Activity Summary
Saturday 20th May - Day 261
Travel to Antigua
Lunch at Kombu Ramen
Walk around Antigua:
Iglesia de La Merced
Santa Catalina Arch
Antigua Guatemala Central Park
Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro
Union Tank
Convento Santa Clara
San Francisco the Great Sanctuary
Dinner & drinks at the Antigua Brewing Company
Sunday 21st May - Day 262
Self styled walking tour
The jade museum / jewellery browsing
Various local markets
Lunch at Samsara
Intro meeting with Ox for Acatenango hike
Dinner at Romeo & Juliet
Monday 22nd May - Day 263
Nicola:
Smashed up the meathead gym
Dinner at Luna de Miel
Luke:
Day 1: Volcan Acatenango and Fuego hike
Volcan Acatenango base camp
Volcan Fuego summit (3,575m)
Tuesday 23rd May - Day 264
Luke:
Day 2: Volcan Acatenango and Fuego hike
Volcan Acatenango summit (3,976m)
Descend to base start
Wednesday 24th May - Day 265
Lunch / killing time at Luna de Miel
Travel to Guatemala City
Thursday 25th May - Day 266
Flight to Costa Rica & San Jose
Summary
Antigua
Antigua is a very nice city. The surrounding mountains and greenery is lovely, the city itself is calm, pretty and just a nice place to spend time in with tons of really good restaurants and bars. The cobblestone streets slow traffic so much it almost becomes a pedestrianised city.
It was a very nice place to settle after moving around at pace since Caye Caulker.
There isn’t masses to do, the big appeal being a nice place to relax in as well as the volcano hikes.
One really annoying feature of the city is that the sidewalks are annoyingly narrow with jutting windows that are an actual health hazard along with a Guatemalan population that could not be less aware of their personal space or lack social walking etiquette. Kind of like their aggressive driving style, their walking standards suck.
Acatenango & Fuego hikes
Luke opinion piece. The hikes were very enjoyable. Ox were a good company to go with, the tour group was fun, the views were excellent and the hiking paths pretty straightforward.
Personally, I found the whole experience very easy. The distance and elevation for each day wasn’t overly significant and I could have quite comfortably done both peaks and descended in a day. Others were saying they had struggled with the 40% less oxygen at the summit but personally I didn’t feel much different. The pace was very slow but that’s the price to pay for guided tours with such a large group. Rinjani was a lot lot harder.
However the 2 day 1 night experience gave the potential of seeing lava spurts which had great appeal. Sadly I had to settle solely for smoke but it was well worth it anyway.
In my opinion, the best thing I’ve done in Guatemala.
Guatemala City
We didn’t see much of the city at all, partly because we had read it wasn’t a particularly nice place to go so we hid away in our airport accommodation. Others we had met however said it wasn’t actually bad and there were some things worth seeing, but it didn’t appeal to us.
Transport
Antigua
San Juan accomodation -> [shuttle] -> Antigua -> [walk] -> Hotel
We booked the transport to Antigua from our hotel in San Juan which was super easy.
Guatemala City
We Uber’d purely for ease. There was a cheaper shuttle we could have tried but we couldn’t be bothered.
Accommodation
Antigua - Hotel Mansion del Rey
Number of nights - 4
Price per night per person - £13
For the price we paid for this place it really should have been better. Most annoyingly, the window shutters didn’t close properly so we had a constant invasion of mozzies, the worst happening in the middle of the night and being so loud both of us had to wake up on separate evenings to clap that motherjefffer. Mozzie deaths went comfortably into double digits.
The bathroom was private but the pipes stank and the shower was in some weird location, next to the kitchen a fair walk away and cold.
Having 3 single beds was nice and given Antigua had a pretty great temperature with its high altitude we had no need for a fan or AC (not that either way provided).
Did the job but really could have done without the mozzie invasions.
Diary
The direct pick up from our hostel in San Juan was a nice change. There was a minor change in meeting time we were only informed of when the hostel owner knocked on our door at 7am to let us know it would be 8.20am but the noise and light from outside wouldn’t have kept us in bed much longer. Nicola was pretty happy to be leaving the 1 toilet hostel.
We were the second people on the minibus that went touring around the towns around the lake, getting as far as San Marcos, and had positioned ourselves in the leggyest possible seats for max comfort. This was all going to plan until we had a strange wait in San Pablo, backed up to a much larger bus and seemingly were about to transition the bags from the roof and us in our comfy seats. For some reason this was called off and we finally continued on the road.
