Volcano- Mecano- Antigua- Aduana

We made it to the top of the steamy active volcano Pacaya !
What a wonderful experience to see lava flowing out just 1meter (3 feet) away from us!

Look at the pictures!

In Antigua we enjoy an expensive Mc Donalds and meet the only honest mecanic who checked the whole car, cleaned our breaks and gave us a few useful tips for free.

Exiting Guatemala a custom officer asked for $1 each. When we refused to pay (as it was clearly stated in our guide books we did not have to pay anything)... he said "ok, not a big deal." Nice try Mr Officer.
The problem is to identify the real ones from the fake ones...

First days in Guatemala

After the Caribeean beaches and snorkeling on the second world wide great barrier reef with sea rays, we were heading back west to Guatemala and its wonders :

Tikal to start with, in the middle of the jungle, magnificiant temples (the 5th ruins... thanks god not straight in a row !). For thoses who know what we are talking about we managed a triple "NI-VU NI-VU" to avoid paying the huge amount of special fees for foreigners=tourists=rich people=not us.
So we had a nice visit, refreshing shower, stay on the parking in the national park after a lovely detour through the rain forest...

Then we drove on a nice road to Rio Dulce. Little town south east of Guatemala where boats from all over the caribeean come hidding to escape hurricanes. Nice despite too many old US retirees spending their $ in Quetzals.
Another ni vu - ni vu on a hotel parking for the night almost cut short by one sticky retiree who thought he was our friend and wanted to tell everybody the story of his new friends coming from New Jersey and sleeping in their Red Jeep... (we hid the body in a swamp...) :-)



And here we are, escaping on a dirty bumpy road to thermal baths. A nice warm (burning) waterfalls called "El Paraiso". We spent half a day swimming in the natural pool, Stephanie speaking with her new Guatemaltese friend and Matthieu trying to catch some new Spanish words... But if our morning was relaxing paradise, our afternoon became a long bumpy nightmare, never ending... we experienced our first real bad raods and had to switch on the 4WD! At one point the road was still under construction and we first had to bypass some guards before slaloming between the giants Caterpillar trucks tahnks to their nice drivers. Soon we understood while they were building a new road.... when we crossed something like the "death Road from Bolivia" (we all saw the powerpoint with those dreadful pictures of trucks crossing on a one way tiny trail in the mountain : that was us).

Once we arrived, we deserved our first payed night in a safe parking of a backpacker hostel (still sleeping in the car to avoid bed bugs and dirty sheets), but we found out that with their free internet it was actually a pretty good deal.

Today we are experiencing our first rainy day, but this won't stop us... we are on our way to visit the Lanquin caves...

Click here to see our first pictures of Guatemala.