On the 31st July we sleepily made our way to Guatemala on our favourite form of Central American transport..the Tikka bus. We arrived bemused and confused, not realising we were even in the country and almost stayed on the bus to Mexico. We made it out and Emma made a quick dash for the nearest Subway to fill our hungry hungry bellies. However, as she approached us with a twinkle in her eyes, the excitement got the better of her causing one of her feet to slip forward leaving the rest of her body behind. Luckily for us, that girl has her priorities right and automatically threw her arms into the air in order to save the food..much to the amusement of me, kella and the surrounding men!

We promptly gathered our composure and headed to Antigua in a taxi in order to meet our tour group for the first time. We entered the hotel and were greeted by 11 smiley but nervous girly faces, plus the one guy (married to one of the women) who formed our tour group of which we would spend the next 17 days. We were then taken to a little room within the hotel to have our initial meeting about what was going to happen in the next few weeks. This was where we were informed that our food and some transport was not included in the large amount of money we had spent on the tour..much to our disappointment. And also that as it was the hurricane season in Belize, if a hurricane did occur that we would not be able to visit and would have to pay for our own accomodation in order to fix the complication...damn GAP tours!!! However, we soon got over our anger about the situation and decided to pick ourselves up and go for dinner with our new found travel companions. The night was spent eating, drinking, laughing and beginning to get to know them.

2 days later, and we found ourselves in a small van, compact into the back with the 2 Australian girls we had befriended (Keavy and B), heading towards Panajachel, where we stayed for 2 nights. During our stay, we did a lot of market shopping. Including a visit to a large market in a place called Chichicastenango (..yes it does exist..and yes i did just remember that off the top of my head..clever lottie!). The market was busy and colourful, with a few ´interesting´characters around. Not only this, but we saw many live pigs and chickens in bags being carried around the market (3 guesses where they were heading!?). We boarded the bus to return to our hotel, and it was then it was illustrated to us why these particular buses were nicknamed ´chicken buses´....we were all squashed as tightly as possible onto the bus, when a woman arrived with a riggling bag and sat next to Keavy; it was a chicken! To top this funny situation off, as the woman began attempting to leave, she rested the chicken-in-a-bag onto Keavy´s head, in order to manover out her seat...the shock on Keavy´s face was one to remember!

We arrived back to Antigua yesterday (4th August), where we are staying untill tomorrow. To make the most of our stay here, we decided to hike up a volcano thismorning. We got up and were ready to leave at 6am, dreading the moment of returning our feet to the walking-boots. However, despite this initial fear, we put our shoes on and hiked up volcano Pacaya. It was AMAZING! The walk was about 2 hours up (which is nothing for our professional trekking feet!), and we finally reached what we had been looking for..the hardened volcanic rock. The space it covered was huge, so we climbed across it untill we were suddenly hit with intense heat. We peered down and through the cracks in the volcanic rock we spotted some red hot magma, it was incredible. Our volcano guide then chucked some sticks down which instantly burst into flames, impressing everyone on our tour! The half-day-trip was really worthwhile and was like nothing we had seen before.....i wonder what the next chapter holds?!!!