Good Times in Guatemala

After a 5 hour bus ride through the mountains and beautiful scenery we arrived in Antigua, an amazing colonial city only 20kms from Guatemala City. Crossing the border from Honduras was easy, the only disappointment being the fact that we didn`t get a Guatemala entry stamp or a Honduras exit stamp in our passports. Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are the CA4 group which means that you only get one entry and exit stamp throughout the CA4 not when you move from country to country.

Just as luck would have it we had a wander and found Reilly´s - an Irish pub. To top it off they have a quiz each Sunday - well we couldn't refuse really could we! The place was packed and the atmosphere was great. The quiz was tricky to say the least, but Jenny's Puppies came in 5th, including a 100% correct round, for which we were rewarded with B52 shots. To say the questions were random was an understatement - can you name the 4 moons of Jupiter???

We had some assistance from Chuck, an American in his 40's who was in Antigua to study Spanish for a few weeks. We got on well until the conversation turned to the US election, which quite frankly we couldn't escape. Well Chuck turned out to be one totally self centred guy - in his opinion the US government should provide only the most basic of free services to its people, not including health care, education or social welfare as people should pay for things themselves and why should he pay taxes for those things for other people!! To a die hard socialist like Mr B this was horrific. The conversation ended rather abruptly and Chuck left the building. We had another beer!

Thankfully this didn't spoil our evening and a procession celebrating 'Day of the Dead' passed the pub, complete with bands and floats with huge coffins on. The 'Day of the Dead' is a Central American festival when people celebrate the lives of their deceased family and friends. They visit their graves and basically have a bit of a party.

We were also treated to a lone piper in the pub, serenading his daughter and future son in law's wedding. He was however a yank and despite our requests he couldn't manage a rendition of Flower of Scotland for us.

A 'must do' trip from Antigua is a hike up Volcan Pacaya which I looked forward to like a hole in the head as I am not particularly fond of hiking at altitude. The hike began at 4pm in order to get to the summit for sunset and lave viewing in the dark. Mother nature intervened on the sunset front and we climbed up through the cloud. Eventually we were just metres from red hot rocks.

We managed to find our way up (and our way down in the dark) despite the best efforts of our guide who shouldn't have a job quite frankly. Whilst Miss J struggled uphill, there was an older woman in our group whose legs didn't do down, and we helped her literally step by step back down the volcano at times in the pitch black with our head torches whilst the guide was nowhere to be seen. The first beer at the bottom didn't touch the sides.