What can possibly be good enough to justify getting up at 4am to get on a minibus??? An acient Mayan city in Tikal, Guatemala - thats what! 6 (hot & sweaty) hours walking around amazing, eerie, pyramid-type temples, surrounded by lush green jungle…….
Semuc Champay has it all; Jungle, natural turquoise swimming pools in the middle of a valley, cabanas with hammocks, animals as an alarm clock, and all we had to do was take 1 very bumpy, very long mini bus ride, followed by a stand up ride in the back of a pick up…but well, well worth it…
For a small town, Antigua has more than its fair share of churches. Most are crumbling, heaps of brick and stone…in a nice way! This one had a direct view, right up to the big man in the sky! no roof! also had a very spooky dungeon-type-thing, scary! but cool shadows!!
Sauna anyone? We have room for 6 more peeps…..
Chilling lakeside in Lago Atitlan for a few days….a lot of hammock sitting, combined with reading….not much else to do here whatsoever…..
Our blog is called 2leftfeet, but given how many things we have managed to kick and hurt our feet, we may rename it 2hurtfeet…these latest ones were the result of uneven pavements in Antigua, Guatemala and kicking some submerged rocks whilst learning to surf in El Salvador….
Breakfast, Guatemala style….freshly ground coffee, freshly baked pastries….all eaten under the eye of 3 active volcanoes…
We love coffee…yep…we LOVE coffee and over the past few months we have drank our fair share of some really really crap attempts at coffee…so when we arrive in Guatemala, home to some amazing coffee we had to take ourselves on a ‘coffee tour’. We forked out more than a cup of coffee on this little tour, just outside Antigua but it was well worth it. We had no idea so much labour and love goes into each of those little cups of coffee we consume…such a long process involving picking, drying, sorting (by machine and hand), rinsing, more sorting, and roasting. We then got to try a lovely cup of coffee at the end - ummm yum….now we love coffee even more!
We have spent quite a bit of time here in Antigua, Guatemala. A beautiful town filled with busy markets, yummy street food (called Papusas), crumbling buildings and surrounded by volcanoes! (one of which is active!). It was a bit of a shock how American-ised it is here - Burger King, Mc’ers, peanut butter, take away coffee and huge 4x4’s driving around…but then there are beautiful ladies walking around in traditional dress and local markets with mountains of fresh fruit and veg too. Its easy to see why people come here and get stuck! Ali took some spanish lessons, I did some shopping (which is by far the best in the whole 7 months we have been away!) and we generally enjoyed drinking fresh Guatemalan coffee and home made cakes for breakie every day!
