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The journey to Antigua was a lot smoother than from Flores to Semuc. We had good company on the bus and the roads were a lot smoother.
We had decided to stay in Antigua for a few days as all the moving around every couple of days was exhausting. It was time to relax.
We got to Hostel Holistico and settled in. The owner, Cesar and his friend, Sergio led us to a decent and cheap local restaurant, where they generously paid for booze for the group (there were 7 of us). We had some delicious typical Guatemalan food and had a good laugh. Both Cesar and Sergio were quite interesting characters, both very openly gay and quite excitable. Cesar is part Guatemalan and part Argentinian, whilst Sergio is Mexican but speaks fluent French and German as he has lived in Switzerland for 25 years. After dinner a few of the group headed to a bar. After the long day travelling I knocked out in bed. Things turned out quite messy and one of the blokes, an Aussie called Ryan was feeling worse for ware the next day as we looked at pictures of him dancing on the bar.
In the morning we set off on a walk to a nearby viewpoint. We walked around 20 minutes and were able to see all of Antigua bathed in sunshine, as well as Agua looming over it
We booked onto a trek up Volcan Pacaya in the afternoon. We set off in a group of around 12, driving for around an hour and a half before setting off up the volcano. We had a decent guide who talked us through various plants etc and led us up the steep 'path' relatively quickly. We even stopped to get some Mayan tribal face paint fresh from a tree. As we got further up, the ground consisted of black gravel/sand that was hard work to climb. Every couple of steps up led to a slip down half a step. I worked up a sweat pretty quickly.
After trekking up around 4km, we started walking towards the crater. The terrain levelled out, it was quite strange looking around. We were surrounded by fog and it was noticeably cool, but the land was black and arid. We could have been on a different planet. We passed various strange looking volcanic rocks and then reached a small hole in the ground. We each took it in turns to climb in. It was like a sauna inside, a shock to the system when the air around us was so cool. A few minutes later the guide picked a rock up off the floor and started juggling it around from hand-to-hand. It went from person to person and they all did the same. When it got to me I realised why - it was scorching hot, heated by the volcano. Our final stop was my favourite. The tour guide pulled out some bags of marshmallows and we each skewered a few onto some sticks he had previously given us. There was a small opening in the rocks under which it was scorching hot. We stuck the marshmallows under and toasted them. Delicious.
The trek back down was interesting. Because of the terrain we pretty much had to run back down the volcano. My ankles almost turned a couple of times but it was a great laugh and a great bit of exercise. We got back to Antigua exhausted.
That evening one of the guys (German Mike) was leaving so we went for drinks at an Irish bar (Reilly's). Despite not being drunk, I was dragged up onto the bar to dance in front of the crowd. I wasn't the only one up there but it was still pretty embarassing. I left to try and find some people we had met on the bus to Antigua but managed to get lost and spent an hour searching for the hostel. Nightmare.
The next morning we were up early to head out walking in Antigua. We strolled for a few hours, taking in the town's architecture and ruins (caused by earthquakes). Mitch spotted a kid with a banana dipped in chocolate and peanuts. He got a hilarious craving for this and so we walked for over an hour trying to find a place to buy it. We got ripped off by a street seller who gave us a terrible banana and chocolate ice cream and charged us Q10. In the evening we met up with Viktor, Jonathan and Konstantin from Semuc and enjoyed a few Cuba Libres before heading to an underground bar (all bars in Antigua have to shut at 1am) which had a special police lookout who let us in discreetly.
Our final day in Antigua was just about relaxing and doing very little. We met up with Ilona, a French-Canadian girl who I had met in Merida, and her friend Faisal, as well as Mike, one of the Americans from Semuc, for an awesome dinner at an organic restaurant and a beer.
All-in-all I thought Antigua was ok. The hostels there seemed to be trying too hard to make it a party town, which it isn't. Far from it. In hindsight I would have left a day earlier and come to Lake Atitlan.
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