Guatemala!

What can I say, I love it here! The landscape is amazing, the people are nice, food and accommodation are cheap and there is so much to see and do.
I arrived in Xela, what is short for Quetzaltenango, and I met some girls from England on the way. We did two hikes together to some volcanoes nearby, Cerro Quemado and Santa Maria, from where you can see the active volcano Santiguito.

This one erupts 10 to 20 times a day and you can see and hear it. So impressive. We did the hikes with a company called Quetzaltrekkers. That is a volunteer program where all the money goes to a school in the neighbourhood. So I found that is a good way to help the children, hike for charity.
After two days of hiking I took two days Spanish classes. And it's easy to learn, well I won't write the blog in Spanish! ;-)






And because I love mountains, I did a 3 days trekking with Quetzaltrekkers again down to Lago Atitlan. We packed food, rain gear and sleeping bags and started. The first night we slept in a school building and the second night with family from one of the villages we hiked through. The last day was the highlight, we got up early 3:30 am to hike up a hill and place our sleeping bags again. This was the perfect spot to wait and watch the sunrise. Amazing! After that we went down to San Pedro and I stayed there for two days. On the trek I met Yael, a Israeli girl with whom I traveled the next weeks.
Lago Atitlan is so beautiful, so I spent a week around there. After San Pedro in San Marcos what is a tiny little village with a great hippie vibe and then Panajachel. I loved San Marcos, it was so relaxed and I could try Yoga the first time and we had life music every night.
Eventually I left the lake and went on to Antigua.


This city is so different than what I had seen so far from Guatemala. A lively colonial town with lots of tourists and language students. But I enjoyed it and of course I found the best cake shop in town where I had hot chocolate and some of the best cakes every afternoon, yummy! Did another two days of Spanish school and now I can almost have little conversations. So proud! ;-) But still so much vocabulary to learn...
Antigua has as well a lot of sights which could keep you busy visiting a whole week. But after a few days I went on to Guatemala City to catch a bus to San Salvador. I decided to have a short surfing break at the beaches there, which is next blog...