Hi!

to set the scene; today we have spent the majority of the day clutching our bellies after eating something dodgy either yesterday or this lunchtime. And it has been raining a lot. and apparently there was an earthquake today, but i didnt notice as i was en el bano at the time....

But yesterday was one of the greatest days of our lives so we arent too worried, just less naive about the dangers of streetfood! Owing to the rain we have managed to get all our pictures online so check the albums!

Kates birthday was fun, the hotel was great, we enjoyed staying in luxury in the posh hotel and its sauna, although Kate was rather disgusted at precisely how much i can sweat in a sauna.. its hot though!! We spent the day strolling around Antigua, checking out the enourmous streetmarkets, tasting many different varieties of spicy food in tortillas or unidentifiable sweet things (1st day of spanish school taught us nothing but verbs). The market here takes up about 50% of the city, full of stalls selling 80s stereo equipment, chicken thats been fried for approximately 19 days, fake surfwear (hulrey anyone!?) and endless fabrics, bags, bracelets and dolls - all handcrafted in the traditional guatemalan style with a medieval looking weaver (in photo album). For the birthday dinner we had a meal of traditional guatemalan food; spicy chorizo style sausage with the omnipresent side of guacomole (guatemalans eat so much of this they refer to themselves as `green bellies`), rice, outrageously spicy salsa, and tortillas, with a few tasty margaritas to wash it down; Bueno.

We have our last day of spanish lessons tomorrow. They were very hard to begin with, as our teacher Waleska cant speak a word of english, not quite what we bargained for but perhaps being thrown in at the deep end is the best way! We have gradually got much better throughout the week, once we had learnt pages and pages of verbs (yawn) the first couple of days. It does seem that she may have taught us questions and answers simply so she can find out how rich we are and what England is like, but it is actually quite enjoyable and we have managed to get some useful information out of her to use on buses, and where we should head to next etc. She did tell us today to avoid streetfood but alas, this vital information was just a little too late :(

The confidence we build up in the mornings during our lessons gets immediately shot to pieces the moment we step outside and try and converse with anybody who isnt speaking one word a minute whilst gesticulating madly as Waleska helpfully does! It should certainly prove helpful in the long run though, and has already helped us to avoid any more refresco blanco ( a drink made from rice milk, sweetened with 10000 grams of sugar, blergh) which we mistakenly drank the other day.

Now for the exciting bit; yesterday we climbed an active volcano! Volcan Pacaya, a two hour shuttle bus ride from Antigua. The trip cant be done on your own as the trail is prone to muggers and (gulp) murderers, so we coughed up a measly ten dollars to join a tour group. It would have been worth ten times that amount, it was an experience we will never ever forget. We had to hike the 2000 metres to the top, but that felt like nothing after our escapades in yosemite, and would have been much easier if we hadnt had to wait for a couple of rich fat germans, the only couple who didnt hike but instead mounted two anoxeric horse, who understandably took a rather long time to heave them up the volcano. Once at the top our tour guide shouted manically about something or other (spanish school doesnt teach spanish volcano saftey information unfortunately) which we nodded wisely at, whilst hoping he wasnt telling us to run for our lives.

so.... we stood on actual lava. obviously not red lava, but it was yesterdays lava, and next to it was HOT FLOWING RED MOLTEN STRAIGHT-OUT-OF-THE-EARTHS-CORE LAVA! The ground was hot enough even to melt somebodys shoe soles off, and it really felt as if we were stood inside an oven. The guide pulled a rather scared looking Kate to within inches of the most dangerous and hottest flow, no bueno. She quickly hot-footed it (sorry, had to be done) over to the slightly less fatal area of lava next to me, where i was busy enjoying myself poking the lava with a stick i had purchased from a small boy for the excellent fee of thirty pence. we weere only slightly concerned by this point that one tiny slip would have meant a chargrilled limb, at the very least. It was bloody fantastic, i recommend you all climb your nearest volcano right now ;)

Despite the idiot germans taking even longer on the way down, and the fact we descended for 2 hours through a jungle in total darkness with no torches (the ticket seller didnt mention any need for this) it was defeinetely one of the greatest experiences we will ever have!

Tomorrow we are going to read slowly from our spanish book at the driver of a bus, who will hopefully then take us to Panajachel, a small pueblo on the shore of Lago de Atitlan in the western Highlands of Guatemala.