Antigua ended with a bang...or multiple eruptions

#6 Antigua, Guatemala

I've spent nearly three weeks in Guatemala, two of which I have been learning Spanish in one of the many Spanish schools. Like I said in my last post, Antigua is a pretty colonial town about 40 minutes from Guatemala City. I have really enjoyed spending a few weeks here, it's such an easy town to walk around (apart from every street consisting of uneven cobbles), it has lots of little coffee shops, restaurants, cool bars and lots to do around the city.

On one of the days after our tour ended, myself and two others from the tour decided to visit a Macademia nut farm called 'Valhalla' farm just outside of Antigua. It had come recommended and I had heard that their Macademia nut pancakes were famous! We decided to take a chicken bus. We walked to the main bus 'terminal' behind the big market and managed to find the bus for San Miguel Dueñas, the town where the farm was close to. As there are no official bus stops we asked the conductor on the bus to let us know when we were there. The bus again was absolutely packed with three to a seat and lots of people standing. The bus dropped us straight outside the farm with the locals helping us climb over everyone to get off the bus.

There are no scheduled tours at the farm so you just arrive and one of the workers there will give you a fifteen minute tour of the small farm. Our tour guide was Guatemalan and from the village nearby, he explained that a Californian man had come and set up the farm about 40 years ago and he still owns it. They donate the majority of their trees to indigenous villages so that the voyagers have a source of income. They do not use any chemicals on the trees and the machines they use can be made easily in the villages and do not require electricity. It was impressive how simple the farm was yet how much they gave to the community. We had to try out the pancakes which were well worth the visit to the farm for...as well as the beautiful bathroom.

Macademia nut pancakes for €5.00

Nice place for A tropical wee

The farm staff joked that it is the most photographed toilet in Guatemala! After the farm we decided to walk about ten minutes down the road to the local village of San Miguel Dueñas where we heard there was a local fiesta on that evening. As we walked into the town it was clear we were the only tourists that had been around in a while, we got lots of looks however most people would say hello.
It did however feel a bit uneasy, it was a pretty run down town. Once we got into the main square of
the town there were food stalls, games and a big stage by the church. People were dressed in a mix of
the traditional Mayan and standard clothes. We grabbed food from the vendors, a mix or tortillas,
tacos and gringas (a type of taco). They cost just over a euro each. We also just got some local beers
from the shop and sat in the square like all the locals were doing. There was a local band playing salsa music and the men in the band were dancing non stop with some people salsa dancing in front of the stage. It was a great atmosphere and good to experience a local fiesta.

The weekend before I was due to start Spanish lessons I had arranged to go to a place about 8km out of Antigua up the mountains called Earth Lodge. It is run by an American/Canadian couple. It has a large avocado farm, hiking trails, tree house cabins, stunning views, home cooked food, board games and hammocks! I spent two days and one night indulging in what they had on offer (including their own infused gins). In the morning when I was having breakfast, Fuego volcano was erupting, it was a surreal view to have while eating granola, fruit and homemade yoghurt. Which was delish. I also met some cool people both volunteers and tourists up there some who were also heading back to Antigua on Sunday evening.

When I got back to Antigua I picked up my bags from the hostel I had stayed at the week before and walked the five minutes round the corner to where I would be staying for the next two weeks. I had decided that while I was learning Spanish I'd stay with a local family that was organised through my Spanish school. The front of the home was a little shop/diner with a house at the back on the edge of town opposite a beautiful church called 'Iglesia de San Francisco'. I met the family, mum Violetta, dad Raphael and their four sons, who are all in their late twenties/early thirties. They were all so
friendly and even though they spoke English they said that they will mainly be speaking Spanish in the house.....at this stage my Spanish consisted of being able to order a beer, say yes/no and 'no entiendo lo siento'. I could also count to six........great. They made me feel welcome straight away though and it was nice to have my own room and actually be able to unpack for the first time since I left. The whole family had a really good sense of humour and the mum Violetta always made sure we were very well fed! The food in the house was basic and traditional, quite carb heavy with little
protein but lots of beans, tortilla, some chicken and pancakes and fruit for breakfast. Violetta also helped me bake a vegan cake one afternoon for one of the guys birthdays the next day! He got sung
happy birthday in seven different languages in school. Raphael, the dad was always joking and laughing, he was a taxi driver now but told us he used to be a narcotics drug officer in Guatemala City, he had so many hilarious and interesting stories as I'm sure you can imagine!

I learnt Spanish for two weeks in Antigua Plaza Spanish school. It is one of the smaller schools in Antigua with maximum seven students each wth a teacher. In Antigua the Spanish schools mostly offer one to one lessons. A friend from the group tour who I'll be travelling with for a while also started lessons in the school too. I signed up to do four hours a day from 8am to 12pm. My teacher Aura and I got on pretty well from the beginning, we had a lot in common. She was a great teacher and we also had a good laugh throughout the mornings chatting about everything (her mostly in Spanish and me in a mix of English and bad Spanish). I could not speak higher of the school, the owner Ana and all the teachers were great.  The evenings after Spanish classes were spent doing HOMEWORK!!...taking up free salsa lessons and sampling out the cool bars around Antigua.

