Arriving into a cloudy Zephyr Lodge after a lengthy 10 hour bus journey we enjoyed our welcome beer (accompanied by 2 more) & had some dinner before calling it a night. A lot of people in the hostel were nursing extreme hangovers as it had been a wild Australia Day. The next morning we were so excited to do as little as possible so got a prime spot on the limited wifi and began to build up our music collections. Spotify and Shazam are our favourite apps for sure. Sarah taught Dani the trick that Shazam works offline and stores your tags and her hand hasn't been down from the air since as she is shazam'ing everything. So we didn't spend the entire day sitting around counting down the hours to dinner we walked into town to see what Lanquin had to offer. We were definitely coming across as exotic in this tiny little village as all the little kids stared at us and whispered 'olá'. Also Sarah realised that Guatemala is a great country for making her seem really tall as most people here are so short. The older people especially seem to shrink with age but they are still a lot faster than us on the hills and in flip flops.

The clouds were due to stay the next day so we thought it was the perfect day to schedule in our day tour to Semuc Champey. After 45 minutes in the back of a truck navigating the extreme hills holding on for dear life we had a good upper body workout already ticked off the list and were ready for our adventure into the caves. We got into our bikinis, put on our runners and with candle in hand started walking into the darkness. Not an outfit you'd normally want to be rocking but when needs must!! The candle tour was unbelievable as you are swimming and climbing through all these little crevices with just a little church candle to guide you. After the caves you could do a rope swing and jump off a bridge into the river but. Dani hit the side of her head off one of the cave slides so we were happy to watch on those occasions and the more people that belly flopped their entrance into the water made us glad we didn't jump. Lunch was a massive roadside buffet and we made sure we stocked up really well as we had been trying to watch the hostel tab system and not go too extreme with our spending so giving us access to a buffet was like someone coming off a diet and having their first bar of chocolate! Of course then what better way to start after lunch then an extreme uphill 20-30 minute hike uphill to a viewing platform. The view over the pools was breathtaking but we weren't feeling at that moment our extra portion for lunch had been our wisest decision. At the bottom of the hike sarah got to swim in the natural pools while Dani spent the next hour in the bathroom. Afterwards we continued to get bombarded by the little kids selling chocolate, beers and water. It had been a long morning of ignoring their auto repeat question of you buy now, pay later you want Choc-o-latte? No gracias fell on deaf ears continuously. On the journey home the rain started to fall so by the time we got back to our hostel we have never moved so fast to get our stuff and grab one of the hot showers as there was only limited hot water. Glad to report we were successful and the first ones to take more than our fair share of that as we defrosted from the day. After a long power nap, we were still not really warmed up so layered ourselves up with so many clothes and Dani was even rocking her woolly hat and scarf. No doubt we stood out a lot as the bar men were wondering when our ski trip started. The only answer that remained was the cocktail list on happy hour to warm us up and playing Uno with our hostel friends. It worked a treat and on Moscow Mule number four we finally started taking off the thermal layers. We enjoyed Uno so much we have asked Col to bring over the cards next week

We were so excited to wake up the next morning and see the sunshine beating in through our windows. Finally the infinity pool was going to come into its own. We spent an amazing and well needed day in the sunshine as our freckles and base colour already felt like it was fading. That night we decided to be adventurous and would have dinner in town that night and break free from the reins of Zephyr, we had a recommendation of a cute cafe that did home made food and we literally danced down the hill with Dani's music leading the way. We arrived at the little cafe and ordered off the menu. It seems like the menu was only decoration as anything we tried to order wasn't actually there. Finally settling on 3 tortillas and a bowl of antipasto we found the deck of cards and started playing our new card game 'idiot' the strawberry smoothies arrived and we were so excited for food until Sarah spotted that the home made food piece may have been true but in the actual restaurant everything was microwaved. Sarah got a delivery of 6 over microwaved tortillas with almost no filling on top and Dani got the worlds smallest bowl of antipasto. It turned out to be our most expensive meal and we realised that maybe the hostel prices hadn't actually been that bad all along. Walking dejectedly up the hills to the hostel, there was no music playing this time.

The next day the sun was even hotter so we were so glad we had extended our stay so that we could get a dose of vitamin D. We had met a really cool Dutch girl our second night and not seen her since but she appeared in the pool too and since all day was happy hour for us on our fifth day we had some early Moscow Mules sitting in the pool at the bar stools. It really was a paradise at Zephyr Lodge when the sun was shining. With our bus booked for 6am the next morning we packed in record time and went downstairs for our final few hours. It was going to be a long day of travel the next day on bumpy roads so we didn't get to the dancing on tables levels of some people before we called it a night. The bumpy road to Antigua awaits us...