Once up the worst of the hill climbing we pulled over to make this change. We weren’t overly happy with this, having ‘travelled’ for an hour and a half to really only go 30 minutes up the road. Naturally our comfortable seats became less ideal, both us sitting next to randos which would usually be absolutely fine except Luke’s Israeli buddy was a bit of a diva. Clad in chav wear that was rather unflattering, for 15 minutes she seemingly took offence to having someone next to her, had an issue with space and at one point was seating her junk in Luke’s lap and was having some serious problems with the window behind her. Rather than have a normal conversation with the girl behind, she would passively aggressively huff and puff, then aggressively close the window. The girl behind rightfully was like wtf and then ensued a pretty awkward half argument over the window being open as the Israeli girl really didn’t speak good English. Eventually someone behind became a translator and one offered to move with Luke’s buddy. It was all so overly dramatic from the Israeli antagoniser and Luke would have been sad to lose the breeze if she had won. It all worked out in the end.
There was a short stop for a toilet & junk food break in the 4 hour journey to Antigua. We had relieved ourselves in the trees waiting for the bus transition so overall it was actually one of the more pleasant journeys of late. One person thought they’d seen some bags flailing over the edge (these are strapped down with rope only) so we did have to stop so the driver could check - a lot of people got out to also check for fear of losing their bags but all was fine.
With our bags reclaimed from the roof we walked to our hotel, dropped our bags in reception and went for some lunch at Kombu Ramen. Luke very much enjoyed the ramen, Nicola was less enthused. Antigua has a wealth of food options that are well rated but certainly are on the pricier side.
Now fed we were able to check in to our hotel room which while having our prerequisite separate beds (after being squeezed for space in San Juan) the room wasn’t all that great. Still dirty, the shower was in such a weird place and the pipes / toilet had some constant sewage smells that didn’t really support the higher rating on booking.com. More annoying for Luke was the window shutters wouldn’t properly close so the risk of mozzies was high, of which we killed 3 of as soon as we arrived. They would be a constant threat whenever we were in the room.
All settled we decided to go for a stroll around Antigua. It was fantastic UK National appropriate weather; cloudy, breezy & mid 20’s allowing a comfortable stroll around the city.
The city itself is also great. It has such a relaxed vibe that feels unbelievably safe, pretty cobblestone streets (although a pain in the ass to walk over), plenty of restaurants and bars with cracking views of mountains and volcanoes all around it. The cars are massively limited in how fast they can go because of the loose rocks which makes it much nicer to traverse as a pedestrian. One of the best cities we have been in on our travels and certainly the best in a long time.
Our walk around Antigua featured:
Iglesia de La Merced - a quaint little pop up market outside a church that had interesting yellow coloured walls.
Santa Catalina Arch - such a popular place for a photo they had even coned up a picture area, much akin to a smoking area outside a lively bar.
Shopping at a local store - we ended up buying a Mayan woman Xmas tree decoration to add to the colourful collection for when back home, the logic being that Nicola had already got a fridge magnet for the country so we would collect these items instead.
Antigua Guatemala Central Park - very similar to the Mexican Zocalo.
Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro
Union Tank - looked like a Roman bath set up in front of the nunery.
Convento Santa Clara
San Francisco the Great Sanctuary - quite a large church and grounds complex with a tomb for some dude called San Pedro. The church interior wasn't overly elaborate but the grounds outside were well kept and nice to walk around.
After our casual stroll around Antigua we walked to a relatively easy to get to viewpoint overlooking Antigua called the hill of the cross. It had a bit of an incline but the cool and breezy weather helped.
The views over the city were nice, Volcan Agua towering over directly ahead and the surrounding hills and mountains in every direction were cool. Visibility wasn’t the best due to the cloud cover but we enjoyed having a sit down chill.
Of interest to Luke was a well regarded local brewery called the Antigua Brewing Company so given we didn’t have anything planned for the next day, Luke messaged Tom who we had met in Tikal and all met up for drinks and some food.
The beer tasting board was decent, the IPA was the best on offer and Luke proceeded to get pretty drunk for the first time in a while. Was a fun night and we managed to snag a table in the rooftop bar area overlooking the city as the sun set. Making it to 10.30pm at the brewery was plenty fine for us before hitting the hay.
Luke was a little groggy from the multiple pints but that was all. Our hotel provided a simple eggs, refried beans and fruit breakfast so once fed we got back out into Antigua to have a wander around without any great plan.
