We had breakfast at the same place so Dave could have the omelet I had yesterday. It was very good!

Today we wanted to explore some of the mountains that surrounded the town. There have been a lot of reports of bandits in some of the hills so we did a lot of research beforehand to make sure we would be safe. Sadly despite our planning we didn’t take in account that we were in rainy season and the trail was very muddy. At least we got some good photos from the top.

Instead of the muddy trail we walked down the road and took a photo of the waterfall on our way to the nature park.

At the Atitlan Nature Park we found out it was a good job we didn’t try the muddy trail since the linking bridges are out of order so we wouldn’t have been able to get down all the way. The park had a butterfly area where some of them were bigger than my hand.

They also had ziplining but the park was so overgrown it didn’t look like you would have a great view of the lake so we decided not to do it. We tried to get some more photos of the lake from higher up in the park but again the very verdant trees somewhat stymied our plans.

We had calzone for tea but they mucked up our order and forgot one of our pizzas. They finished cooking the second pizza once we were finished so we took it away so we could have it later.

I might have caught what Dave had a few days ago and didn’t sleep well at all. Instead I tried sleeping on the bus to Lake Atitlan which we caught very early at 7am. However there were a ton of switchbacks and many people on the chicken bus so I didn’t grab a wink. At least I had a seat.

We had breakfast at Panajachel and I had a super cheese and ham omelette and Dave was jealous again. This theme will never end.

I was rocking my new top I had brought the previous day in Antigua. It is a local style of top worn by all the Mayan women with differing complexities or embroidery, we saw many of the local women around Lake Atitlan wearing the traditional dress. Usually it is coupled with a wrap around one size fits all skirt as well.

Dave did a research run while I napped and got info on laundry and shuttles so we were prepared. It turned out we could have been more prepared – check out the post for the 18th where everything went wrong!

I looked at so many of the stalls of pretty clothes but managed to resist. I do have a bit of an issue with backpack space so sadly couldn’t purchase all the colourful things. So many pretty colours!

We then had dinner at an incredibly cheap place which included soup, garlic bread and meat. I always like to save dem pennies.

We started the day early to get a view point over the whole of Antigua. We walked up Cero de la Cruz hill before breakfast even. Antigua is the former colonial capital of Guatemala and is a UNESCO world heritage site (our 8th this trip).

Breakfast was back at the same place as yesterday but this time Dave took my advice and also had the awesome chocolate crepes.

We went on a walking tour around Antigua and visted the Iglesia de la Merced where the Mercedarian order was the first to construct a monastery in Antigua. The church was built after the tremors of 1751, and thus survived the 1773 Santa Maria earthquakes as its designer had incorporated thicker walls and stout arches. However with the relocation of the capital the Mercedarians were forced to relocate and it wasn’t until the mid 19th century that a new parish took up residency in the church.

Before we set off on the rest of our tour we caught a glimpse of smoke and ash from the top of the nearby volcano, the well named Volcan de Fuego. According to our guide we were quite lucky as it only happens about once a month. The adjacent volcano Acatenango can be climbed as a two day trip, but our guides advice was not to climb Fuego unless you wanted a fiery death.

Our next stop was the Arco Santa Catalina. Arco Santa Catalina was constructed in the 17th century in order to connect Santa Catalina convent to the school across the road. It is actually an enclosed bridge so that the cloistered nuns could move freely between convent and school without going out on to the street. The clock tower was added in the 1830’s and although it no longer connects to the buildings either side the arch and bridge remain.

Catedral de San Jose is Antigua’s cathedral, originally built in 1541 it suffered a lot of earthquake damage and was eventually demolished in 1669. A new cathedral was built and consecrated in 1680 and by 1743 it was Guatemala’s largest cathedral. Sadly the 1773 earthquake badly damaged the cathedral and there was great debate over abandoning it, eventually the cathedral moved to the new capital city. The church was partially rebuilt, but its original sacred artefacts have moved and the gold from the altar was taken in 1816 to make new ones in Guatemala City cathedral.

