Guatemala has been absolutely wonderful, and for our final few days we decided to go rogue and escape the tourist shuttles and inclusive hostels. First we headed to Rio Dulce which was an absolute dream, staying in a place right on the river with hammock jetties (where we spent most of our time). The whole place was so stunning, we jumped in the water sharpish before reading our books as the sun went down and enjoying some amazing homemade lemonades. The next day we kayaked down the river, through the amazingly green canyon (and luckily didn’t run into any manatees) to arrive at Livingston.

This port town is the home to the Garifuna culture from Africa/the Caribbean and it was so interesting to sense the difference. Bob Marley tunes weaved their way into every corner and guifiti (the local herbal liquor) was everywhere. We also tried their candy (coconut and ginger), plenty of hibiscus cocktails and the culinary wonder that is tapado. This signature dish is essentially a coconut curry soup filled with plantain, shrimp, a fish and a crab – it was excellent and we couldn’t move afterwards. We found a lovely spot in the shade and read like maniacs before our hunger crept up on us and it was time for fish tacos. Discovering breadfruit was bizarre, a jackfruit relative that tastes like potato when fried (they serve it here like chips). We went on a tienda crawl for our favourite snacks and sat on the pier before moving on for our final stop.

We decided to cross the border into Honduras for a day before returning to Guatemala City for our flight, and so began an interesting journey. After a boat ride and three different colectivos (shared minibuses that cram everyone in) we arrived at the border. It was a hot journey but at least the roads were paved, and after a tree, chickens and a marriage proposal, we finally passed into neighbouring Honduras. A short bus ride took us to the town of Copán Ruinas where I thought it would be a good idea to sample all the local cocktails (an idea that I seriously regretted the next morning). The Mayan ruins here were amazingly decorated, with glyphs everywhere and intricately-carved statues filling the plaza. We had a trip to a tea shop to sample all the local herbal flavours, and smashed through some tacos before finishing our trip the only way possible, in our hammocks. From here we travelled back to Guatemala City to catch our flight home as Beth’s starting her placement year in med school and I’m off into the world of work. Mum and Dad, we are coming home!

After a day in the bus on some extremely dubious roads (and a very exciting dinner at McDonalds) we arrived in Lanquin. Jumped in the back of a pick-up truck and bounced our way to our hostel in the middle of the jungle. This was one of the most surreal places I’ve ever stayed, with an incredible natural view (see photo) as well as a pool, jacuzzi, bar and restaurant in amidst it all.

We had a hilarious time tubing down the river for a few hours, which basically consists of propelling yourself down the current in a rubber ring and hoping you don’t hit anything in the occasional rapids. To add to the excitement, the rubber rings had beer holders, so we had a great time! We stopped to play volleyball on the banks of the river and mess about on a rope swing, and all in all had a great time. Came back for a calm swim in the pool, but the weather had other ideas as a storm pelted rain down and the lightening illuminated the sky.

We had a crazy day at Semuc Champey, which is this beautiful collection of pools in the middle of the jungle. They themselves were very very relaxing, but before we arrived there we did a full day tour which was knackering. We started with the K’an B’a caves which were a huge passage full of water which we swam, clambered and jumped our way through for an hour (wearing some excellent crocs). Our only light was the candle we each held (which easily blew out when it hit the water as you tried to swim) but we somehow managed to make it out alive. Afterwards Beth and I decided to jump off the waterfall while everyone watched (a spur of the moment decision which I would later question). The 10 metres were a lot higher when we were standing on the top, and the idea of having to jump far enough out to avoid the jutting rocks made it all fairly terrifying. But we did it! We then drove across a barley-existent wooden bridge to the national park where we climbed the steps to the viewpoint and got the view of the pools. After all that we could finally go and enjoy the pools while nursing all our bruises! A calming end to a jam-packed day.

