Year 7

and we celebrated by going to the newest place on earth, Well, one of them....

Lake Atitlan and western highlands

In the last week of June, we left Antigua Guatemala and headed to Panajachel on the shores of Lake Atitlan. The lake is a very deep (220m - 340m) caldera formed by an eruption 84,000 years ago and has three volcanoes on the southern side. Mark has already posted the view we had from our apartment, so here is a different one looking down on the town

We did a day trip to Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela in Mayan), Guatemala's second city. Lots more old buildings and gardens

Another day we went by bus across the mountains and valleys to Chichicastenango. the largest craft market in Latin America. Such a riot of colour, it was amazing. Stalls with crafts next to fruit and veg next to chickens (both alive and dead) and anything else you can think of.

This country is truly beautiful, with hillsides growing corn and maize right down to the verges and crops wherever there is space, interspersed with trees and all things green.

One day we did a tour of four of the villages around Lake Atitlan - San Marcos for breakfast

Then to San Juan La Laguna

Then to San Pedro La Laguna where they were having a fiesta

and finally to Santiago Atitlan where this was our view as we had lunch

We are now back in Antigua Guatemala while we wait for our insurance company to make a decision on how they can help us with our next move to South America. And pause... 

The wheels have finally come off

After almost 6 years of travel and temporary living, we've finally come up against something that has derailed our plans - Nicaragua.

Originally we expected to be starting to drive through El Salvador about now, with a plan to spend a couple of weeks each there, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, arriving in Panama city in early September to arrange shipment of the car to Colombia (we always planned to drive through the narrow part of Honduras quickly as its so corrupt)

But, with the violence in Nicaragua, the UK government has issued a travel advisory prohibiting all but essential travel, which in turn means our travel insurance won't cover us there and if anything goes wrong the government probably won't help either - there is no British embassy in Managua. And you just know that however hopeful you are,  a couple of obvious gringos with poor spanish driving a US plated vehicle are bound to find trouble.....

So, what do we do? Our visas are good for another 2 months here in Guatemala. They do also cover us for El Salvador, but if we take the car out of Guatemala then we can't bring it back in for another 90 days. it boils down to two major options, keep the car and somehow continue, or lose the car at this stage.

• We could drive back up through Mexico, hoping they let us and the car back in, and drive back up to the US, who could also refuse us entry as our last visa slips were only returned a few weeks ago, and try to sell in the US. Problem is its probably around USD1500 in fuel and tolls for that trip, and we then still have to try and sell the car in the US while renting somewhere to stay, and it isn't somewhere we want to go back to with the current administration.

• Sell the car in Guatemala unofficially, probably to someone who wants to drive the pan American highway north and visit the US where they would be able to sell it. Possible, may take us a while to find someone, but backpacker/traveller season is just getting underway here. But that still leaves us with no vehicle for south America

• Ship the car from here to South America. Possible, but expensive. We were expecting to pay around USD1200 to ship it from Panama to Colombia anyway, but quotes for shipping from here are double that. And we would have to ship to Ecuador as the Pacific coast and ports  in Colombia are also no go zones according to the Foreign Office. And ports in El Salvador and Honduras are allegedly so corrupt there is no chance your vehicle would ever actually make it onto the boat. Means we would miss Costa Rica and Panama, and a chance to visit Cuba, all which I was looking forward to, but its not the best time of year to be visiting them weather wise, and we can always do them as a fly through another time - maybe on the way back from the south Pacific in years to come.

And despite having paid extra for travel insurance that is aimed at independent travellers and does specifically include coverage for cancellations and curtailment in the case of government travel advisories, it doesn't look like they are going to help us in any way - typical.

So, we've agreed a deal for a couple of months apartment rental back at the place we stayed in Antigua while we try to work this out.  At the moment we're favouring the ship the car option in late August - its expensive, but we've learned that having a vehicle is so much nicer than trying to travel as a backpacker, and its still cheaper to ship the Suzuki than rent down there for the amount of time we will be there, and the logistics of buying another vehicle down there and finding an address to send the paperwork to and waiting while it comes through before you can cross a border and still wanting to end up in Rio for Carnival are something I really don't want to mess around with.

If  Nicaragua does settle down in the next couple of months we could still drive through quickly and sort of stick to the original plan, but as more time goes by the less likely a quick resolution is looking.

Its a nice apartment in a small complex with view of the live volcano, a nice patio area and a propane BBQ so we can cook for ourselves, and even though we are coming into busy season the owners gave us a 45% discount and moved a couple of other bookings around so we could keep the same place throughout, and its a lively town with lots of ex pats and tourists. I'm sure I'll still be bored and climbing the walls after a couple of weeks, but that is probably true of anywhere that doesn't have a ski hill or a workshop. And at least in the highlands the weather is pleasantly tropical rather than scorching and humid, and it does have some spectacular thunderstorms.

So, breath in, breath out, twiddle thumbs, and repeat.....