After returning to Antigua for a night I headed to Lanquin, located 9 km north of Semuc Champey. At my first night at Zephyr Hostel (which was one of the most spectacular hostels I have stayed at; located on the side of a hill in one of the regions many valleys) I met up with Sam and Dougie. It was good seeing the guys again and we exchanged books and insults over a few games of Veinte Uno. The next day I took a trip to Semuc Champey, the setting for one of the b...

I took a short trip from Antigua to the Guatemalan highlands, known as the most dramatic region of the country, my destination was Lago de Atitlan, were traditional, indigenous values and culture are at their strongest, the setting for this is also spectacular. The lake is surrounded by volcanoes and small villages and even though it was quite cloudy when I was there it was still a sight. I used the village of Panajachel as my base to visit the more beautiful vil...

Every person I had spoke to in Central America who had travelled from north to south had told me Guatemala had been their favourite country so I was looking forward to it a lot. My first port of call was Antigua, situated just over an hour southwest of Guatemala City. Described in the Lonely Planet as a ‘fantasyland’ where ‘rubbish is collected, traffic diverted and stray dogs “disappear” mysteriously in the middle of the night’, it was raised to the ...

So after a strange evening we made our way to the Bay Islands and the island of Utila. Isla de la Bahia are extremely popular on the ‘Gringo Trail’ of Central America because of the cheap and spectacular diving. The reef that stretches across the top of Honduras and north to Belize and Mexico is the second largest in the world and also boast some of the cheapest diving on the planet. The three islands (Utila, Roatan and Guanaja) were homes to pirates like th...

After packing up and having our last Huevos Rancheros and Gallo Pinto breakfast at Rosa’s, we hopped on a lancha in the pouring rain and returned to Big Corn Island. There we boarded a plane that was even smaller than the one we took out to the islands, sitting only 12, and we returned to the mainland. We bypassed Managua and headed straight for Leon. The former capital is Nicaragua’s other colonial jewel aside from Granada. After missing out on the latter ...