I learnt my lesson in San Pedro and this time I have asked for 1 Spanish lesson before I sign up for the whole week. It went pretty well and my teacher is a lot more conversational than my last one. So I will start next week as well as helping out [...]

It was a beautiful ride and just before Monterrico I had to put my bike onto a skip for a 30 minute ferry through the mangroves. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre my bike but Julio had said that once I took of my helmet I would have 10 blokes [...]

You all might think that I am living the life of Riley. Cruising around on my bike, soaking up the sights, no cooking or cleaning, seeing beautiful people and interesting places. But personally I don’t think that I have nearly as much hammock time as I was anticipating. I had thought that [...]

Wednesday morning Julio took me up to the Mixco Viejo (old) Mayan ruins situated on a number of hill tops. Due to the limited access this was one of the last cities to be conquered by the Spanish. We were the only people there and beauty of the hilltop views and the serenity [...]

Out of all the things that I have done so far visiting Casa Alianza was probably the most daunting. When I arrived they only spoke Spanish to me so I had no idea what they were saying and felt quite uncomfortable. Finally someone took me to the house of teenage mothers and luckily [...]

Went I met Sri in Tikal he said that he had taken his Suzuki V-strom into the Suzuki dealership in Guatemala City and they had done an excellent job. So seeing as how my bike had yet to see a Suzuki dealership and I had just hit 14,000 miles I decided to drop it [...]

The next day we did a tour of the coffee plantation and saw where they shelled, cleaned and sorted the beans using hydro power before they are left to dry.
Then we saw the rubber trees which are tapped for the sap which is used to make rubber products and the liquid to make latex.
Afterwards we [...]

I was heading off to a jungle lodge with my riding amigos from Guate City (thanks to Julio and Lusia for arranging the weekend and putting me up) and as Andres was out of town I left all my luggage in the city and had Karla on the back of my bike.
Since being in Guatemala [...]

I was invited back to Guatemala City to go for another riding weekend to some Mayan ruins with Julio who is studying the Mayan culture at university so it was an offer that couldn’t be passed up.
During dinner I was telling them about being escorted by the police to Antigua and I mentioned that one [...]

You know when someone tells you that a movie is the best one that they have ever seen and when you see it you are a bit disappointed. Well unfortunately someone told me that Pacaya (an active volcano near Guatemala City) was the coolest thing that they had seen in their lives and inevitably [...]

When I told one of my fellow travellers that I had been writing my blog he told me that I shouldn’t be disappointed that nobody reads it (even though he had never seen my blog). Particularly if I wrote about what I was eating each day. So here is what I had for [...]

Before I left San Pedro I had asked some locals about the back road to Antigua and was told it was all safe except for a 10km section just after leaving town, that people had been robbed on. It had been recommended I contact the policia and ask for an escort from the next [...]

After finishing my Spanish class I stopped in a little diary (NZ for convenience store) and met a Guatemalan girl that was brought up in the US, post graduate in Holland and France and worked as an international event coordinator. She was taking a bit of time out to spend time with family, evaluate [...]

I am starting my last day of Spanish classes in San Padro. When I asked if I could stay with a host family the school said my Spanish wasn’t good enough so I ended staying in the school’s dormitory. At first I thought I was getting a great deal paying half of what [...]

When I emailed Casa Alianza UK to find out about seeing one of their projects their reply is below. I am going to go and try and see them next week hopefully it will inspire people to donate so that it doesn’t close down in other countries.
Dear Annette,
We have been following you blog with [...]