Tanque la Unión was used as a meeting place in colonial times. The fountain is nice, but it actually served a very practical purpose, beneath the shaded collonade stone basins are fitted into the side of the fountain. Each basin has a little soap holder and could be used to wash clothes with clean water from the fountain. The basins then drain away to separate the dirty water. This would have been a busy communal space when it was built in 1853.

Iglesia San Francisco was the last stop on our walking tour. It is one of the most popular and frequented churches in Antigua, as it contains the shrine of Santo Hermano Pedro. Santo Hermano Pedro had his own church in the town (which we visited yesterday and stopped by again today) but it was his wish as a Franciscan to be buried at the monastery that he considered his home.

The Franciscans arrived in 1541 when they constructed a small chapel, this was destroyed in an earthquake in 1565, so they built a new church a few blocks away in 1579. This was the first construction on the current site and parts of it still exists today. It was reinforced and survived the earthquakes in 1691, but was badly damaged in 1717 and 1753 and then partially destroyed in 1773. Today it is partially reconstructed and is an active church, but is also surrounded by partial ruins.

For lunch we went to the same place as yesterday so Dave could have what I chose – seems to be a running theme today!

In the afternoon the heavens opened at 2pm because it’s officially rainy season so we worked on a few blog posts back at the hostel. Once it calmed down we went out for tacos and enchilada at a Mexican restaurant and then I might have bought a cute top I saw – but more on that tomorrow.

Tragically we were waylaid on the way home by the temptation of ice cream.

I had the most amazing breakfast ever! I had researched about this place and it’s chocolate crepes and was dying to try them. They were every bit as good as I hoped and dreamed of and they were filled with strawberries and banana and I can’t even tell you how good to chocolate was. Dave was jealous with his boring egg filled crepe.

Our second aim for the day was to get Dave high on coffee which after several weeks off the stuff meant only two small cups. Apparently Guatemalan coffee is like rocket fuel and even an americano sends you jittery. Every coffee shop we found either grinds or even roasts their own coffee to achieve their version of the “perfect” guatemalan coffee.

We went to the Monastery and Church of Recollecion where everything was collapsed. The Recollecion monks petitioned the town council to be allowed to build a Monastery in 1695, but were refused as there weren’t enough monks to support it. In the end though construction began in 1700, and was finally complete by 1717 but suffered from numerous earthquakes. It was almost immediately damaged in the earthquakes of 1717, and again in 1753, and then more severely in the Santa Marta earthquakes of 1773 where it lost significant structural elements. Since then it has gradually collapsed in further earthquakes and has been used for local building materials until the site was protected. It has even been used for sports facilities and as a soap factory at different times in history.

The groundskeeper was very keen that we see all the ruins, and in some broken Spanish we were sent to investigate the old kitchens. They were remarkably well intact given the damage to the rest of the site and even retained some of the stucco decorated ceilings.

The Santa Marta earthquakes started on 29th July 1773 and the aftershocks continued until December. Antigua was the colonial capital city at that time and suffered 500-600 dead in the initial 7.5 earthquake, and another 600 dead due to starvation or disease afterwards. The earthquakes in 1717 had taken enough effort to rebuild from so in 1776 rather than rebuild Antigua as the capital city it was moved to the current location of Guatemala City.

We then had lunch where sticking to the theme for the day, Dave was jealous of my food, because I had some awesome chicken and potatoes which were cooked over an open wood fire. Dave had sad looking chorizo and potato salad. It was a great place where all the locals went, where food was placed in fire and given out and mystery drink of the day was included in your meal.

After lunch we stopped for a quick photo outside a nearby church. We would later find out that it is the Church of Hermano Pedro (Brother Peter). It is still a church, but the buildings on the right also operate as a social welfare project, providing low cost quick access health care clinics. Although Guatemala provides free state healthcare waiting times and quality of care are so bad anyone who can afford it pays for private healthcare. Hermano Pedro bridges that gap by offering quick healthcare at a fraction of the price of most private clinics – in the mornings the queues are long…

We went to a hotel which looked like a place my Mum would stay in (very expensive). The hotel Casa Santo Domingo was within the ruins of what was the Santo Domingo and Santo Tomás de Aquino church and convent and had been tastefully built up around it. As part of an agreement with the city the hotel allows non-guests access to the museums it has on the church and convent, colonial era art, silver and pre-colombian glass and archaeology. At one point we were trapped in a crypt because the rain came down very heavily at 3pm. I particularly found the Mayan pottery interesting, it had modern reinterpretations next to the pieces which made it a bit different from other museums we had been in.

