Category: Central America
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Viva León!
After a bleary-eyed 2:45am pickup from our apartment in El Zonte, we finally bagged the best seats on the shuttle – marginal win! With a quick stop in El Tunco to scoop up a few more travellers, we were soon winding our way towards Nicaragua, ready to trade surf towns for smoky volcanoes, political murals,…
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Facing the waves in El Zonte
We hadn’t planned to stay too long in El Salvador – more to claim back some days from staying longer than expected in Guatemala! We had planned to visit Honduras next overland on our way to Nicaragua, but just at the start of this year the Honduran government changed it’s entry requirements for British citizens…
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Surprising Santa Ana
From Juayua we got the public bus to Santa Ana, which is direct for just $0.70 each. However we had to wait a while, we heard the bus goes every hour at 10 past, so at about 11am we headed outside the hostel. We were on the street where the bus would go down, turn…
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A-maze-ing Ruta de las Flores
Our time in Guatemala was at an end, and so we booked a shuttle to take us across the border into another new country for the both of us; El Salvador. We booked with Gekko Travel, but a G Adventures bus is what eventually picked us up (about 40 minutes late). It had come from…
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Motmots, Volcanoes and Alfombras in Antigua
To get from San Marcos on Lake Atitlan to Antigua Guatemala by public bus looked like a bit of a mission, with potentially 5 different buses changing in 4 towns… So we booked a tourist shuttle to take us for Q140 each which we didn’t think was bad for such a long journey. We arrived…
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Exploring Lake Atitlan
From the city of Xela it’s only about a 2.5 hour drive to the scenic Lago Atitlan, nestled in a mountainous cloud forest region surrounded by volcanoes. We were super excited to visit. We headed to the main Xela bus terminal in a £1 Uber, and then some locals helped us find the bus to…
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Unexpected Birding in Xela
The next stop in our Guatemala adventure is the town of Quetzaltenango, also known as Xela (sheh-lah), since its original name in the Kʼicheʼ Maya language was Xelajú Noj. We wanted to come here for another slice of authenticity. Basically, we’ve heard that although Antigua Guatemala (Old Guatemala city) and the towns around Lake Atitlan…
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Seeking Quetzals in Cobán
We returned to Flores from Tikal and planned to leave the next morning at 8am on a shuttle to Cobán. We booked a shuttle as I couldn’t find a reliable way to get to Cobán on public buses, especially since the journey requires a river ferry crossing too. The shuttle was reasonably priced and would…
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Incredible Wildlife and Ruins at Tikal
From San Ignacio in Belize our next stop was Flores in Northern Guatemala. Once again we waited at the bus stop for over an hour to get a bus to the border town of Benque, then hopped in a short taxi ride to the actual border. Entering Guatemala had to be one of the easiest…
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Sweating in San Ignacio
The next leg of our journey takes us inland towards Guatemala to the popular town of San Ignacio in Belize, close to the border. We had planned on getting the bus again from Dangriga, it would have been the same one we got there, but Robbie and Ciara who we met in Tobacco Caye were…
Travel Alchemist 