Guatemala part 2

After leaving Flores we headed south to an eco-farm run by an american woman(her husband set it up with her in the late 80's but he was murdered by the guatemalian government in 1990 and this contributed to the US cutting off aid to guatemala in 1995). It was set in the middle of a forest, lots of hills but it rained the whole time so couldn't really do much but eat, which suited me nicely!! After two nights we moved on to Lanquin, it took us 5 busses and 10 hours to get there, all on little mini-busses packed with up to 30 people. It was really cool though because we went throught the countryside and places tourists dont normally get to. As the crow flies it was only about 120km but it took 10 but thats Guatemala for you!!!

Linguin is in the middle of the mountains on the edge of a valley and is absolutely stunning (like all of this country). The hostel we stayed at was set of by an English guy and is on the hill leading to the valley floor and the big river. Its all huts and cabanas with a good restaurant. I'll attach a picture of it onto this. There;s lots of water activities you can do here, so we went tubing down the river, not a good idea since i'm probably the worst swimmer known to mankind!!! It was amazing but some parts of the river had very strong currents and there was fallen trees across the river at parts and you couldn't really stop your self flying into them and in doind so, i cut all my hand and half ripped a nail from one of my toes... its all part of the experience though!! when you come to the hostel your supposed to hang onto a rope and pull yourself in... that didn't really work and Emma ended up hanging onto an overhanging branch with no where to go....eek! a local had to save her, i couldnt do much because i was hanging onto a different part of the tree. We all survived and really enjoyed it!

We also went caving in Semouc Champey and hiked a mountain and went to the most stunning natural pools.... From there we came to Antigua which is the Old capital of Guatemala until it moved to Guatemala City in the 1700's after an earthquake. Its an old spanish colonial place, all cobbled street and overlookd by volcanoes all around the town. Buena Vista Social Club play here twice a week but are very hard tyo find out where they are actually playing, so hopefully going to catch them tonight or on the way back (we have to pass through here in about 3 weeks). Tomorrow we're going straight to Nicaragua on an epic 36 hour journey via El Salavador and Honduras and on to Managua and then Granada... Fun Fun Fun