After so much coffee Dave decided to sleep off the effects, or he might have been ill. Anyway it had been a busy day.

Luis recommended we take a taxi to the bus station but instead we decided to walk 40mins with our heavy backpacks on because we were going to spend the rest of the day sitting down. We might as well get some exercise.

Getting to the busses involved battling through the local food market – always an experience with bulky luggage. The bus station somehow resides within the market, making it a tight squeeze as busses leave and people rearrange their market stalls to let the bus through.

I was particularly impressed by our first bus of the day where the driver regaled us with such hits as ABBA’s Chiquitita, then Celine Dione’s My Heart Will Go On, and Wham’s Careless Whispers. Complete with LEDs all over the bus which flashed in time with the beat of the songs. Sadly I recognised all of these songs with Spanish lyrics.

We had to get a series of buses from Santa Ana to our end point at Antigua. First we went to Ahuachapan and then to the border crossing at Las Chinama. At Las Chinama we had to walk a half mile of no-mans land over a bridge and up a hill, wondering if we had accidentally entered Guatemala illegally. After finding Guatemalan immigration we then had a bus to Guatemala City and the our final one to Antigua City. At least it was cheap!

After experiencing papusas last night we were on the hunt for them again, and fortunately found a small El Salvadoran place that could meet this demand and supplied horchata in impressive beer glasses.

Pupusas originate with the pre-colombian Pibil tribes and implements for making them were found at Joya de Ceren. Although they have been around a very long time they weren’t particularly widespread until relatively recently. In the 1940’s they were mostly only found in large cities and it wasn’t until the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980’s that pupusas really spread outside of El Salvador as communities migrated to avoid the conflict.

Horchata is my favourite drink and is found all over central america, however it originated in western Africa. Based on creating a “milk” from dried and sweetened tiger nuts, the drink has varied through history, reaching Spain with the Muslim conquests and then again as it arrived in central america with the Spanish conquests. Nowadays in central america it is most typically made from white rice and flavoured with cinnamon, though the exact flavour and method varies between regions and even individual restaurants.

It was an early start to climb the Santa Ana Volcano which always makes me happy – not. Luckily Luis treated us to banana pancakes and won my undying affection.

Only one bus a day goes as far as the volcano so we so grabbed the 7:40 bus and on the way we passed Lago de Coatepeque, which is a volcanic caldera. We then hung around for over an hour waiting for the guide to leave at 11am with a group of us because they hide the entrance. However along with the guide you also get an armed security guy to follow the group and make sure no one gets robbed. So at least you feel safe.

The climb was pretty steep and reaches a total height of 2,831m above sea level. Fortunately you don’t start at sea level, so this was actually a relatively easy climb and took a bit over an hour.

On the way up we could see Izalco Volcano – another stratovolcano on the southern flank of Santa Ana. Izalco was nicknamed “lighthouse of the pacific” because it erupted continuously from its formation in 1770 up until 1958, but it is now quiescent so we didn’t see any lava today.

Santa Ana Volcano is a large stratovolcano, surrounded by vents and cinder cones on its lower flanks. The top of the volcano actually contains four nested calderas, with a small crater lake in the centre. It last erupted as recently as 2005, with rocks the size of cars landing up to a mile away – two people were killed and seven injured. Thankfully it didn’t make even a peep when we were up there!

At the top of the volcano the caldera is filled with acidic water and we could see it steaming and bubbling away. There was a slight smell of sulphur, but not too strong as there was a good breeze. You could see the convection of the clouds as they fell into the caldera before being warmed by the crater lake and rising again out of the caldera, it was quite surreal.

