buses, mountains, hangovers

hi there.
today Jon and I left the tourist stained cobblestones of Antigua and decided to head up in the mountains. this required roughly five different buses. all of which were fairly sketchy.
guatemala is very mountanous...so your constantly driving up and down these mountains...this usually occurs with zig zag roads/switchbacks...whatever you wanna call them.
to preapre for this journey we drank a bottle of the cheapest rum we could find in antigua. neither of us remember what happened that night...only that we bought chips at some point.
so here we are riding these suspension-less buses which are sending us flying off our seats every few minutes or so...zig zagging back and forth, feeling like the bus should probably tip over at any point, with drivers who seem to enjoy passing others cars on dangerous blind corners....extremely hungover.....

but the views were nice.

also we managed to fit 22 people into our mini van at one point. thats a personal best in my experience!

lava!

we gone done a volcano tour a few days back. it was really special to see lava. so warm and inviting. what made the tour even more special were the hyper-cautious elderly americans that joined us. one woman inparticular was on a lot of uppers and pounding back 3 liters of grape soda. she ultimately did not make the summit.

the shuttle to the volcano was an adventure in itself. we had to pull over due to white smoke and someone yelling ´fire!´ the americanos almost killed each other to get out the door. colin and i sat there quietly.. after much argument, 50 onlookers and the fire departments arrival, everyone piled back into the van.

i have photos but the internet is hurting in these parts.

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just outside of antigua,
spent a few days up in the mountains at a cottage like getaway called the earth lodge. got some hiking in and witnessed some serious local culture. not much else to be said here. they had some alright dogs and avacados.