Next stop was up in the hills to the huge Lake Atitlan and its little towns of San Pedro and San Marcos. Really pretty with lots of indigineous folk but sadly a place with a few scare stories. We´d heard that robberies often take place on the roads between the various towns so we decided to explore the area on kayaks so we could make a speedy escape over water if necessary. I mean a robber isn´t going to want to get his new steal wet is he? All was going well until it all started to go a bit wrong for Ashley. You see the combination of his British blood coupled with coming straight from a Canadian winter coupled with no sun lotion on his legs coupled with legs getting wet = red raw legs. Ouch.

Now the place is renowned for its hippies and the offer of a massage or such like. Not the best past time for someone with the worst sunburn ever. So that idea was out. Hmmm what else was on offer - rebirthing apparently. Yep indeed the hippies of San Pedro and San Marcos have been joined by hoardes of happy clappy Protestant evangelical missionary gringoes who promise a new life of no drugs, no violence and no fun. Hmmm we weren´t really up for that either. Especially when we learnt that the some of the evangelicals have crossed ideas with the hippies with one guy deciding that he was the Messiah sent to divide the angels from the demons with the help of a machete. Hmmm bit of a weird place.

So with Ashley laid out coated with aloe vera, Ant and I decided to... climb another volcano! And being a bit lazy that morning, we started out later than we should have done only to be told by our guide that we only had a couple of hours to get to the summit before the mist would come in rendering the point of summiting it, well, pointless. So we effectively had to run up the volcano and it was STEEP. Still, volcano pros that we are, we made it up in time to see the view and Ashley was delighted to see that we too had very painful legs by the end of the day.