Once we left Flores after a good night’s sleep, we got on a bus at 9.30am and spent the rest of the day slogging it across the country to Guatemala City.

When I was last in Guatemala city, I was completely unaware of it’s status as a ‘dangerous city’. Nothing made me feel uncomfortable, or made me feel that I had to be any more on my guard than anywhere else I’d been, and I left the city unharmed, with all of my belongings and a fondness for the run down capital.

On my return this time, I was unfortunately aware that Guatemala City has a bad reputation, and I felt uneasy once we got off the bus ( after a mere nine hours this time) in the dark, in an unknown area of the city. The feeling was made worse by the cab driver telling us to lock the car doors, Friday night drunks in the street and not being able to find the hotel we wanted to stay in.

Cities are planned out in a grid system in Guatemala, and adresses are written in a fairly confusing format, as generally there are no street names, just numbered avenues that run north to south and streets that run east to west. An address would look like this : 12a calle 8a avenida 32, which is translated as 12th street, 8th avenue, number 32. So without knowing how the address system works first, you’re unlikely to find anywhere you want to go- hence why we couldn’t find our hotel.

We settled into a hotel that we could find for the night, went out into the deserted streets, found some overpriced Mexican food and had an early night, as the next day we were moving onto Antigua. We’d be spending a few more nights in Guatemala City at the end of our trip.

After a rubbish night’s sleep spent listening to the antiquated American school buses that Guatemala’s transport system is run on revving up outside the bedroom window, we caught the bus 40km out of the city to what was once the capital city of Guatemala.