After our (late) night out in Antigua, the journey to Atitlan wasn't particularly pleasant and we'd also opted for a cheaper local bus option. However we made it without major issues and surprisingly without breaking down, which a lot of the private shuttles had even done! Lake Atitlan was a huge lake inside a series of old volcanoes and mountains. The actual crater lake was created by a historic mega volcanic explosion that left a huge crater in the earth, aro...

Our first stop in Guatemala was the city of Antigua. It's described by most as a beautiful colonial city and at various times has been a part of the changing capitals within the country. As we'd been to many colonial cities over our time in Latin America we just planned a brief stop before heading to lake Atitlan. The city was indeed one of the most beautiful we'd seen throughout the trip in Latin America. Quite small and navigable by foot, I went on a run aroun...

After leaving the Bay Islands we were to head back inland and up to Guatemala. As part of our shuttle route we had included a stop in Ruinas Copan, little did we known how good it would turn out to be! Ruinas Copan was just a few minutes from the Guatemalan border, a really quaint little town and a bit trapped in time. The people were friendly, hostel really nice and for a change we managed to get some nice local street food. The main purpose of our stop and th...

Our next stop was Honduras. We only planned a short stop there because a lot of the country (mainly the cities) is quite unstable. Many of the tourists are put off by higher rates of crime than elsewhere in Central and a lot tend to skip the country all together or head to the Caribbean Bay Islands which are very safe for tourists and backpackers. The journey was long but not too bad via a shuttle from Nicaragua. The border crossing was smooth and the ferry on t...

As most of the tourist spots we wanted to visit in Leon were closed for the Easter celebrations we decided to have a few days break from the city and head to the town of Esteli for a river/ canyoning trip! A few hours from the city but another chaotic trip on the chicken buses! The chicken buses are still the standard yellow (or other random colour) buses that were once the old school busses in the USA and now the main form of transport in Central America for th...