It turned out the walking tour route was the one we had done the previous day so we ended up redoing this with a few additional ad ons. Luke did get his picture in front of the Santa Catalina Arch like all good tourists should.
We also jumped into a number of jade museam / stores so Nicola could have a browse. Not the cheapest and maybe would be something Nicola would buy if on holiday but nothing really stood out.
The animal / horoscope type affiliations to our birthdays made for an interesting read, Nicola’s Kej / Deer seemingly appropriate while Luke’s Kame / Owl seemed a little bit of a stretch in the likeness. Being labelled as the ‘end of all things’ seemed a little dramatic - he knows most people don’t like auditors but they’re not that savage.
Once we were done with our perusing we had lunch at a vegan restaurant called Samsara. It was a fair amount cheaper than other suggested places, provided nice food and a substantial portion where most around us seemingly unable to make a dent in their orders. Of course this wasn’t the case for Luke. Service was pretty terrible (seemingly understaffed) but we got a free show as we waited when a hippie US guy got attacked by a another customers dog, using his suitcase to hide away from the aggression which was all pretty shocking to watch, thankfully no one was hurt.
On our way back to the hotel we walked through another market which was more like a maze but didn’t spend much time here before walking back up the west side of the city. We killed some time in the hotel room before heading to our intro meeting for the Acatenango (Aca) hike due to start the next day. Nicola had been debating whether to take part as she hadn’t really been feeling 100% and was getting anxious about the lack of sleep, early rise and then savage uphill slog. In the end she decided against the hike and after Luke hadn’t slept on the mountain with a straight vertical climb with no warm up / minimal food, it was probably the right decision for Nicola not to do it. She would have been a whole lot faster than most of the group but the lack of sleep and food would have made it very difficult for her and therefore not even remotely enjoyable.
Luke joined in the hour long intro meeting with Ox expeditions for the Acatenango hike, along with most of the 30 strong group. Philipe would be our tour group lead, a 37 year old Swiss born with massive amounts of experience in the mountains. He briefing was thorough and for once Luke felt the tour company had all their shit together - it was a weird feeling. Nothing Philipe had said was news to Luke however and had all the hallmarks of the Rinjani hike just a whole lot easier. Whether the rest of the group was prepared for this was another matter.
Once done Luke rejoined Nicola back in the room, packed for the next few days and then had dinner at Romeo & Juliet. Expensive Italian food but it was good quality, especially the pasta. We did see two Western tourists having dinner as well who turned out to be two girls (Lea & Bess) Luke would do the tour with.
Nicola story time:
Nicola decided to have a relaxing, semi productive time whilst Luke was away. This involved heading to the nearest meat-head gym which to be fair was relatively female friendly. It was certainly affordable at £3.50 for entry. The gym was dated but served the purpose, and was effective enough in disuading Nicola from getting a boredom massage afterwards. So she headed home, grabbed lunch at a soup restaurant and then researched for the rest of the day at a crepería "luna de miel". The following morning was spent chatting to tilly and waiting for Luke's return...
Luke story time:
I was up and at the Ox office (fortunately only around the corner from our hotel) for 6.30am and was one of the last there. I only needed a hat & headtorch (ours had broken some time ago) and Nicola was kind enough to give me her gloves and the use of Basil. Basil was a very trusty companion, especially as the hiking poles on offer were in fact just long sticks - wholly impractical and not that useful for support as many would find when the flat base slipped around the volcano.
Everyone was required to pack some communal items but there wasn’t a whole lot left when I arrived. Everyone brought group water (I had 4.5l plus 0.5l of Powerade which was plenty), were required to take a tub of pasta and I ended up with some milk. For reasons unknown, bottles of wine were also carried up the mountain which could not have been less appealing to me and it would turn out to most as well. Such unnecessary weight when everyone’s in bed by 8pm… whisky would have been much more preferable. I have a feeling of those who rented 55l bags and had porters (seemed like most did) carried up quite a lot of these bottles.
My 30l day bag was expanded and refashioned by attaching my 20l dry bag to the outside given the water & communal items took a lot of space. It worked pretty well actually.
Everyone now kitted out we jumped on one of the two buses and had a short ride to a cafe for breakfast. It was a simple feeding of eggs, refried beans, tortillas, plantain and coffee but it was a decent start. It was slightly awkward speaking to people at first, I’m really not great at making the first move (this is usually Nicola) but got chatting to a 53 year old American who looked infinitely younger than she was and also another US guy that was an auditor in the US of NFP organisations. First time I’ve met an auditor travelling and I was sadly far more excited than I should have been.
