¡Buenas dias! We're in full Spanish mode now, having had our first few lessons back at school. Hmm, seems this travelling lark doesn't necessarily get your grey matter in the shape it should be for intensive 3.5 hour sessions of one on one Castellano. But it is a good thing; Guatelmalan Spanish is lot slower and clearer than all the 'thhhhh-ing' and 'kkkcccchh-ing' I encountered trying to learn from a Vallencian. Claire & I now invite each other to perform ...

Hi All, less of an essay this time... maybe. We´ve changed our plans slightly and are leaving Antigua for Lake Atilan and the highlands tomorrow. Not because we don´t like it here, it´s beautiful, but because we´re going to finish off Guatemala before returning to Antigua for a week´s intensive Spanish course... get ourselves proper fluent and all. Not that we haven´t been able to procure anything, we just thought we should take the opportunity and hav...

Quick update from the Mayan mountains, just outside a town called Lanquin. Well, we´ve climbed out the jungle and have almost stopped sweating. Don´t get me wrong, the woolies haven´t exactly come out and cold showers are still very muich the order of the day, but it´s a lot more pleasant up here. And we´ve even seen rain. Only a short burst, but when it rains in Guatemala, it means it - dinner was downhill last night and we had to wade there with water ...

Belizean bikes have no brakes. The Guatemalans only seem to ride mountain bikes. I´m not sure how much you can tell about a country by it´s 2 wheeled transport but the pace of life in Belize doesn´t necessitate reaching a speed that would require brakes whereas Guatemala definitely presents a more off-road challenge...For us, this manifested itself less than a hundred metres into Guatemala (last Thursday). Having crossed the border and had to bribe the immi...

Belizean bikes have no brakes. The Guatemalans only seem to ride mountain bikes. I´m not sure how much you can tell about a country by it´s 2 wheeled transport but the pace of life in Belize doesn´t necessitate reaching a speed that would require brakes whereas Guatemala definitely presents a more off-road challenge...For us, this manifested itself less than a hundred metres into Guatemala (last Thursday). Having crossed the border and had to bribe the immigra...