Everyone who we mentioned our Guatemala trip to had told us to visit Lake Atitlan, and so off we went. Getting lanchas across the lake to access the various towns along its shores was an adventure in itself as the lake is 130km²! Many towns are still populated by the Mayans so we heard snippets of indigenous languages and noticed the women in their traditional dress. It was also on the lake that we found out our brother got into Cardiff Uni to study Mechanical Engineering so Rhys well done!

We stayed in these cosy tipis on the side of the lake, with amazing views of the three volcanoes and the whole lake spread before us. Each night we had a family dinner which was really social and Beth enjoyed meeting her new best friend, the puppy. We woke up early to do standup paddle boarding for sunrise which was incredibly serene. We had the lake all to ourselves as we set off in the moonlight, the sky gradually turning blue as we sat in the middle of it all. I also tried morning yoga which was surprisingly relaxing and it was good to stretch out after days of doing absolutely nothing.

We travelled to the market at Chichicastenango which sprawled across the streets of this town twice a week, displaying all sorts of produce. It was busy but we managed to haggle for some textiles before grabbing a quick rice and beans for lunch. The next day we caught the boat to San Marcos for the cliff jump, which was actually 10m high but so much fun. The best technique was to go for the pencil jump in an attempt to stop anything from whacking the surface. All in all, the lake was worth the hype and the view never ceased to amaze us.

After all the excitement of the volcano, we headed to El Paredón to relax on the beach. The black sand was boiling so we often ran into the sea to cool off (although the Pacific currents were very strong). The hostel also boasted a pool which made everyone very social and we met some great people. We had family dinner each night when everyone ate a buffet together, and the first night was particularly fun as the country-wide alcohol ban (which was in place during their elections) was lifted. Funny to think that making alcohol ilegal supposedly makes people vote with a sound mind.

We rented some kayaks one of the days and made our way up the Rio Acomé (through the national park) and into the mangrove forest. It was so peaceful and the mangroves were full of crabs that popped out to say hi. At points we didn’t have space to use the paddles and managed to get stuck in the branches a few times, but it was a good outing and we enjoyed the silence of the river compared to the noise of the ocean.

After another day of reading in the hammock and only standing up to go for food (especially these amazing watermelon ice creams!) it was time to leave. This involved getting packed into a van which was driven onto a wooden platform with a motor engine. To our surprise, it all went smoothly and on we went.

We arrived in Guatemala and headed to the old colonial city of Antigua, full of hostels and churches. I managed to try all sorts of foods from the local pepián (chicken broth) to a shepherds pie, and have a wander under the famous arch to the ornately decorated church of La Merced (photo below). However, the biggest attraction of this pretty town was its location in amongst a host of volcanoes, a scenery we admired each morning from the hostel rooftop. It was our plan to climb one.

We started off at 7am, gathering our gear and beginning our trek up the (dormant) Acetanango Volcano. We maintained a good position at the front of group, along with some other students from Scotland and Northern Ireland (representing all Celtic Britain!) The trek was steep and took five hours in total, but regular breaks spurred us on and we even bumped into a friend from Surfside Cafe back home. The trail flattened out for a while after lunch, which allowed us to catch our breath before the final climb to Base Camp. The air was noticeably thinner at this altitude but we all arrived very chuffed with ourselves, as you can see in the photo!

Base Camp centred around a fire for the evening, as we toasted marshmallows and watched the neighbouring Fuego Volcano erupting all night long. During the daylight we could only see the smoke appearing from its summit, but we had a gorgeous blue and purple layered sunset and then by night we watched as lava spurted out and ran down its sides. The distance meant that we always saw the eruption before hearing the rumble and roar of the lava, and even from this far away it was incredibly impressive. The eruption continued all through the night, with some particularly huge ones happening in the early hours of the morning.

As the main photo suggests, the sunrise was absolutely cracking! We left at 4am to scramble to the summit at 3,976m over ash and rocks. The altitude meant it was absolutely freezing but all the exercise meant we were also boiling – it grew increasingly difficult to regulate body temperature. When we arrived at the summit of Acetanango, the clouds cleared and we had a spectacular view of the sky as the sun made its appearance. Needless to say that the trek down was nowhere near as difficult as going up but we left as two very tired and awestruck humans!

