We drove into Antigua at 6am as the sun was coming up through the heavy rain clouds and chicken bus exhaust fumes (they are really bad). An amazing image appeared of a perfect volcano cone partly obscured by cloud with smoke rising from the summit (it is active). We drove down cobbled streets with colourful houses. You could call it the real Guatemala but the real Guatemala is a lot more earthy. This place is akin to the Cotswolds in England - the steriotypical...

Another day another country. We knew this was going to be a tough section, no one comes to central America for the cities. To get anything out of San Salvador you need to speak the language and be used to being stared at. San Salvador is simply a stepping stone to cheaper rural destinations that are less hard work. It is an 'expected' five hour journey to the next stepping stone Guatemala city. As I sit in one of many border snarlups I am wondering if this is no...

The flight got us in early to San Salvador. We had a place to stay in mind but there was two places with the same name. Using my basic Spanish I asked the taxi driver to take us to the cheaper one that I pointed to on the map. When we checked in the cost was twice what we expected (but still cheaper than LA), we initially thought that prices had gone up a lot. After looking at the nice fittings I had my suspicions that we were in the other hotel in the nicest par...

I was not going to write a blog today as we have been sitting in the reception of the motel most of the day killing time for the 11:55 pm flight to San Salvador. However (prepare for a rant) we have just been told that American Airlines does not provide vegetarian meals for the five hour flight - they have simply stopped doing them. They would not give any alternatives either. This is not the first time that we have had a run in with them either (but that is a l...

It's been a funny sort of day. We drove from Hollywood to drop the bags off at the motel near the airport (on the other side of LA). We then drove back to Hollywood to drop off the car and then went back to the motel near the airport by metro and bus. It took three hours by car to cross LA, mainly due to the sat nav taking the shortest rather than the quicker freeway route. I have had my fill of traffic lights. This was the hotest day in LA ever, a record breaki...