This is Gill
Today Ant has gone off to climb the Pacaya volcano – yet another active one. Even the promise of toasting marshmallows at the top wasn’t enough to lure me up it’s steep, hot slopes. So I am ensconced in “Fernando’s Kaffe” next door to our hotel enjoying dos crepas with nutella and the best coffee ever and managing to order in Spanish. We are quite proud of how our Spanish is developing. Our understanding is much better (as long as we ask people to speak slowly) and we were both truly amazed that we could follow all of the hour long talk at the museum yesterday. We are learning by using waiters and bar staff as unpaid teachers, insisting we converse only in Spanish (when most of them here speak at least some English) and getting them to correct us as we go! As far as we are aware, we haven’t made too may “faux pas”. The major one was Gill ordering a “Margarita Rocas” with no ice, only realising later that Rocas means ice cubes… The second nearly faux pas was trying to decipher the menu and searching madly in out trusty dictionary to translate “Nacho’s Fridas” – the word “Fridas” was nowhere to be found. Luckily, we realised before we asked the waiter that “Frida’s” was the name of the restaurant we were in…..
And this is Ant
Very excited to be going up an active volcano, makes geography lessons of all those years ago seem relevant. 6am start, for a 10US$ all in trip – expectations were low. Bouncy minibus as were hurtled along for 1.5 hrs for all of 25km!! Jose ( who we had met yesterday at the coffee farm) was on the bus and it was good to chat to him in spinglish. The drive took us past Guatemala city that was hidden beneath a blanket of cloud and looked like a glacier from above.
Bus mobbed by kids as we stopped selling walking sticks. Yet again I was unprepared, I only had big notes, I could have bought their houses but not their sticks. The walk is only for two hours or so each way and climbs 600m , passed initially through farms on the steep lower slopes and then we hit ash. We were followed by dogs looking for scraps and young guys on horses shouting ‘taxi’, hoping to sell rides to the weak.
The views as we walked were amazing, three perfect volcanic cones in the distance, appearing above the cloud, Fuego showing off as is usual. As we climbed beyond the farms, we hit ash which was much trickier to climb as you kept sliding backwards. Good fun though. The lava field we were crossing was less than two years old and there were many areas of hot air escaping. Eventually we got to the fresh red hot lave flows, moving at quite a pace down the mountain, The heat was intense and there were no safety barriers or warnings at all. Where else in the world could you have this level of unfettered access.
Too soon it was time to retrace our steps, not as exhausting but trickier on the knees!
When I got back to Antigua I was desperate for food , Gill had sent me of with no breakfast and only water, she has done this before and is reminiscent of her and Deryn talking Kev to the park with a shilling and bottle of water!!! So lunch beckoned. Back to Sabe Rico for our usual – a bottle of wine, demi cru tomatoes on pan integral with hummus salad in pitta with avocadoes. Amazing yet again!! So our last lazy afternoon in Antigua but we are sure there will be many more along the way.
Gill has adapted to the last minute changes of plan so well, that at one point in the afternoon we were about to change plan and go to El Salvador – we sobered up and sanity kicked in. We did however manage to book a shuttle seat to Montericco tomorrow with only minutes to spare as office was closing!!
As we sat over dinner, we reflected on the trip so far. We had dinner where we started with a plato tipico in as local a restaurant as we could find in Antigua. It is hard to eat local here. But here are our thoughts so far:
It was the soft landing we expected and had hoped for
It is not Guatemala
It isn’t Disney but can meet our comfort needs
It is a bad place for skate boarding – despite the aspirational local dudes carrying their boards everywhere. The streets are all roughly cobbled with lava and the best way to get a massage must be to ride a bike.
It was great to spend each afternoon doing very little – we have time so no rush at all.
You can say no to sexual approaches by restaurant owners up for a threesome.
Today Ant has gone off to climb the Pacaya volcano – yet another active one. Even the promise of toasting marshmallows at the top wasn’t enough to lure me up it’s steep, hot slopes. So I am ensconced in “Fernando’s Kaffe” next door to our hotel enjoying dos crepas with nutella and the best coffee ever and managing to order in Spanish. We are quite proud of how our Spanish is developing. Our understanding is much better (as long as we ask people to speak slowly) and we were both truly amazed that we could follow all of the hour long talk at the museum yesterday. We are learning by using waiters and bar staff as unpaid teachers, insisting we converse only in Spanish (when most of them here speak at least some English) and getting them to correct us as we go! As far as we are aware, we haven’t made too may “faux pas”. The major one was Gill ordering a “Margarita Rocas” with no ice, only realising later that Rocas means ice cubes… The second nearly faux pas was trying to decipher the menu and searching madly in out trusty dictionary to translate “Nacho’s Fridas” – the word “Fridas” was nowhere to be found. Luckily, we realised before we asked the waiter that “Frida’s” was the name of the restaurant we were in…..
And this is Ant
Very excited to be going up an active volcano, makes geography lessons of all those years ago seem relevant. 6am start, for a 10US$ all in trip – expectations were low. Bouncy minibus as were hurtled along for 1.5 hrs for all of 25km!! Jose ( who we had met yesterday at the coffee farm) was on the bus and it was good to chat to him in spinglish. The drive took us past Guatemala city that was hidden beneath a blanket of cloud and looked like a glacier from above.
Bus mobbed by kids as we stopped selling walking sticks. Yet again I was unprepared, I only had big notes, I could have bought their houses but not their sticks. The walk is only for two hours or so each way and climbs 600m , passed initially through farms on the steep lower slopes and then we hit ash. We were followed by dogs looking for scraps and young guys on horses shouting ‘taxi’, hoping to sell rides to the weak.
The views as we walked were amazing, three perfect volcanic cones in the distance, appearing above the cloud, Fuego showing off as is usual. As we climbed beyond the farms, we hit ash which was much trickier to climb as you kept sliding backwards. Good fun though. The lava field we were crossing was less than two years old and there were many areas of hot air escaping. Eventually we got to the fresh red hot lave flows, moving at quite a pace down the mountain, The heat was intense and there were no safety barriers or warnings at all. Where else in the world could you have this level of unfettered access.
Too soon it was time to retrace our steps, not as exhausting but trickier on the knees!
When I got back to Antigua I was desperate for food , Gill had sent me of with no breakfast and only water, she has done this before and is reminiscent of her and Deryn talking Kev to the park with a shilling and bottle of water!!! So lunch beckoned. Back to Sabe Rico for our usual – a bottle of wine, demi cru tomatoes on pan integral with hummus salad in pitta with avocadoes. Amazing yet again!! So our last lazy afternoon in Antigua but we are sure there will be many more along the way.
Gill has adapted to the last minute changes of plan so well, that at one point in the afternoon we were about to change plan and go to El Salvador – we sobered up and sanity kicked in. We did however manage to book a shuttle seat to Montericco tomorrow with only minutes to spare as office was closing!!
As we sat over dinner, we reflected on the trip so far. We had dinner where we started with a plato tipico in as local a restaurant as we could find in Antigua. It is hard to eat local here. But here are our thoughts so far:
It was the soft landing we expected and had hoped for
It is not Guatemala
It isn’t Disney but can meet our comfort needs
It is a bad place for skate boarding – despite the aspirational local dudes carrying their boards everywhere. The streets are all roughly cobbled with lava and the best way to get a massage must be to ride a bike.
It was great to spend each afternoon doing very little – we have time so no rush at all.
You can say no to sexual approaches by restaurant owners up for a threesome.
