It was a beautiful drive from El Salvador to Guatemala, just as we came through the border the sun was setting and the scenery of lush jungle was awesome. We pulled into Antigua in the dark and headed straight to OX Hostel as we had arranged to do the overnight Acatanago Hike through their OX Expedition company.
The next day we spent making sure we had everything we needed (lots of snacks!) and having a general look around Antigua, which is our favourite colonial town we have been to so far.
The Acatanago overnight ‘double whammy’ expedition consists of a 6 hour hike up volcano Acatanago (13,044ft) which in itself was a hard trek, here we set up base camp with a view of Volcano Fuego.
A few of us opted to do the hike to Volcano Fuego summit (12,342ft) to watch the sunset while seeing it erupting. This was killer after hiking all day as we had to race to catch the sunset and it was another hour and a bit uphill. Once we got to the ridge of Fuego we pulled on some warm clothes and watched the sunset with it erupting right next to us- it was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had and worth every moment of pain! After the sun went down we had to hike back to base camp in the dark, inhale some much needed pasta and red wine by the fire and then jump into our sleeping bags for some rough uncomfortable sleep before our 3:30am wake up call to get to the very summit of Acatanago for sunrise.
It felt like we had just closed our eyes when we were woken up for our next hour hike, this was perhaps the hardest as we were pretty buggered from the day before and the terrain was very unforgiving, just rubble so it was two steps forward one slide back the whole way up.
Made it to the top and it was FREEZING! The coldest I have ever been in my life!! Sunrise was beautiful, then Dom and the boys did the summit challenge where they had to run around the crater in under the record 3mins 20secs. However with only 40% use of your lungs because of the altitude its pretty tough going and none of them made it- Dom came in at 3:55-close!
We had brekky, packed up and then started our decent down- couldn’t count how many times we bailed!
We pulled into our hostel and the first thing we did was have a shower, it was amazing to feel clean after two days of hiking! We stayed at Yellow House and it was the nicest hostel we have stayed in our whole trip. They clean it 24/7 and it has a lovely homely vibe with great staff and an awesome rooftop courtyard with a view of the surrounding volcanoes.
We scrubbed up then hit the town for a few well earned drinks!
After cruising the markets in Antigua for a couple of days we caught a bus to Lake Atitlan, a massive lake with little towns set around it. We stayed in San Marcos which is known as the most alternative and hippie place around but we didn’t quite realise how extreme it was until we got there!! Lets just say there was a lot of body hair, dirty bare feet and awkwardly long hugs.
We spent a couple of days just cruising by the lake, there was a 7m high jump off point set around the bay and it was a nice spot to park up and spend the afternoon.
Ems and I went to a yoga class which was…different to any I have done before! From San Marcos we all went back to Antigua for one night and then on to El Salvador for seven days.
After saying goodbye to Tommy and Ems in El Salvador, Dom and I got a shuttle back to Antigua and spent a day (we couldn’t stay away we loved it there!) before we flew to Flores, Tikal to check out the ancient Mayan ruins.
We decided to do the 4am trek where you walk in before the sun comes up and climb to the top of one of the ruins to listen to the jungle wake up with sunrise, the roar of the howler monkey’s was crazy!
The next morning we were on our way to Mexico to catch our flight from Cancun to New Delhi. Our bus ride was a good lesson why you should be very careful when booking a bus/shuttle online in Latin America. According to the website we were paying for a 12 seater, air-conditioned new Toyota Hiace shuttle to take us to Cancun - a trip that was advertised to take 7 hours and would involve crossing through Belize en-route. However what arrived to pick us up in the morning was a 20 year old 35 seater Toyota Coaster with no air conditioning, a badly cracked/shattered windscreen and small bench seats on each side of the aisle that could barely fit two people! The “direct trip” to Cancun included a stop off in Belize City and ended up taking 12 hours to get to Cancun. After checking in to the Ibis and two bottles of wine later we were celebrating our last night in Latin America, not quite ready to leave but on to the next stage of our trip.. India!