Lago de Atitlán..

Awakening at 6am to catch a shuttle bus to Lago de Atitlán : a 3-hour ride through the mountains that brought us to an amazing lake surrounded by volcanoes...

What about starting the day trip by a nice breakfast on the lakeside ?
You´ll notice the extra instant coffee powder on the table, kindly given by the waiter after we asked him why the ´cafe negro´ was so clear... ;-)
(and of course the Central America lonely planet guide)

Tough beginning of the day actually...

After the breakfast, we went for a nice hike along the lake, in order to reach the next village, Santa Catarina Palopo :

There we had a great meal in a small local comedoria. Our cook and waiters were the 12-14 years-old son and daughter of the owners, as their parents was out during the day !

On the way back to Antigua, the shuttle bus driver gave us a dramatic scenic ride through the mountains, showing us the damage caused to the roads by the last wet season´s landslides... We even had to drive through the river since the bridge was gone...

Mercado de Chichicastenango

Today we took a bus to Chichicastenango, as Thursday is market day. The town is absolutely different from Antigua, which is all clean and touristy! This one is very crowded (with local people this time :-) ), and somewhat more dirty...

After a couple of hours wandering around the market, we went for local market cuisine. Let's hope our intestines are ready to take it after only two days here... We were told by the owner that only Europeans venture there, Americans being too afraid of getting sick (it is excellent food though, and 4 times cheaper than anywhere else...)

Yes, the food IS delicious (petage de bide en regle, as would say Moliere). I know Sevag agrees...

Yet another delicious coffee break...

And in the special category, I like that ideally placed No parking sign...

This last picture is actually from yesterday: Antigua's cathedral by night... That was just minutes before attending a memorable local concert. The video will have to wait!

Let's get started - Antigua, Guatemala.

Avant toute chose, parlons langues :-). Je reçois régulièrement des plaintes de défenseurs de la langue française - dont je suis pourtant un piètre ambassadeur - concernant la langue de rédaction du blog. Pour régler ça à la régulière, je compterai les commentaires des prochains jours. Si il y en a plus en français, on repassera au français (oui monsieur). Sinon, sinon...... 

Before anything, let's talk business... Since we are French all three (baguette!), we have not really decided yet on the language for the following posts. More english comments will mean posts in english. If french comments win, we'll switch soon. spanish and swedish are off the game (indeed :-P)...

So the trip really starts on Monday, 0am, time to checkin in order to get the emergency exit seats (check :-) ). 

Arnaud, Sevag and me all met in Madrid on Monday night, eventually ending our scare of flight disruptions.

We had some time to read the guide brought by Arnaud over the 12-hour flight, direct to Guatemala city, with a quite surprising route over Halifax, New York, Florida,... Landing eventually arrived - for the record, an hour delay on a 12-hour flight is much more confortable than the 8-hour delay I had on the 50-minute flight from Toulouse to Madrid last week. After a short time of bargaining, we got on a cab to Antigua, which used to be the capital of Guatemala until a terrible earthquake teared it down in 1773 if my memory is correct (and the Lonely Planet's).

The city is surrounded with three massive volcanoes. But we probably wont climb any of these, we will wait for smaller ones further south (still digesting Christmas).

And here is a picture to prove that we all got here alive...

I will try to keep the map to the right updated, with as usual the blue flag showing our position, and the different planned stops. Red pins are the places we will go to, whereas blue pins are only ideas so far (and might remain that way)...