I also joined a gym while I was there.....gym fabrica for about ten euro per week.
One evening I had arranged to come to a gym that Aura, my teacher said she had set up in her town, a suburb of Antigua where she ran classes five evening a week. She told me that when women in Guatemala get married it is common that they aren't really allowed leave the home to meet friends or go out. However since starting the classes in the gym some of these women have been allowed my their husbands to come to the classes, mainly as it the classes are only for women. The gym was just
a space in a backyard that she rented. I came to do tae bo and the class killed me! At the end she instructed the class (myself and three other Guatemalan women) to get mats to do abs...the mats were cutting from carpets. I was dying after the class and it just goes to show that you don't need fancy equipment or gym memberships to exercise. It was also really impressive that Aura had set this all up and how much the women who came looked forward to it and benefitted from it.

After my last day of Spanish, One of the guys staying in my home stay and I decided to go to a coffee plantation and music museum. It was just outside Antigua and in the same town where I had been for the Tae Bo so we grabbed the chicken buses there and back quite easily. It was called 'La Azotea centro cultural'. It cost about €5.50 for the music and coffee plantation tour. The first tour was about the traditional Mayan musical instruments and the tour guide only spoke Spanish, it was a bit underwhelming but the highlight was the coffee tour. It was really interesting and included two free cups of coffee. The coffee plantation was also accredited as fair trade and employed the same local families each harvest.

The highlight of the whole Antigua trip and the best possible way to round up my stay in Guatemala was an overnight volcano hike up the third highest volcanoes in Guatemala called Acatenango. There was four of us who booked on to do it but a total of 15 in our hike group. We had heard that it was pretty tough and freezing on the top. We got picked up at 9am and got to the volcano at about 11am, although that was a lot of driving on cobble stones picking other people up for the tour. It cost about €21 for the hike including tents, sleeping bags, mats, food and two tour guides. We did however hear that dinner was pot noodle and lunch was a grim sounding sandwich. Thankfully our Guatemalan mum made the three of us two massive sandwiches to take with us, we also snacked up and brought 4 litres of water and plenty of layers.....that with all our camping gear made our backpacks very heavy.
The six hour hike up was so steep and really tough with the heat. We made it to 'basecamp' at about 5pm and got the tents up. It was pretty cold up the top and seeing as we were about 3,600ft up, the air was also thinner and we were above the clouds but the views were astounding. The actively erupting volcano Fuego was just to the right of us and we were hoping to see it erupt that night but it can be quite unpredictable.

After us all laughing at the thought of pot noodles for dinner. By the time it came to actually eat them, I've never seen a group of people get so excited about dehydrated peas and instant noodles before. Our tour guides also had some wine and hot chocolate for us and our group shared some local tamarind liquor around the camp fire. The sunset was stunning and we were admiring the full moon when Fuego started erupting bright red lava! Unfortunately the photos just don't do it justice and my GoPro decided to die not too long after we got to basecamp. It continued erupting through the out the evening! I felt so lucky that we got to experience it

We all headed for our tents early enough as we still had to hike up to the summit!
At 3.30am we woke up....although I'm not quite sure how much sleep I actually got. It.was.freezing! Even with five layers on In a sleeping bag. In the pitch black with torches we literally pulled ourselves up over the volcanic sand with our trusty walking sticks (mine called rick) to the summit which is a total of 3976m high! It took about an hour and a half and it made basecamp feel like the tropics. The wind was icy and strong.

We finally made it up to see the sunrise and after nearly losing some fingers to frostbite we almost ran/slide back down to basecamp where we had crap coffee that tasted amazing and pastries. We packed up camp and made it back down in just over three hours! Enjoying the sunshine as we got further down the volcano. My legs were in agony by the time we made it back to Antigua but was happy knowing that the hostel we were in for our last night in Antigua has a beaut hot tub and cheap beer!

Next stop: Copan, Hondurus
Food: home stay meals, lots of rice, tortillas, fruit and some chicken
Drinks: Gallo (local beer), local tamarind liquor
Bars/restaurants: Toku Baru - really cheap curries, falafel and lentils. San Simon for really good cocktails and live music. Cafe sky for more expensive drinks but amazing views of Antigua. Samsara for the best vegetarian/vegan breakfasts.
Stayed: home stay for two weeks ($90USD)  for a week including three meals daily mon-fri), hostel Matiox is great, has a hot tub, nice crowd of people for about €8.50 a night.
Lesson 7: flip flops, alcohol and uneven cobbles will result in a nasty grazed knee #imhard