Hello everyone,

So the last time I left you I was in Mexico...I then spent another week visiting a gorgeous coastal town called Tulum, Mayan ruins at Palenque, the colonial town of Merida and eventually ending up in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, where I met Genie for Halloween and Day of the Dead Celebrations before leaving the Mexicanos behind...

Halloween is not so celebrated down this way but along with a load of people from the hostel we dressed up as skeletons anyway and took a pinata out onto the street (a basket made from papier-mache filled with sweets which the kids can have once theyve managed to break the basket - usually by bashing it to bits - so we took a broom along to help)...the fancy dress drew a lot of attention though which probably labelled us as slightly mad when sat in a restaurant eating tacos. We did find a local fancy dress party going on though which was fantastic, everybody really made an effort with the outfits (we even had a terrorist or two thrown in there) and it was an all-round great atmosphere.

The next day was Day of the dead - a strange affair - a day where all Mexicans (actually all Latin Americans) celebrate the lives of their lost loved ones by taking decorations, music, food and drink to the graveyards and staying by their altars with the rest of their families to celebrate together...we left for Guatemala this day too as it was quite a family affair but interesting to see bits at least. Another interesting thing we found at San Cristobal is that a lot of the people really looked indigenous and this was confirmed by a short 20 minute trip out of the city where people could no longer speak Spanish and led an almost segregated life to what we knew as Mexico.

So the first place we got to in Guatemala was Antigua, a really pretty city, all the buildings low rise and quaint with loads of nice restaurants and guesthouses...it`s surrounded by volcanoes which makes the setting really scenic but this also means its been victim of a load of earthquakes...Kim joined us here and together we climbed one of the volcanoes - Pacaya. The walk was pretty hard, especially the last part cz the molten rock was still warm from where the lava had run the day before and the rock really brittle (not great when spending most of the time climbing on all fours)..but worth it when we got to the top - views were amazing and the lava was running past us down the mountain like a river.

Our trip into Guatemala City was pretty uneventful, although we did get our first chicken bus (!) home...these are basically old American yellow school buses, pimped up and converted into public buses by each individual driver, usually showered in religious paraphenalia and pumping out Latin beats as it throws it passengers around cliff corners - definitely an experience.

Lake Atitlan was our next stop, a really gorgeous lake, again surrounded by volcanoes and loads of gorgeous places and scenery. We made base for a couple of days in San Pedro, from where we went on an afternoon horse trek with a really interesting Guat called Lucas, took the local boat (and broke down on it) to a small market town nearby and spent some hours in these lovely thermal baths overlooking the lake with candles and beers.

Our last stop with Genie was in a place called Xela, a proper Guatemalan City, but somewhere we really visited purely for the reason of going to the Fuentes Georginas, these natural hot springs up in the mountains. Gina, of course, loved it and we whiled away some hours there until all the trees were shrouded in mist, and finding that we couldnt actually get back to the town as there was no phone to call a taxi, we ended up hitching a lift with this Italian and his girlfriend...from here, I carried on with (and am still with) Kim, up to Semuc Champey, near a town called Lanquin, right in the middle of the country.

This place was gorgeous! My favourite place so far in Guats...this national park hosts a load of turquiosy-blue natural limestone pools between mountains which cascade into each other, the limestone means the water`s always warm, and there was literally no-one there except our rowdy group. The whole day in the park was a big adventure day and involved climbing up and jumping off waterfalls, jumping off bridges and into rivers, tubing, swimming through pitch-black caves and not forgetting the massive uphill hike which left our legs aching for days to get to the highest viewpoint...the hostel here was also gorgeous, either sleeping in little wooden huts or just in hammocks, this was pretty much the only thing around so there was a nice traveller atmosphere and we ended up meeting lots of people, including bumping into loads that I`d met before in Mexico, as I seem to have done everywhere so far in Guatemala.

So this brings us to Flores, where today we got up at 4am to go and see the Mayan ruins at Tikal, really pretty in the morning mist and really impressive buildings...

So until next time...xxx