To finish our trip together, Tom and I headed to Puerto Vallarta to explore the various beaches on offer. It’s very close to the US, and this influence was obvious in the fast food outlets and American estate agents. However, the feel of the town was still decidedly Mexican, with hundreds of families coming for their summer holidays at the shore. We arrived after the night bus (exhausted after very little sleep) and wandered onto the malecón to enjoy a view of the bay. The section by town is very built-up with parasailing and seafood restaurants galore, but we spent most of our five days here exploring the untouched beaches further down the coast. Saying that, our hostel was very close to the shore so we could have a dip whenever we wanted and it was gorgeous.

We had a few dinners at this amazing seafood restaurant on the sand, which allowed us to watch the sun setting across the ocean. Needless to say, food was excellent and we enjoyed fish, octopus and prawns cooked in various styles. We also met my UCL Spanish teacher here (he happened to be here on holiday at the same time), and so we had a very surreal evening with Diego & his wife Cecilia, discussing our trip in their gorgeous country. Aside from copious amounts of seafood (a highlight being prawn skewers on the beach), we also had some excellent quesadillas in Puerto Vallarta. They are hardly complicated (grilled cheese tortilla) but they were as close as we got to comfort food. There was a storm one night so we panicked and ran into a restaurant we’d read was good. However, after sitting down and receiving the menu it became clear that its prices were aimed at middle-aged Americans and not recent graduates. Our solution was to politely just order starters and then pop round the corner to the taco place.

We were proud of ourselves for mastering the town’s bus network, which allowed us to visit more remote beaches. Our first adventure was to the (again) Tracy Island looking beach of Quimixto. This involved taking the bus along the coast to Boca and then asking a small fishing boat (with a big engine strapped to it) to take us to that particular beach. We had decided to buy a parasol, which ended up being the best tenner we ever spent, thanks to the gift of portable shade that we now carried with us wherever we went. We had this beach to ourselves and spent the afternoon enjoying our homemade mojitos, reading and swimming in the calm water.

Another day we hiked from Boca to the tiny beach of Colomitas, putting up with the sweaty climb thanks to the promise of an unspoilt beach at our destination. However, we arrived to blasting reggaeton and hoards of people (who had obviously all made the trek to this ‘silent’ beach too). Struggling to find a place to sit, we carried along the higgledy-piggledy path to a lovely cove with hardly anyone on it. It was very calm and we enjoyed some cloud cover for once! The next day we caught the bus to Mismaloya and enjoyed a snorkelling trip to Los Arcos (two islands in the middle of the sea covered in coral and thus plenty of colourful fish). We pottered about in the sea and then headed back for a barbecue where we met some very opinionated Texans.

Before leaving we spent the day lying on the main beach beside the malecón, swimming between all the boats and feeling very relaxed. We finished off with tacos on the beach (an appropriate end to our time in Mexico!) before catching our bus to Mexico City where we’d hop on our flights. It’s been a dream but my wonderful travel partner Tom is heading home and I’m off to Guatemala with Beth for some sister shenanigans.

After the business of Mexico City, we travelled North to the small holiday town of San Miguel de Allende, full of Mexican families and retired couples from the US. With a few plazas surrounded by shops and food, the pedestrianised streets were bustling with people day and night. Mariachi bands wandered around and kids were entertained by a host of different balloons. We stumbled across a concert one evening, with a few musicians playing some instruments we’d never seen before. Safe to say there was music in every corner here.

The really exciting thing about this stop is that we finally found the church on the front of our Mexico guidebook! Parroquia San Miguel Arcángel stood proudly in the plaza, surrounded by vendors of all kinds of crafts and foods. We ate plenty of corn-on-the-cob and tacos, as well as trying molcajete (a boiling hot ‘volcano bowl’ full of meat, cheese and peppers). One night we went for Peruvian food which brought me back to pisco sour and lomo saltado!

