Hola amigos!

We are now in Antigua, Guatemala. Its such an amzing place. It used to be the capital of Guatemala until 1773 but then an enourmous earthquake destroyed most of its buildings, and rather than rebuild, Guatemalans decided instead to simply move thier capital city about 20 miles north. Antigua is now a UNESCO world heritage site, and is basically still the same size as a capital city would have been 200 years ago (we walked around the whole place this afternoon). Its still full of old ruined churches, colonial spanish buildings, cobbled streets and tiny little cafes, all under the rather ominous presence of an enourmous (and more disturbingly) active volcano - it almost looks fake after seeing the Latin American film sets in universal studios as it just looks so, well, Latin american!

Our hotel is great, and very cheap, and it even has a fountain with a little turtle swimming around in :) Tomorrow, as it is Kate´s birthday we are going to be staying in a five star hotel (five star in Guatemala perhaps isnt quite the same standard as back home, but its still pretty damn posh) as a birthday treat, and so hopefully will spend the afternoon relaxing in the spa with a few mojitos. However we will be getting up early, as Kate has always done on birthdays, to go to school. We are enrolled in a spanish school for the week as the typical english communication skills (pointing and shouting) dont get you very far here. It sounds great, we have a teacher just to ourselves, get four hours of spanish every day in the mornings, and it only costs us fifty quid!

Pictures from the past week or so will appear when we find a USB connection. This current machine appears to have been made in 1981. Adios x