I start the day having the gigantic egg burrito for breakfast and an extra long hot shower as I don’t know when the next time I’ll be able to have a hot shower. Apparently all countries south of Mexico don’t have hot showers. I guess I got lucky in Xela. I have the directions how to get to the farm and I’m paranoid I’m gonna get lost or get my bag stolen. I’ve heard horror stories where backpackers have had their stuff rummaged through while on top of a chicken and another time where someone who was still on a chicken bus see their entire pack taken by someone else and was too late to get off the bus to chase.

All I need to do is get to the west side of the lake and then get a 20 minute tuk tuk to the town of Tzununa.

I get told from reception that if I walk a few streets away from the hostel I can get a local bus to the bus terminal and get a chicken bus to the lake. I walk out, turn a few streets and then literally lose my bearings. The map shows straight roads but I’m seeing a turn that isn’t on the map. Street names are hard to distinguish so I stand around on the corner looking for buses coming down the road. Apparently there should be “bus conductors” shouting names of destinations and all I need to do is tell them “boos terminale” (bus terminal). I wait for a few minutes and can’t see any buses. I guess I’m in the wrong place. I carry on down the road and see something that might be a bus. I’m hesitant to ask the guy shouting as I still lack the courage to speak the little Spanish that I know. After a minute or so manage to pluck the courage to as the conductor.

Turns out that was a bus and I was just too chicken to ask. We make our way to the bus terminal, a route I know already as Naz and I have walked it pretty much. We get dropped off at the market next to the bus terminal. Now the bus terminal is on the other side of the market and I need to navigate my way through. I’d been through the market before as when we finished our volcano hike we went from the bus terminal to the local bus stop, so I’m doing the reverse journey.

A few minutes in the market and i realise I’m lost. I don’t recognise any of the stalls around me. I come to a junction and don’t quite know which direction to go. All I remember is that the road we walked on last time was wide so I try to see which route leads to a wider path. Sod it, let’s go straight on. Down some steps that I don’t remember walking up but pow, I get on the wide path that leads straight to the chicken buses.

The chicken bus terminal is hectic. As a backpacker you stick out like a sore thumb and I get paranoid I’m gonna get ripped off. The names of the destinations are written on the front of buses, the routes are fixed for the drivers. I try to find one for San Pedro but all of a sudden some random dude comes up to me as asks, “Pana?”. He means Panajachel, which is on the other side of the lake. I tell the guy, no and say “San Pedro”. He replies with what I think was “you can get to San Pedro from Pana”. As I don’t know any better I say OK let’s go. First mistake. He either gave me an up sell or just wanted the fare as he saw I was a little disoriented trying to find a San Pedro bus. I realise I got done over as while I’m on the bus I see other chicken buses going the opposite way that read Xela – San Pedro. I’m quite lucky Lake Atitlan has good boat connections as I probably would have been sent the wrong way.

So I end up at Panajachel, the other side of the lake. It just means ive already past my destination and going slowly further away from the town i need to get to. I can get to San Pedro but it’ll cost more and take longer but I’ll get there in the end. I’m still the ropes of travelling solo. If I had a buddy to stop me going the wrong way I wouldn’t be in this situation.

At Pana, a fair load of people are heckling at gringos if they need hotels. I’m one of them but reply to some guy that “I need a boat to Tzununa” in English. The guy replies in pretty good english and tells me where to get a boat, but I’m also dying for a piss. The guy explains that there are two places but they’re restaurants. No problem, I can get lunch too. I go to a chicken restaurant. Its quite an interesting one. There is a drive in type window to get quick service from outside, a normal counter for takeaway service and if you sit in, there is table service. Kinda makes everything more efficient! Everyone is catered for.

I get a standard chicken burger and drink and make a beeline for the toilet after I’ve devoured the burger. Lunch now done and toilet emergency taken care of I have time to double check the directions Shad, the farmer, gave me. I leave the restaurant and make my way down to the dock to catch my boat.

When I get to the dock, immediately a tour guy comes at me and offers me which destination I want. I tell him where and he walks me to the boats. Along the way we have a brief chat, he says something in Spanish and I don’t get it, so he something again and I hear “INGLES” so then I reply, “oh where I’m from”. I say “Chino” as I think that’s how you say Chinese in Spanish.

I get to the boat and I get told the fare and was asked if I could pay upfront. I find this a little odd as if I lied and you took me to my destination, where on a dock could I get money out? I pay upfront, thinking I’m getting screwed over, as a tour dude introduced me to the boat so he’d get a kick back. Turns out I actually paid normal price. I’m really not sure how these guys get money.

I share the boat ride with locals and an american dude who works at a hostel near my town. He tells me a bit of history about the lake and what life is like here. The guy, who’s name I can’t remember, has been here for 2 months and really sells the area well.

