We wolfed down our delayed breakfast & caught our 6 hour minibus/shuttle bus down to San Pedro La Laguna, one of the villages on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Supposedly the chicken buses aren't safe & take forever, so these shuttles are the best way to travel & all the travellers seem to use them. Unfortunately they're distinctly lacking in leg room & comfort. That coupled with no headrests & Guatemala's roads being some of the worst & bump...

For some unknown reason, I just couldn't sleep last night, so decided to stay local today & try & catch up on Zzzzs. So Rach headed out to take in the sights of the city. As per usual, the main places of interest within a Central American city centre are either churches or museums. The churches here have wonderfully ornate & colourful fronts, but were very bland inside & the cathedral, literally only had it's 17th century front remaining, as the r...

Our place did a corking breakfast (finishing way too early for a lazy git like me, at 9:30am!), after which we headed out to see the town in daylight & grabbed a decent cup of coffee at one of the multitude of cafes/coffee shops. This place has restaurant, after bar, after cafe, after travel agency. So the whole place is orientated towards tourists, but still manages to somehow maintain a strong Guatemalan character & culture with a number of the locals w...

Again the girls shot off early, while at 9:55am Rach & I had a shock that check-out was at 10am! b*****! Not what we needed with a hangover! A quick exit left us 2 hours to chill before our minibus into Guatemala at midday. The border crossing was only 10km away & was a smooth transition between countries. Rach sat up front with an older lady we'd met in the ruins, while I sat in the back with a mix of young Aussies, Americans & Danes, who I chatted t...

Whereas everyone else got up at 8ish & headed off to the ruins, we thought we'd take our time & strolled over there at 10am or so. We started with the museum which was excellent, with multiple, different sized original stone carvings, along with a whole monumental shrine/building moved inside from it's location within the ruins. It was quite fascinating & educating. We then headed into the ruins themselves, but weren't able (to my disappointment) to f...