Once back in the busses it was about an hour to the start of the hike. Everyone departed into a local house / courtyard to rent the annoying hiking sticks, grab porters and gear up for the start of the hike. At this point we had our first introduction to some of the many dogs along the hike that would follow us religiously from start to finish. Bess would find herself playing with all the animals she could find only to be told they could have ringworm based on a pretty gnarly mark Philipe had on his arm - she would swiftly stop giving the dogs attention but only after being chastised by another tour group member. The puppies were cute though, both at the base and base camp.
The hike then began. It wasn’t overly sunny throughout the day which was great for the first day. Shorts and t shirt were more than enough when walking and throwing on my Rab coat when the group stopped for a break. Good hiking weather despite the low cloud cover limiting views somewhat.
The first part was fairly steep with a fair amount of lose soil / gravel. It was deemed to be one of the harder sections by Ox and the group was almost immediately separated into a fast and slower one. The fast group consisted of between 6-8 people, depending on who was talking to who at the various stop points and then hangin back to continue those conversations, while the slower ‘group’ were incredibly spread out. It was uphill pretty much all the way to base camp and there were a lot of stops that went on for ages as we had to wait for everyone to rejoin. There were 4 guides which should have made it pretty straight forward to split the group into a fast one and then babysitters for the rest but this wasn’t considered. This really didn’t matter so much on the first day as we managed to make it to base camp in good time and then Fuego, and I had just consigned myself to the fact it wasn’t going to be a particularly strenuous hike. I ended up chatting to a lot of people within the group, predominantly Hamed (a lone Algerian travelling and working abroad), Jack & Ben (two 19 year old high school lads in Guatemala for a 4 days holiday) and Bess & Lea (two 28 year old US girls on holiday).
After about 30 minutes there was a section between two cafes that had a pretty narrow and annoying channel where those going up and other down would clash in a bottleneck. The barbed wire made this pretty challenging but most annoying was the insanely negative views of those we passed. They predominantly claimed the views were terrible, the hike was difficult and shouldn’t be bothered with. As someone who is very much type 1 fun when hiking this didn’t bother me at all but this did get to a lot of people. It was however all the more sweeter when we had outstanding views both days and everyone really did enjoy themselves (maybe more type 2 however).
The second section was deemed to be the fun one. The path footing became a lot more stable, we had passed all the oncoming traffic and the surroundings turned into cloud forest that it would seem most had never really experienced. It was nice, the moss covered trees being the clear indicator of the this climate but there was little landscape views from the cloud cover.
Hamed and I were tasked with hanging back to direct everyone to the lunch spot, rather than having the spread group accidentally go the wrong way so naturally embued all my positive energy into it while everyone crawled past already looking defeated. The lunch provided was the densest pizza bread thing that noone could finish.
Post lunch it was considerably flatter to base camp. Still pretty though and imagine everyone started feeling a whole lot better with the route.
We arrived at base camp at around 2.30pm. We had started walking at just after 9am and it was confirmed by Philipe that this was the slowest pace he’d ever had a group arrive at base camp. The views were nice but there was a lot of low hanging clouds. These intermittentantly cleared up and then everyone would run to get pictures of Volcan Fuego towering in the backdrop of our cabin site.
The Fuego crew set off at 3.30pm which consisted of the fast group plus a few others who were plenty fine keeping pace with Philipe. Again there were a fair few stops, one of which was for 10 minutes centred around a mushroom he bagged which began a huge chat about psychedelic mushrooms from those in the group who were enthused (turned out to be a fair few).
The hike to Fuego was scenic, added about 600m of elevation but was still pretty non-technical.
The summit was great. The clouds had formed around parts of the landscape luckily away from the volcano summit, but were impressive in their own right.
Volcan Agua was visible from the ridge line, towering in isolation above all mountains around it and over Antigua. Again the cloud cover for the most part had allowed us to truly appreciate the view.
Looking back at Acatenango was less impressive comparably but we could clearly see the campsites on the side of the volcano we had walked from.
Fuego was immense. The volcanic colours were popping and every now and again the volcano would release plumbs of smoke as pressure built up. Sadly we weren’t able to see any lava spurts due to its minor eruption a few weeks before but I was more than happy with the views and activity presented.
