Sunshine and coffee

We awoke to the strange sound of no rain! Yey!! I sent Anna off on the 9am coffee tour of Finca Filadelfia (145Q). They run a free pickup from town and she was the only person there so got a private tour! She came back buzzing - in more ways than one, having seen the plantation and the drying, sorting and roasting process. Plus a few free samples.

I meanwhile went for a wander to see the sights of Antigua sans rain. The puddles had virtually disappeared, people were out everywhere, the coloured houses looked vibrant and the crumbly old magnificent structures looked, well, still crumbly. Plus you could clearly see the three volcanoes: Agua, Pacaya and Fuego. Fuego (fire) was smoking away - apparently lava is visible at night but so far we've been thwarted by clouds :(

Once Anna was back, I took her to the chocolate museum which I had visited earlier and we had a yummy truffle each.Then we walked up the hill to a lookout which gave a great view of the town with Agua as the backdrop. We then booked a bus for tomorrow, had some mango and pineapple and sat in the main square people watching (it was a public holiday so very busy).

Anna wanted a hot chocolate so we went to the chocolate museum where they were doing 2 for 15Q which is a good deal, however when we got the drinks they were disgusting! Turns out it was cacao rather than chocolate but it tastes like dishwater. The nice waiter brought us more cacao to give it more flavour but this and a ton of sugar couldn't disguise the burnt yucky taste! We didn't drink them, but at least the brownie was good. We went back to Cafe Condesa for 2 more hot chocs, which weren't quite as amazing as the one I had on Sunday but were still pretty great. We sat in the pretty courtyard reading / writing for a couple of hours.

Continuing our falafel tour of Antigua we went to Zoola for dinner (98Q) which has typical sit-on-the-floor-on-cushions type seating. The falafel was in wraps rather than pitas and whilst not presented as nicely as last night's, it had a lovely tangy sauce so it's a close call as to which is the best falafel joint in town (there are also a few others we didn't try so it's my kind of place). My mint tea was infinitely better at Zoola and it was cheaper too.

We paid our hotel bill - the friendly hotel owner had given us a big discount on our last three nights (which we hadn't booked) which saved us about $30 which was very lovely of him. He also gave us a free beer each - well two for Anna, one of which was a local dark beer so she was very happy!

Tomorrow we head north to the top of the country to Flores for the Tikal ruins. The tour agencies tried to convince us to get a night bus but we never end up sleeping that well and didn't fancy passing through GC at night. Plus we prefer to see the country as we pass through it. Our original plan was to first go to Lake Atitlan, a couple of hours from here, but the road is possibly blocked by landslides and it won't be much fun if the forecasted rain occurs. We were then going to go to Semuc Champney, some beautiful rivers, in the middle of the country. Again the road is supposedly blocked and the foreign office is reporting increased robberies due to this. Plus if it rains, they won't look so beautiful. So best be safe and hightail it to the top of the country!Weiterlesen