Antigua, Guatemala

July 2: Copan to Antigua

We got up this morning fairly early and decided to go check out the local bird sanctuary, Macaw Mountain. They have about 50 or so Macaws there, many of which are rescued or old pets. It was really cool to get to see some of the birds of the area up close, even getting to hold some macaws and parrots. Macaw Mountain also has a breeding program, which is super cool because supposedly macaws used to be everywhere around Copan. After trying in vain to catch the museum in Antigua once more, we gave up and ate some lunch before catching our shuttle to Antigua. The shuttle ride was fairly uneventful, as was the border crossing into Guatemala (no exit fee from Honduras! sweet!). Arriving in Antigua, we eventually found our hostel of choice, ideally named "El Hostel", ate some dinner, and settled in for the night.

July 3: Exploring Antigua and Volcano-roasting Marshmallows
Antigua is a beautiful city, with cobblestone streets (pretty, but super impractical), colonial style architecture and is surrounded by volcanoes (1 active, Fuego, and 2 inactive, Acatenango and Agua). Agua is the volcano that is literally right next to Antigua. There are TONS of church ruins from the 1700s here. Apparently there was a huge earthquake sometime in the 1700s, and instead of rebuilding old churches, they just build new ones, which makes for some interesting sightseeing. After seeing just about as many ruined domes and arches as we could handle, we went back to our hostel and relaxed for a bit before our tour bus picked us up go hike El Volcan de Pacaya.  On our way, we ran into some pretty massive traffic and were delayed about an hour, so we didn't start hiking up the mountain until about 4:30ish. To top this off, there were some pretty ominous clouds and thunder lurking around the top of the volcano. We began our hike, which was pretty steep and reasonably strenuous. The hike is only made worse by the local with a horse following you nearly all the way up asking you "taxi, taxi?". Apparently our bargaining skills aren't up to scuff (and Phil's butt probably couldn't take another horse ride), because we ended up hiking the whole way. After making it up to the lava flow, we followed our guide out to a heat vent to roast some marshmellows. Its hard to compare roasted marshmallows, but these have to be somewhere at the top. By now it was getting kind of dark, so we snapped a few pictures and started down the mountain. Before long, it was dark and started sprinkling, but the walk down wasn't too bad.  Once at the bottom we had a much deserved beer, after which we boarded the van and made our way back to Antigua.









July 4th: Happy 4th at Earth Lodge

This super hippy art teacher staying at our hostel had told us about a 4th of July BBQ at this place called Earth Lodge, so we decided that was as good as place as any to spend the day. It was a good decision.  Earth Lodge is a sweet little hostel set up and away from Antigua on an avocado farm. The views are spectacular, including 3 volcanoes in the background (Agua, Fuego and Acatenango) and a ton of farmland. We spent pretty much the entire day just relaxing, reading, drinking beer (they had beers from Brooklyn Brewery, how crazy is that?), playing some cornhole, and chatting with other travellers. The food was amazing. For lunch, we had a pulled pork sandwich and a bacon cheeseburger, and then for dinner we had 2 bean chili (really good), homemade beer bread (really good), along with a few sides. After dinner, the whole place pretty much shuts down and everyone generally goes to bed (which is awesome). The hostel had made a mistake in their booking and apparently only had one bed available in their dorm, so Steph and I ended up saving some money by squishing into the same bed (which was fine for one night... and it was cold up there, so even better).