Tuesday we travelled. We managed to negotiate with the bus company and push the leaving time back to 9am so we could sneak in an excellent comlimentary breakfast (not to be missed when they pop up every now and again - Guatemalan breakfast tipico is scrambled eggs, refried beans, guacamole, tortilla, fresh cheese, salad and a massive wad of toast. Or a burrito. Not bad if you are on a bus all day.)

We had a stint back to Antigua in the morning sunshine for 4 hours or so giving us a couple of hours stopover for some lunch and a spot of shopping. It was strange being back for so short a time considering how much time we spent there earlier on in Guatemala! The next stint was a bigger bus and filled with hippie Israelies talking about the benefits of yoga, us, and two 28 year Essex lads called Danny and Denny. By 9pm when we were still in the middle of nowhere in the dark in Central Guatemala (they claimed the journey was 8 hours... 8 hours in a straight line maybe. Try the mountain roads of Guatemala...) Danny and Denny were firmly on board for the next few days.

We had only heard of Lanquin through chatting with others and though it is a big backpacker destination has reached out to nobody else and you can tell - the ´road´from Coban is two hours of stony dirt track literally sliding off the mountain into a jungly ravine. I think we were all pretty glad it was dark because we have done it in the back of a truck in the light since and that was nothing short of a white knuckle ride.

We arrived at 11... naturally everyone in the village was in bed apart from the 5000 resident wild dogs. Waking people up in El Retiro´s (essentially a student village style ego lodge) had no effect and they shut the doors on us. We made one man´s night though when we turned up at his "hotel" (questionable) - he opened the door looking as if some one had just thrown a melon at his face and it has burst open into a million pounds, with no shirt on, just some old raggedy shorts - I am pretty sure he has not had a customer (or a wash) for at least ten years.

Nevertheless, the entire bus was installed in the "hotel", even though he couldnt work out how to split us into rooms so everyone with mixed in with everyone else, and then spent the rest of the night wandering around with his shirt open looking more confused than I have ever felt, and eventually wandering off into the land of the mad when we asked (tentatively) if we could maybe have a key.

In the end it didnt matter as we were gone by 8am and it was a mad rush down the village to El Retiro´s for a room. We were in luck as there was a whole busload leaving when we turned up so we had a big dorm down by the river. Retiro´s was brilliant - people apparently lose themselves there for weeks on end and you can see why. It is all thatched huts on the river with a D.I.Y sauna (made of wine bottles, you make the fire yourself), the river to swim in, and a little restaurant by the water that corners all the nightlife in the town.

We spent the first day with Danny and Denny tubing down the river from Lanquin Caves a few miles from the village. This was an hour trip with some beers to keep us warm (the locals thought we were mad for wanting to go on so ´cold´a day). This was mainly a relaxing experience except for the odd jungle snag in the briars, for everyone except Owain, who cannot tube, and capsized twice and cut himself to bits on the rapids.

That night we optimised four double rum and cokes for two pounds and got happily smashed. The other top point of the night was the buffet barbeque with at LEAST twenty unknown food options, all were fantastic except for curried coleslaw. We hadnt eaten all day so everyone´s portion sizes were enormous, slightly annoying as after seconds there was no food left on the buffet. On the brightside that meant I didnt have to go home early because I couldnt move. Result!

The next morning we had planned a day´s tour of Semuc Champey, beautiful natural pools an hour´s white knuckle ride away. We spectacularly missed the tour after our big night in the village, so we decided to do a D.I.Y job and wandered into town with our favourite technique: "semuc champey?" Immediately a mechanic in a nearby garage popped us in his pick-up and drove us into the mountains. We had a fab afternoon climbing cliffs and got some great photos before having a quick swim in a pool infested with cleaner-fish nipping our ankles. (Lauren had a lovely time being fish phobic.)

That night we had a few quiet drinks in the bar with the group before heading to bed early for a 5am chicken bus adventure planned for the morning.