On one of our days in Antigua we visit a macadamia nut farm, getting there  by local chicken  bus. The bus station is a sprawl  about the size of a football pitch.. multicoloured and highly chromed buses leaving in all directions.  These are former American or Canadian school buses which are sold to central America to start a new  life as public buses. They get fancy paint and chrome  custom jobs and extra seats.3 to a seat and as a result a very narrow aisle...a huge emergency door opens at back of aisle and conductor hangs on at front door or jumps off and hops on back, comes in through emergency exit door and proceeds through bus collecting fares...

We ask around and get pointed to a bus which is heading in our direction. The conductor understands where we are headed and assures us he'll keep us right and 40 minutes later, the bus stops at a road end and driver tells us it's our stop.  We have a short walk to the macadamia farm.  Here they harvest nuts and also bring on seedling trees which they donate to indigenous Mayan people who can produce their own crop to eventually sell back to the farm. We buy  a couple of seedlings to be  passed on in this way. Elaine gets a neck massage with macadamia oil then we hop back on the next passing chicken bus back to Antigua.

On another day we visit a chocolate museum and take a hands on tour which involves making our own chocolates starting  from cocoa pod  right through to completion. Chocolate originated in Central America but now Guatemala produces less than 1% of the world cocoa harvest. There are two of us in the tour led by a very enthusiastic and jovial guide Edwin.

The beans are first roasted on a clay plate then the nibs removed from the shell.  The nibs are ground to a paste using a mortar and pestal. Eventually the mix is poured in to moulds and we add toppings of our choice for example nuts, ginger orange peel chili cinnamon etc and leave to set in a fridge. We leave a lot wiser as to the origins of chocolate and each with a nicely packed selection of our own hand made chocolates. Great way to spend a hot afternoon.