We settled at the Fuego summit (ish - safest point being 3,575m compared to the peak of 3,768m), donned all the layers we had and spent the next hour or so chilling, watching the incredible cloud cover, the colours of Fuego, the relative blandness of Acatenango and isolated Volcan Agua. We were the first group up to the summit which gave us plenty of freedom for unspoilt pictures.
As sunset passed, which wasn’t great due to the cloud cover, we set off down Fuego and back to base camp with head torches now required.
The guides had cooked us our pasta dinner, the unnecessary wine was passed around without much take up and everyone was in bed super early. I ended up chatting and laughing with Hamed, Jack & Ben, none of whom understood my people’s elbow reference (WWE & the Rock pre films) which actually made me feel really old, before we called it just before 10pm and settled into our ‘boys’ cabin.
The cabins were awful simply because the sleeping mats had the width of a small child so having a cabin of 5 grown lads in one was pretty tough. I much preferred the tent on Rinjani simply because of the shoulder space and ability to get in and out without clambering over everyone in the room. Safe to say, I didn’t sleep that night but I knew I wasn’t going to really anyway.
I listened to Obama's autobiography for a few hours, tried sleeping but just couldn’t switch off. This wasn’t helped by the strange array of snoring and half gasping for breath down the other end of the cabin as well as Hamed deciding to assert his dominance when he lay on his back and aggressively used his shoulders to force me out of the way. I ended up trying to sleep on the further half of my pillow and inbetween two of the roll mats. Alpha’d.
The previous night I had threatened to wake Hamed up with a people’s elbow when he said it was likely he would ignore the wake up call. Much to everyone else’s disappointment he sat bolt upright when the 3.15am roll call came in.
I didn’t sleep much when on Rinjani either so I knew I would be absolutely fine here, almost like my ridiculous late night working sprees pre gap year were preparing me for night volcano hikes. Got to take the positives. The adrenaline and excitement of the hike contributed a lot to this as well, the guide saying there were two types of people; those that would pass out and struggle to wake and the me type. That’s how sad I am.
I chowed down on my last banana (they had been obliterated in my bag but I ate them anyway) and then the group was off walking at 3.45pm. It was pitch black bar the line of head torches lining up the single track path along the mountain. From the group about 8 stayed behind and didn’t ascend, one of which we nearly left behind because of an ill timed toilet run, a squeak of ‘I’ve been left behind’ for her to then decide it wasn’t for her anyway and settled back down at base camp. Another went full Nicola and was throwing up shortly after starting - had to feel for her, I’ve seen that action many a time and it’s not pleasant for her.
The pace was disgustingly slow. We ended up waiting multiple times mid route for the group to catch up plus the various planned stops which meant we were still a way off the peak when the sun started rising. I got pretty annoyed with the thought of losing out on sunrise after paying all this money for what was essentially a super simple hike where I only needed the group to camp. I went full billy big bollocks, voiced my discontent to Philipe and told him I was going to run off ahead. I was initially declined but he quickly went back on this suggestion and pulled one of the local guides, Ruiz, forward to go with me. I ended up leading a fast group up (Ben, Jack and a German couple) and quickly lost Ruiz.
My next rage out came when we had run off at pace to be held up by other slower groups, proper Batur style. Usual hiking etiquette would have the group step aside to let us pass and we did wait patiently for a while before I asked the guide of a 6 person group to politely let us through when able. The guy flat out refused so we ended up burning them across a rock section and cutting them up, much to their annoyance and just deserts. I hate people.
We ended up summiting with the light already popping through at 3,976m. The sun rose in the backdrop to Volcan Agua and the low lying clouds over the lower mountains which was super nice.
Fuego was looking great to the right hand side of Agua without a cloud in sight bar the small dribble of smoke eruptions coming from the peak. The views from base camp for the people that didn’t ascend would have been pretty good as well.
There was a challenge to run around the 700m crater rim in under 2 minutes 39 seconds but no one took Felipe on the offer. He was keen to get me to do it (I had just been raging about the pace so understood if he wanted to fuck me over) and younger me probably would have caved, but I am no runner and at 3,976m I didn’t fancy it. The walk around the crater rim was much nicer, albeit pretty hazy from the north side.
We were at the summit for not an overly long period of time but descending back to base camp was a lot quicker. The route up, which is pretty challenging to see in the dark, was predominantly loose soil that formed decent enough footholds when climbing (not gravel like Rinjani which was much much harder) and therefore meant descending could be taken at pace.
