So after being so tired yesterday I zonked out at 8pm, I decided to get up at 3:30 this morning... which suprisingly wasn't too much of a problem thanks to the fact my feet accumulated several hundred mosquito bites when I was in Honduras meaning I actually woke up mid-scratching them!

Yes, I sleep-scratch now.

I only have one day on the shores of Lake Atitlan meaning today had to be the day I headed to the Indian's Nose, a rock formation from which you can see an awesome sunrise over the lake.

The tour was crowded, as me, several Israelis and a mix of Dutch and Australians trampled through endless corn fields in the dark to reach the mirador. As we arrived, the sun was just about to appear over the horizon, a beautiful, deep orange over the shimmering pitch black lake.

The sunrise was indeed phenomenal, although the experience was slightly jaded by a) how bloody freezing it was! and b) the hoardes of selfie-taking Israelis...

Guatemala is the big shot of Central America when it comes to stuff to see and do so its no surprise it feels a lot more touristic than El Salvador or Honduras. It's much more backpacker oriented however, than Costa Rica, and still cheap although prices are very obviously inflated in tourist centres such as San Pedro and Antigua.

On returning to San Pedro I had a typical Guatemalan breakfast of plantains with a bean, scrambled egg and 'disgusting Latin American fake cheese' tortilla along with another suprisingly decent coffee.

I took a walk around San Pedro, the downtown area around the port is largely travel agencies and touristy restaurants, the interesting local bit was up quite a steep hill, so I elected instead to take a boat to check out a nearby town instead - San Marcos.

San Marcos is still a tourist mecca, but a world away from San Pedro. Whilst San Pedro is where backpackers rave, San Marcos is where backpackers 'find themselves'. Atitlan truly has something for everyone.

I was struggling to think of what to do in San Marcos. It's very small, just one narrow alleyway lined with touristy restaurants and hotels here before the impoverished town, which according to posters has a 70% malnutrition rate, on the hill above.

I had a choice. Learn how to cook Guatemalan food for £25 or, go to a class on metaphyiscal dreaming at a yoga retreat for a tenner. I decided finding myself was both more cost effective and more interesting than learning how to make tacos.

I headed to the Las Piramides del Ka meditation centre, one of many dotted around Lake Atitlan which is an international hub of all things spiritual as, largely, Americans and Europeans flock to learn about the Mayan spiritual world.

I headed into a large, pyramid shaped structure with 7 other long term medidatees who the previous night had down an exercise in (Astral dreaming?). After a thirty minute meditation, one by one each of the medidatees shared their experiences of having some form of energy come into them during the night. Whilst most of them experienced nothing or very little, two Dutch girls appeared to have very extreme experiences.

One of them claimed to have an out of body experience and the feeling of floating as if above a city, the other imagined/heard an incredibly intense noise of leaves, so intense it made her want to leave her room and almost vomit the following day despite not having eating anything.

Whatsmore, the Dutch girls seemed to be the most sceptical of ideas of 'energy' coming in and out of people, making their stories sound very genuine.

It is of course easy for anyone whose not experienced this to either assume its all mumbo-jumbo, and ridicule it all, or to be too accepting and unquestioning of the whole thing. One thing I can be certain of is that the whole place seemed remarkably scientific. They were definitely focused on what they actually/what they felt they actually experienced and wanted indepth recollections of exactly how much time they had slept etc. This was very much a place for people to come and learn about consciousness and about these very intriguing ideas, seriously and to actually interrogate them, rather than pretend to be hippies and have some wacky gap yah stories.

The meditation as well was a fantastic experience. I kept on getting flashbacks to various points of this trip and life in general, as far back as cutting my knee on a pool in Bulgaria and visiting a war musuem with Nan and Bob. It's been just over two months exactly now, and its a week tomorrow I'm going home and this by far has been the best trip I've ever taken.

This is, in no small part, simply because I've done what I've wanted to do this time. Last time, it was more 'do what I should do'. I 'should' go on an organised tour - which turned out pretty badly, at least with regard to the actual tour organising itself and the people on it - 'should' do volunteering projects - all had serious problems such as poorly housed animals and a Colombian emerald barron siphoning off money from homeless projects to fund her father's lawsuit against a prostitute.

Of course my first trip was great, it was a great growing experience, this trip has been even better. And of course, this only all happened because of Granddad's generosity, in giving me the means to make this trip and return to Latin America.

Well, Lake Atitlan is also a great place to relax and I definitely need to do that with two long drives in the next three days and two final big attractions to see. Pretty much everything Atitlan offers I've done before, so am saving money and catching up on rest for one more week in Latin America!

Vamos!