After a few more flying bus adventures through the mountains and getting off over 1500m higher than when we left off in Panajachel, we were left feeling slightly shell shocked, and as we had no idea where we’d been been dropped off (actually flung off, as the bus driver didn’t stop for us to get off, or for us to get or bags off the roof of the bus), we decided to get a tuk tuk to take us to our hotel. We were led through a pretty flowery courtyard and up a flight of stairs up to our room, which had a fireplace, I was relieved to see, and a beautiful balcony which looked out over the mountains.

The drop in temperature caused by the altitude was immediately noticeable, and after we had had a wander around the small town to get our bearings before we went to visit the market the next day, we sat on the balcony with a beer huddled up in blankets to try and keep warm. Dinner was the usual hurried affair and we were in bed early tucked under no less than five blankets!

After a very cold night, we were woken early by the noise of the market setting up and trucks revving as they struggled up the steep and narrow streets. We had breakfast right on the edge of the market while we compiled the very long list of presents that we needed to get and a few goodies for ourselves. We had purposefully not brought anything throughout our trip as were were counting on getting everything at the market.

We were surprised at the goods on offer at the market, I don’t think either of us had realised that although it does cater for tourists, it is mainly for people in the surrounding towns and villages that need to get their supplies for everyday life. So there was a huge area dedicated to selling dried fish, fresh fish, dried meat, fresh meat, dried fruit, fresh fruit… the list goes on. Having visited many markets all over the world, I braced myself for the pungent aromas that was to be expected from fresh meat and fish in a hot climate, but I was pleasantly surprised. It must have been because it was so much cooler that the small was much more bearable and the fact there were so few flies about, making it much easier to have a good look at local delicacies though I still couldn’t quite bring myself to try any of them!. The slight downside to the fact the market was more like an open air supermarket (albeit with more atmosphere!) was the fact that we couldn’t get all of the presents we were hoping to find. We still managed to get one of the very brightly coloured blankets, a few Christmas decorations, a beautiful hand-carved and hand-painted ceremonial Jaguar mask, a woven tablecloth (that we wished we could keep for ourselves!), a gorgeous jade and silver bangle for our friend’s newborn baby and some fantastic black jade earrings for myself. It was a hard day’s work and we rewarded ourselves by layering ourselves with blankets out on the balcony again and have a few beers.

Dinner was spent in an empty restaurant looking out over a fast disappearing market and a faster diminishing crowd. I loved Chichi (as it’s affectionately named), but I was starting to look forward to going back to Guatemala City and then back home, as it felt like we had been away for so long, and I was looking forward to central heating again (the promising fireplace in our room never did get lit)!

The last Central American bus ride we took was less fearsome than the previous ones, but what it lacked in excitement was more than made up for by the fact it had the densest human population per square centimetre that we had encountered so far, mainly due to the fact that the bus we first got on broke down and we were squeezed onto another full bus that was headed the same way. It was a long journey which felt longer due to the cramped conditions (people were even squeezing themselves into luggage racks), but we arrived back in Guatemala City all in one piece, and we checked into our motel.

That evening we read up on good places to eat in Guatemala City, as we wanted to spoil ourselves before a fairly hellish few days of travelling back to the UK, so we caught a cab across the city and found a restaurant that the guide had been raving about… and it was empty. After the bland and chewy meal was finished we went to a (German run) bar a few blocks away that actually did have a lot of people in, and a good atmosphere, but unfortunately for us we were no longer really in the mood to carry on drinking for long, so we went back to the motel again for a good nights sleep.

Well, until 4am anyway, which is when the city bus system seems to swing into action and toots and revs its way through till dawn, just underneath our window. It was because of this that we decided to switch hotels so we could get a last good night’s sleep in Guatemala. We dropped off our bags at the hotel so that we could check in later on and went off to do some exploring.

We started off at the city’s main square which had the government palace on one side and the beautiful cathedral on the other, and we spent a good few hours wandering the areas around the square and getting a bit more shopping done (we hit the super-tourist market to get the essential Guatemalan tat) and soaking up the atmosphere. Once we’d had enough of being semi- cultural, we decided to go and see one of the strangest tourist attractions we’d ever been to. The to-scale relief map of Guatemala. Yes, really. It was a strange scale, the vertical scale of the many mountains being of a different scale to the horizontal scale of the land, creating these huge peaks and valleys, and I finally realised why it had taken us so long to travel what I had presumed what a relatively small area of land. Why the relief map had been built however, I will never understand, other than it was 1905 and that there was no reason why not!

After checking into our lovely hotel and walking through the lovely corridors and walking into our lovely room to have a look at the lovely view from our window… I mean the brick wall built less than 10cm away from our window, I decided to have the first bath I’d had since leaving the UK and get ready for the reality of being back in the UK at the end of November.

I wont bore you with the details of our dinner that evening- even though it was a Peruvian restaurant, the food was exactly the same, and we got our last early night.

We were up at some ungodly hour the next day to catch a cab to the airport, where we flew to Flores (near Tikal where we first started our Guatemalan adventure), and then flew on to Cancun, where after a short wait we’d then fly back home. The firs two flights were short and on the cutest, smallest plane I’d ever been on, and Cancun airport was as rubbish and tacky as the rest of Cancun was, and I was actually pleased to be leaving.

I made the comment to Rick in the last week of our holiday that it felt like time had really dragged on since we left the UK the day after our wedding. I didn’t mean it in a negative way at all, I simply meant that three weeks had felt like a really long time away, and I was looking forward to getting back, and starting our lives as man and wife. Rick was definitely of the mind that he could have stayed away a bit longer! I, on the other hand, was looking forward to seeing our cats and our friends, and catch up with our families, and gossip about the wedding and most importantly- open all of the presents!