Tour de Guatemala

It's been a busy couple of weeks! In a (no so little) nutshell, with a few photos for your viewing pleasure, here's a re-cap:
In Antigua we mostly just toured around. From the roof of our hostel we saw the Pacaya Volcano erupt which was amazing and apparently rare to see - bright red lava came shooting out the top then turned into a thick smoke cloud. The tourist police escorted a group of us out to 'Cerro de la Cruz' (Hill of the Cross) which had a pretty cool view of the city of Antigua and one of the volcanoes:

From Antigua we took a shuttle to San Pedro La Laguna at Lake Atitlan. From there, we hiked Volcan San Pedro which was probably the most difficult thing we've done so far; it was four hours straight up with a painful lack of traverses. Imagine climbing very steep stairs for 4 hours while the air gets progressively thinner... talk about cardio. Here's the view on the way up:

Me & the guide's dog, 'Coyote', taking a very necessary breather:

Going down may have been even more difficult than going up as my knees were not agreeing with me... I guess I'm getting old, but the view from the top was worth it :)

From San Pedro we went back to Antigua for a night then caught an 8 hour shuttle to Lanquin where we stayed at the Zephyr Lodge in the jungle; this was the view:

We met up with some great people at Zephyr Lodge and had a lot of laughs. It was definately a highlight for us and we stayed a couple days longer than planned as it was so good, despite raining on & off the whole time. One day we toured the Lanquin Caves and waited until sunset to see the bats fly out - sitting at the entrance of the cave there are thousands of bats flying around you and into the night. It was kind of freaky, actually since it was pitch dark. Here's a pretty cool shot!

Another day we floated down the river in tubes and had a few cerveza's!

Our tour of Semuc Champey was awesome. It started in a water cave where we swam with candles, then did a hike to a lookout point where we could see Semuc Champey from above, then hiked back down to swim in the 'pools' and waterfalls for the afternoon

Another 8 hour shuttle ride and we made it to the island of Flores in Peten. We hired a canoe for a few hours and were both successfully sunburnt despite the SPF 45 we applied; it was a scorcher. The main reason we went all the way to Flores was to go to the Mayan ruins at Tikal National Park which were pretty incredible. Here's a picture in front of one of the temples:

Sadly, our time in Guatemala has come to an end; we loved it. After a full day on a crappy bus we are now in San Salvador in an air conditioned hotel room eating 'Pollo Campero'; it feels like +36C with the humidity so tomorrow we're headed to the beach! I will try to update more regularly if possible, and in a bit more detail!
We miss everyone at home and Jody wants me to note that he says "hi" :)