We visited the botanical garden of El Charo de Ingenio, which is more like a National Park as it consists of 100 hectares of land, including wetlands, canyon and arid mountain ground. There was an incredible amount of cacti dotted about, many were the species we were used to seeing but some were endangered and protected in greenhouses. It was amazing to be amongst the fresh air after the smokiness of Mexico City. We wandered for hours and soaked it all in, the canyon and the reservoir, as well as the amazing view of the town below.

We went and explored the nearby hot springs at Escondido Place, a huge park with lagoons (full of terrapins) and different temperature pools. The hot one was more like a tunnel with various sections and shoots of water. The cold one was open-air which meant you got some sun too. It was all very relaxing! We had an interesting time getting back to town after hitching a lift on the back of a truck with some other travellers, but we made it. San Miguel was fantastic.

We treated ourselves to an Air BnB when we got to Mexico City, complete with lounge, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. We had a lovely terrace too, although we didn’t get to use it much as it was very rainy for our days there. We stayed in Roma which was a lovely area covered in trees and full of good places to munch. Our first meal was chamorros (big portions of slow-cooked lamb) which set the bar very high. Another highlight was a bougie brunch which again could’ve come right out of Shoreditch!

The traffic in the capital city was as bad as everyone made it out to be with its 25 million residents, and we spent plenty of time waiting around on buses and cramming ourselves onto the metro! In fact, one of the popular metro stations, Auditorio, was decked out as a London tube station, with red phoneboxes and underground signs everywhere. Apparently it was to signify the deep connections between the transport systems in the two cities, but we were happy just listening to Keane and Adele blasting out over the speakers.

Tom became the ultimate bartender with our homemade mojitos (we’ve now moved onto the white rum we bought in Havana and have been lugging around this whole time). Good food just kept coming, from the churros at El Moro to the fancy lunch in the centre of the city at El Cardenal.

A big day of sightseeing took us through the artisan market to Alameda Central and the gorgeous domed Bellas Artes building with its Diego Riviera mural. This was original commissioned for the Rockefeller Building but was rejected for its anti-capitalist themes (see for yourselves below). Riviera then remade it in Mexico City for everyone to see, it was so impressive. There was also a Francisco Icaza exhibition about the seaside which was really captivating but made me quite homesick.

We moved onto the Zocalo (main plaza) which was vast and boasted both the cathedral and the national palace. These buildings were interesting and also gradually sloping due to the soft subsoil that they had been built on. We saw the remains of the Templo Mayor that had been torn down to build the cathedral (Cortés literally used the stones from this Mayan temple to build his Catholic cathedral).

Another day we headed past the Angel of Independence to the Chapultepec park with its huge ‘castle’ where many presidents lived, although it wasn’t disimular to a National Trust house. We wandered through the furnished rooms and courtyards to get a glimpse of what life might have been like for Porfirio Diaz, hero turned dictator. We then ate gorditas (almost welsh cakes without raisins) by the lake and explored the National Museum of Anthropology. Given all the different cultures that have existed in Mexico, this was a very very interesting place with plenty of artefacts and explanations. It was huge so we only did the ‘ancient traditions’ half and had to leave the ‘current ethnography’ section for another time.

Music was great here. We went to a living room concert, where singer-songwriter Belén Cuturi (look her up!) welcomed us into her home and performed her songs for us. She was brilliant and it was such a great atmosphere, us two even ended up performing a song at the end! Another night we were invited to a speakeasy, which we entered through a door behind a restaurant, and after a carpeted corridor arrived at an underground jazz club. It was brilliant (even if the tequilas were the size of a small americano). Despite the rain we had a fabulous time in the capital!

We were lucky enough to be in Oaxaca City for the annual Guelaguetza festival, where delegations from all over the state come to the city to celebrate their collective heritage, displaying their unique dance and indigenous dress. The whole city was buzzing all weekend, with stages all over the plazas and craft markets sprawling into every corner. The opening parade was a definite highlight, with each delegation displaying their outfits, showing off their style of dance, and throwing their produce into the crowd. Everything was colourful and exciting, with loud shouts of “Viva la Guelaguetza!” arising from performers and spectators alike.

