areas! The food unfortunately was of the salty oily variety and full of carbs. Most meals were rice and spaghetti with beans or rice and potato. We could feel the kg's buildng just looking at the food.

A volcanic land - Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua

We caught a ferry across the enormous Lago de Ometepe to an island consisting of two volcanoes, one of which is still active. This is a lake in denial, behaving more like the open sea. For the hour or so trip, the waves were lashing the boat and people around us were looking a little green by the time we arrived to shore.


We jumped on the local bus and proceeded to bounce around in our seats along with the locals, listening to the Latino American tunes that we have grown so accustomed to. We spent a night in probably the nicest accommodation that we have stayed in, but with no kitchen on-site and in our impoverished backpacker way, pulled out the gas stove and self catered.

For the second and third day we moved to a hippy farm in an underdeveloped area of the island. This was the 'real' Ometepe, complete with pigs, chickens, donkeys, dogs, you name it, all living free range and strolling from house to house. Some of our time was spent in a small bar/restaurant/home to a family, where we drank a few beers whilst observing the comings and goings along the dirt road. A particular highlight was watching a local on a bike being pulled by a rope attached to a horse! Between beers, Tom also turned the establishment into a hairdressers, after spotting one of the owners with some clippers.





Reclining in the sofa-hamoc in the living room after a hard day's work. Check out the reflection!
On one of the days we hired bikes to take in the views of the volcanoes and lake and go for a dip in the springs - water renowned for its purity and ability to soften the skin and hair. It was like jumping in a fresh pool of moisturiser!




Time in the hippy farm was interesting. It was located in a beautiful spot with fabulous views of both volcanoes, and surrounded by coffee and banana plantations. The finca/farm was owned by an Italian, passionate about his organic bread and pizza nights prepared in the wood fire oven. Amusingly, pizza night brought out the rather freakish community living foreign hippies, who when asked 'where they were from', replied with quizzical expressions and replied 'from planet earth' and proceeded to discuss the environment whilst puffing on their cigarettes!

Our accommodation was a shabby little cabaña, and in true Latin American style there were lots of gaps in the walls. An attempt to cover up the gaps with bug screens was fruitless as at night the bugs were out in force. Upon trying to kill one small spider with a broom stick this resulted in uncovering a massive tarantula. We spent the next 10 minutes freaking out trying to work out how to remove this 8 legged creature as he proceeded to stare at us from the sink while simultaneously wiggling his furry legs. Finally our Italian neighbour came to our aid scaring the fella to the next floor. When finally our pulses were returning to normal, we spotted another spider, this time it was a hybrid spider-scorpion and was aggressively clenching his pincers together. After spotting 3 potentially deadly spiders in a matter of minutes, this one had to go and he was immediately squashed. Trying to then sleep in a bug infested room was hard to say the least, each time I closed by eyes I had spider visions. With only 8 foot each of wedding veil material as make-shift mosquito nets, we didn't feel particularly protected from these biting insects. Hence we were incredibly relieved when morning broke so that we could pack our bags and head back to the mainland, away from crawly bitey things!