Today was a free day to enjoy the marvels of Antigua!! The aim was to have a sleep in... The first one of this tour....however that didn't quite go to plan! After the roosters started cockadoodling at 5.30, closely followed by the church bells continuously ringing for 5 minutes...my dreams of a sleep in were shattered!!!
I did manage to get back to sleep, however with church bells going every hour it wasn't a dreamy sleep!!
We got up, and then went out to find that the sun was out and the view of the volcano was spectacular!!
After breakie, Joyce and I hit the town!! Map in hand, we hit every attraction in this town!! We climbed to the top of Cerro de la Cruz, which had a brilliant lookout over the entire town of Antigua with a backdrop of the volcano! We stumbled across a few ruins! Now these aren't the Mayan ruins, these are earthquake ruins. Old cathedrals and buildings built by the Spanish destroyed by the earthquakes that frequently occur in Guatemala.
Now it's not often that mcdonalds makes the tourist attraction list, but today it did!! So we grabbed a coke and entered the courtyard garden to find honestly probably the best view of the volcano in Antigua!!
We walked up to the chicken bus terminal, and checked out all the cool buses up there!!
I also managed to get my eyebrows deforested which was a great feeling!!
Then this afternoon, we went to a chocolate making course!! This was so cool!!! We actually followed the process of chocolate from seed to chocolates. We also made traditional Mayan cacao drink (yummy but spicy), we also made and tried the Spanish hot chocolate!! The best thing though was the cacao hot tea!! Delicious!! We are now all chocolated out!!!
Tonight we are meeting the next 10 members of our tour group....here's hoping they are just as brilliant as our last group!!!