On the way back down the volcano we went up a viewing platform to get a better photo of Lago de Coatepeque. The lake is actually a volcanic caldera which was formed during explosive eruptions between 52,000 and 70,000 years ago. It still has some hot springs at the edges today and is about 10 square miles in total.

We had an hour or so to wait for the only bus back to Santa Ana, and finally got to use our rain coats in earnest. Fortunately we were waiting in the right place, as some locals flocked out at the last minute to grab the bus.

This time we managed to get a papusa and they are seriously good. I also had a hot chocolate since I was still cold from the climb at the volcano. This is so far the best hot chocolate in all of central america, it was soooo good.

We took a number of chicken buses to our seventh UNESCO of the trip – Joya de Cerén. Joya de Cerén means Jewel of Cerén in Spanish, and the site was added as a UNESCO in 1993. It is basically Pompeii but less impressive because all the peasants were much more clued up than the Romans and went away when the volcano erupted. However, you can have a look at the remains of their preserved houses which are very different from the stone temples we have seen previously from the Mayans.

Going around I pulled a fast one and joined an English speaking tour that was already going on. In the end the guide actually invited us to listen in instead of us follow subtly behind him – maybe we weren’t that subtle?

In 600AD the village was buried under 10m of volcanic ash from the eruption of the Loma Caldera on San Salvador volcano. Because the ash fell quickly and was at a relatively low temperature, the majority of the structures were preserved, with only organic material burning away. The eruption was likely preceded by small earthquakes which gave the inhabitants plenty of time to get out of the way.

Most of the buildings were constructed using a wooden frame on to which clay/mud was packed to bake in the sun. Roofs were generally thatched, so the hot ash burned away the roofs, but didn’t really affect the walls, though a few collapsed under the weight of ash. This gave us the opportunity to see how the majority of Mayans lived.

The shaman’s house building is raised up, so that visitors ascend towards the gods when visiting. It is one of the few buildings to have a “window” – or in reality small holes patterned to provide ventilation without allowing anyone to see in. The layout of the building is complex so that there are no direct lines of sight into the inner areas, this was to prevent bad spirits from entering as well as to trap good spirits within. It also had a little waiting room bench outside and areas for offerings to be left as payment to the shaman.

We also saw a replica of the sweat lodge. It’s surprisingly roomy inside and would have been used as a communal area for bathing/expelling bad spirits. It also doubled as a maternity area according to our guide, though no one was sure how a 9 month pregnant woman is meant to crawl through the door. Heat is piped in from external furnaces, similar to Roman construction methods and the temperature inside can be regulated by a bung in the ceiling to let heat out if required, making it a reasonably sophisticated construction for a small village.

We then took a bus to Tazamul ruins which were small and much less impressive than other Mayan sites we have been too. The structures were covered in concrete by Stanley Boggs during reconstruction in 1942-44, as he deemed it sufficiently similar to the original appearance. Interestingly it seems to break down and require more maintenance than other sites we saw which were left as they were.

We took the bus back to Santa Ana in search of papusa but everything was shut on a Tuesday. Luckily an Argentinan street food van was there and we had choripan, a grilled sausage sandwich served with chimmichurri and salad. They tasted great, so good in fact we had two each!

We took a number of buses today but luckily everything went smoothly. We started with a collectivo at 7:20am to the Guatemala border to get our stamp. Then we caught a bus to Jocatan and the assistant was very helpful in taking our bags and placing them on the next bus we needed. We ended up at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere but only had to wait 10mins for a bus which luckily went all the way directly to the El Salvador border.

After crossing immigration in to El Salvador we then went on to our first colourful chicken bus to Metapan, then a longer bus ride to finally arrive at Santa Ana. Phew that was a lot of buses, but we arrived at 2pm so all in all made pretty good time. Although Honduras and El Salvador share a border it was actually much quicker for us to go via Guatemala and avoid the large mountain range that would otherwise mean a very long detour south.