Again Philipe split us into fast and others, and our fast group ran down the soft soil at more or less a sprint, following the two local guides from our group. It was really good fun, with only one sketchy moment when the deep soil abruptly stopped, my footing got a lot less sure footed and as I was going far too quickly I tried to stop when a fortuitous overhanging tree offered assistance. Jack was right behind me however and very nearly bowled me for soup.
We were back to base camp in about 25 minutes, met the crew who didn’t ascend up (was a fair few) and waited for the others to arrive. At camp everyone packed up their things while the guides served breakfasts of muffins & bagels on the fire as well as avo and various spreads. It was a decent breakfast. At this point everyone looked shattered, sitting there eating slowly without saying a word so naturally with my bundles of ‘I’ve just summited a volcano enthusiasm’ decided to make fun of everyone. Type 1 fun looked to be had by me and me alone.
The packing up was an absolute shit show as it seemed like most hadn’t taken any communal items, choosing instead to sit by the pontoon area and swan around. I’m the end I had about 5 tubs and two wine bottles which was awkward when fashioning bags strapped to my bag but at least it was light.
Again it was slow going down which turned into a grind that made me pretty tired by the end. I usually half run down these things to get it over and done with but it had the benefit of preserving my weak knee ligaments.
It was pretty uneventful going down, having various conversations with people and constantly trying to avoid one of the weaving dogs that accompanied us. We didn’t see many others going back the way we had come but we were far more positive with the ones we did see.
Back at the start of the hike people ditched their sticks, tipped the local guides (I have nothing - it was already a very expensive trip) and got into the two buses. At this point I could have fallen fast asleep but Hamed seemingly had bundles of energy so we chatted most of the way back. At Ox we returned all our gear, said our goodbyes and I trundled back to the hotel where Nicola was.
Luke's story ends.
Nicola by stark contrast had had a very relaxed morning, speaking to Tilly for a few hours and on hearing Luke would be back before lunch waited to greet him. Luke rocked up bleary eyes, sleep deprived and mighty brown from the dirt tracks. Quote ‘looked like shit’ was thought and not said until the next day when Luke commented on how he still had bags under his eyes.
Once Luke had showered we both went for lunch at Luna de Miel, a pancake cafe around the corner from the hotel that although Nicola had been to the night before, Luke couldn’t decide on a place so this proved to be easy. The French classic of cream, caramelised onion & bacon was delicious.
Luke went back to the hotel to pass out for 2 hours while Nicola went for another gym session. We spent the afternoon doing very little as Luke was more or less dead to the world until we went for dinner at Romeo & Juliet again.
Luke certainly had a good sleep. We didn’t have any plans but to make it to our accomodation near the airport in Guatemala City and not leave. Breakfast was provided by the hotel and we checked out as close to 12pm as we could. We tried to mix up our cafe choices by going to a Guatemala cafe but on refusing to let us have our bags in sight of our table, of which Nicola was wholly uncomfortable with, we called it quits in this choice and ended up back in the balcony area of Luna de Miel. Iced drinks, pancakes and WiFi kept us occupied for a few hours before leaving.
We got an Uber to Guatemala City which, while more expensive than a shuttle, was just easy. We could live with the £35 cost and on hearing the journey can sometimes take 3 hours we would have preferred to be in the cab.
Our homestay was in a gated community of which our Uber driver couldn’t get through. It was all a bit calamitous trying to show him the location, get him to communicate in Spanish and then be refused by the guard only to be unable to reverse because of traffic. In the end we had to get out and walk, showing our passports to security and then finding the homestay.
It was a nice place. The owner's large home had been converted into an Airbnb style place where rooms were individually rented out. No one was really around when we arrived so we started watching the new Ant Man film in the lounge before the owner arrived back from work and started chatting with another guest so we ran off upstairs. Nicola also got told off for putting her feet on the sofa so shame also helped us to hasten our departure.
From the comfort of our room we got a KFC delivery dinner which was nowhere near as good as the UK but it filled a hole.
Our flight was at 9.50am so we were up and in our free accomodation shuttle at 7am and at the airport 5 minutes later. Nice and easy.
Checking in our bags was simple, security was straightforward and it wasn’t long before we were through and exploring the terminal. Food choices were limited but we were never going to turn away from mcds.
There were limited things we could purchase with our change so stocked up on water and boarded our flight to Costa Rica & San Jose.
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