Oaxaca itself was gorgeous, with this gold-leafed church of Santa Domingo really stealing the show. A wedding happened as we were inside, so we stood and watched the bride walk gracefully down the extremely long aisle (and some late relatives running in behind her). Later on, there was a party in the square to celebrate their union, with a huge bride and huge groom doll dancing around to the music. It was very very elaborate.

The city is nestled amongst the mountains thus it was colder again and we had a daily early-evening downpour to watch out for. We caved into home comforts and found a nano-brewery/deli which served pints with bangers and mash. We also found an incredible bakery which made all our mornings better. Oaxaca is famous for its moles (sauces) so we tried many varieties and were very very content! We also discovered the joys of Mercado 20 de Noviembre, which involved huge tlayudas (open corn burritos) and the Grilled Meat Alley. This required walking around a smoky corridor of the market and picking which meat you would like barbecued on the numerous open charcoal grills that were dotted about. We ate a kilo of beef and it was amazing! Unfortunately though, I failed to take Tom’s advice and also ate grasshoppers, which were much less appealing.

We spent time visiting the stages around the city, whose shows would last for hours and were full of enthusiasm. We watched a youth concert band play a range of songs (with two young sopranos) and also a display of dances from the coast, mountain and valley regions. The crowds watching were huge, and everyone was determined to get some of the snacks or mezcal that they gave out as part of their performance. We did make our way to the Mezcal Fair one night, after slipping through a parade and being treated to a mango and various shots. The main event was a giant convention centre filled with 74 different stores selling this famous Mexican alcohol. We enjoyed ourselves with all the tasters, found a chocolate shop and danced to some 80’s Mexican hits. It was excellent. Thank you Oaxaca!

We caught the night bus across the coast to Puerto Escondido, a small town that is famous for its world-renowned surfing beach, Zicatela. We stayed at La Punta, which is definitely the hippy end of town, full of dreadlocks and vegan tacos. However this meant we were right next to the sand and could thus walk the full 3.5km length of Zicatela to find ourselves in the fishing end of town, full of locals pushing boats in and out of the water. It was all very relaxing as we watched the world go by whilst ploughing through caipirinhas and nachos, watching the birds follow the waves across the shore. One day we found a cliff walkway around this end of the beach which was really beautifully laid out and allowed a great view of the bay.

We could hardly stay in this surfers’ paradise without giving it a go ourselves and thus we headed out to Playa Carriziollo in the mornings to have a crack at the waves. We spent a while looking like muppets practicing our pop-ups on the sand, and then paddled into the water to get started. We were both pleasantly surprised at how much we managed to get up (and stay up), it was a lot of fun. The second day the waves were smaller, which meant a lot more paddling from us (and a lot more tired muscles afterwards). Also a turtle joined us in the waves which was a surprise but quite exciting!

Oliver Ridley turtles use this area to lay their eggs, coming ashore at night to keep them safe. We went to help release the newborn turtles into the sea, these tiny things that could fit into our palms and were extremely restless. They waddled their way down the sand until they were taken away by a wave to began their lives in the water. Very few baby turtles survive so we hope Oli and Moana will be the lucky ones!

We ate lots of seaside food, lots of tacos, and discovered an amazing Thai restaurant that was buzzing – live jazz band, incredibly well-stocked bar, and an open kitchen that gave birth to some amazing dishes. We sat at the bar and got chatting, which ended up with mezcal shots (which are very very strong).

We spent our last afternoon chilling at Playa Coral, a smaller beach that looked like Tracy Island from Thunderbirds, with its almost-volcanic outcrop of sand, rocks and jungle. Luckily there was a big tree which provided plenty of shade as we enjoyed our Cuba Libres (still carrying our Havana rum!). It was really empty and the sea was a lot calmer so we could get a swim in (with another turtle). Really really relaxed!