Colourful houses, ruins, police and a lot of Cafés – La Antigua

After another long drive we reach Antigua. We like the city with its cobblestone, cafes and colourful houses and ruins. Unfortunately there is no campground but we can park at the tourist police. It’s not really nice but it’s free and they offer restrooms and showers (super cold though) Also it is very close to town. In less than 5 minutes we can reach the center afoot.

Standing on Pick Ups while driving is usual here, as well as the loaded trucks.

Poor street dogs everywhere.

La Merced. One of the many churches in Antigua

The artist market

Yuhu, a little smile

Coffee Roasting workshop

Hmmmmmm what a nice smell.

Guate Java, a nice little cafe in town

The people here love to the the pics on the camera

Chicken Bus

Security in front of each shop

Catedral de San José

Catedral de San José

Catedral de San José

Catedral de San José

Okay, Antigua is a little touristy 😉

“See that?”

In the choco Museum…

…it smells like? Chocolate!

Do we buy this?

Lunch in a traditional restaurant.

You can buy so many paintings from the city

Arch of Santa Catalina. An emblem of Antigua

The kids can sleep no matter how loud it is

Luckily Laundries are not rare here .

 

From Tikal to Coban

From Tikal we head to Coban but if we will reach the city today is not clear as it’s a long way, we were told. We give Lucia a lift to Santa Elene where she takes a taxi to Coban. An interesting ferry ride welcomes us, as well as a lot of curvy roads. After approx. 6 hours we are not in Coban so we decide to stay at the “Grutas Candelaria” for tonight instead of driving in the dark. On the mainroad I see a huge sign “Camping Grutas Candelaria” with an arrow to the left, “only 900 meters”.

“Yuhu. There we go.” I say to Jan without thinking for one minute. Jan turns left and after 100 meters the road gets unpaved, more and more narrow, steeper and steeper and more and more curvy. It’s one of these nightmare drives. Jan does make it to the caves but we both had to sweat the entire way. The Toyota would not have had an issue with this, but the trailer is not off-road suitable at all and we are always worried that something will brake if we drive such bad roads.

Unfortunately it rains the whole night and morning and the river, where they normally offer rafting is too high. We go and see the caves quickly before we have to drive this horrible road back up.

The Toyota has to pant but all works well. We make it to the highway without accidents and head to Coban where Lucia is already waiting. Our camp is directly in town but we can not feel that. It’s a super nice park, “park Victoria” with nice walking trails, grassy area, bathroom and shower. Also it’s very close into town so that we can get our weekly ration of fruits and vegetables on the local market afoot.