Portions of the El Salvador/Honduras border remain disputed today, even with UN rulings in place. Some of the disputes are unresolved since the 1969 “Football War” between the two countries. Both countries had vast wealth inequality between the ruling classes and the general population. However when rioting ensued at the 1970 World Cup qualifiers between the two countries, the riots were a flash point and were used as an excuse for El Salvador to invade Honduras. Both countries governments blamed each others citizens for the inequality of course, not the ruling wealthy people…

We stayed in a lovely B&B and Luis our host was great at giving us advice on where to eat and how to navigate around the country. Definitely stay at Casa de Vieja if you are in the area. He recommend a lovely restaurant (Keka’s Place) complete with old TVs and radios in walls which had the best burger in central america as far as we could tell.

The liberty square in Santa Ana is dominated by the Catedral de Santa Ana on one side and the theatre on the other. It’s nice to visit a park that’s so well used by the locals.

Today we went to our sixth UNESCO. Yes, we went to Honduras solely to get another UNESCO ticked off – achievement unlocked!

It was a pleasant walk to the Copan ruins and at the entrance we saw many macaws feeding. Macaws are the national bird of Honduras and they have been reintroduced into the area from 2011.

Macaws were very important for Mayan culture and they used the feathers to decorate their headdresses. In Copan the ballcourt had images of macaws as part of the decoration showing how revered they were.

The most impressive part of the Copán ruins was the staircase, this has inscriptions running up and down, and is believed to be the largest discovery of Mayan text in the world. The text is a chronological record of Copan’s rulers and their achievements. Translating it completely has been made difficult however as this was only realised quite recently (1980s). In the 1930’s an attempt at reconstruction was undertaken without this understanding and with no idea how to read Mayan it meant many blocks were incorrectly re-positioned. More recent restoration has un-jumbled the blocks and made good progress on translating the text. Fortunately the lower 15 steps of the staircase were intact so could be used as a key to decipher the staircase’s meaning.

Copan is one of the southern most Mayan cities and was surrounded by non-mayan cultures. As such it developed a very distinct style to emphasise its Mayan control. Copan was a large city in control of this region, though it had a 17 year hiatus after its ruler was captured and killed by Quirigua’s king (as we found out when we visited Quirigua). Copan was strongly linked with Tikal as its ruling dynasty originated there. You can still see the impressive stelae built by 18 Rabbit before his capture and execution, the subsequent lack of stelae indicate Copan’s fall from power for the following decade or so.

From its peak of 20,000 people, the cities population declined in the 8-9th centuries dropping to only 5,000. However buildings didn’t begin to deteriorate for another 400 years as they were so well built. When the Spanish arrived the site was largely deserted with only farming hamlets in the area.

We also went to the museum within the site and were wowed by the replica of the Rosalila Temple in the centre. The original temple still exists buried beneath temple 16. The Mayans traditionally built their temples on top of each other so archaeologists can learn more about previous ages by tunnelling through the current temple to see what was previously there. The Rosalila temple was exceptionally well preserved and archaeologists even found offerings still within the temple.

We then had the left over meat from the previous day and watched a huge thunderstorm roll in. At least it’s consistently at around 4pm you are going to get wet.

While we waited for rain to end so we could have dinner, we changed our itinerary and added El Salvador to our list of places to go to. We will be going tomorrow on a number of chicken buses, hear more about that in our next post.

We are moving on to a new country today. However I definitely have a sore throat so it’s ice cream and crisps breakfast for me.

We took a coach to the border at el Florido and then passed through immigration quickly to get through to Honduras. A collectivo was there to take us to Copan Ruinas and was very nice in taking us straight to our hostel in the rain and helped us with our bags. It was particularly entertaining when the driver tried to take us up one of the cobblestone roads up a hill at least 45 degrees and failed half way up – “No es quatro y quatro!” The torrential rain made all of the cobblestones very slick so we had to slither back down and find an alternate way up.

We then waited for the rain to go away so we could grab dinner. Rainy season in Copan is certainly dramatic; the rain was coming down heavily for at least two hours. Our hostess didn’t speak any english, but we had enough spanish to get by and she was so welcoming and kind – kept us topped up with cinnamon tea at every opportunity!

Our meal in Copan made up for the rain though, we had more meat than I knew what to do with – we even took some back home with us for the next day.