I reach my town after about 15 minutes on the boat. The view is amazing. Its like Sumidero Canyon all over again. The lake doesn’t have a shore as it’s basically a volcano creator filled with rain water. I take a couple of pics as I like the scale of the nearby volcanoes behind the lakes.

I make my way up a slope after leaving the dock and ascend to check into the only hostel in town.

We left San Cristobal early, around 7am. Naz had to call O2 customer services and was using my tablet to call. He was on hills for a while but managed to get through to speak to someone. Our shuttle to Guatemala arrived and the driver was asking us to get our stuff on but Nas was still on the phone to O2. He literally finished the call as 1 foot was out the door and WiFi got cut off. Naz cuts things pretty close.

Our journey in Mexico to the border was fine. We had no problems. We stopped at a petrol station with a restaurant next to it. I think this is a practice that most tour companies do, take tourists to specific restaurants along the way to somewhere so the driver or tour company get a kick back. Everyone got a breakfast but Naz and I didn’t have any money as we’d spent it the night before as we thought we weren’t gonna need it anymore as we’re leaving the country. Oh well, we got a nice coffee as that was all we could afford. We had pot noodles as backups.

So we get to the border, things look really shabby here. We queue to get our passports stamped, or in this case nothing was stamped as we had use a departure form which was part of our entry form. So then I never really arrived in mexico only left it according to my passport.

After we left immigration we travelled on the road for another 20 mins before hitting the Guatemala immigration office. I read there was a fake tax to pay and it was true. 20 pesos. We could have argued it but I didn’t bother as it woulda been hassle.

The border divide was literally a vehicle barrier. Security in terms of police or army was little. The only guns I saw were from the dodgy money changers, they had massive wads of cash the size of your fist but also had a large hand gun with an extended clip. If I had the balls I woulda taken a pic!

After the border we travel through some really poor areas. Kids selling petrol on the side street. Kids selling sweets on the street. I never grasp the fact that I pass through rural areas and not metropolitan areas of the country. I haven’t yet experienced a metropolitan city in central america. Last time I was travelling I hit major cities but this time I seem to be avoiding them.

Driving in Guatemala is pretty ropey. People tend to overtake recklessly and they don’t have a problem doing it around corners. Es mucho dangerous! Our driver was pretty pathetic as he kept trying to overtake cars and lorries but never managed to do so as he was either too slow or the minibus was too weak to get past the vehicle. There are still tonnes of speed bumps here too!

We finally get to the city of Queztaltenango, or Xela as the locals call it. We unpack our stuff and jump on another minibus. The original minibus was going to Antigua so they carried on but we had a local minibus take us to our hostel/hotel(we were travelling with some French retirees).

We get to the hostel at 6pm having left at 7am. We were told the journey should take 6 hours! A German guy is staying in our dorm and he and recommends we go to the local market as they sell some cheap enchiladas. They’re veggie, soy based mince, but dirt cheap. Like Q5 for 1 which is 40p! We end up getting 3 each as we were starving. Once again we were eating with our eyes. Waaay too much food. Also the woman put sprinkles of cheese on it so I couldn’t stomach it all. Still excellent value for money and very tasty albeit cold. We ate in the Parque Central which made us feel sort of like at home when you get a munch from a kebab shop and eat outside. No one else seemed to be doing though… We go home and relax as we’re set to book a volcano hike for the following days!

So I’m writing this in transit, on a shuttle bus going to Guatemala from San Cristobal.

Mexico has reminded me about my time in Thailand. Buildings are of similar structure. Shop fronts are usually open. Electricity or other cables are all overground and the roads are all dirt. I have a hard time drawing then line between poverty and wealth here. Back home I guess tarmac road and pavement mean the area is decent. But in mexico this could be totally different as I’ve seen grand houses and dirt roads. Its possible that in the UK, we can’t have dirt roads as we’ve got soil and earth so all our roads need to be tarmac of something.

The people here are extremely friendly and polite. It really helps if you speak some Spanish as I’ve had a few times where by not speaking the language, your reception for assistance is lower. Its not too bad, serves you right for not learning the native language! People pretty much understand English and you can sort of get what you want by talking in English so long as you’re not asking for something complicated. They don’t seem to correct bad Spanish much. Maybe the younger people do a bit, but if you’re saying something in a rude manner, it’ll be forgiven.

For some areas and services there is a Mexican price and local price. When I bought a Lonely Planet Mexican Spanish phrasebook, I could see that I was getting ripped off in front me as they scanned the book and I saw the price on screen but the manager told the guy at the counter to knock it up a couple of quid! Also at nature reserves they is a specific sign reminding natives that they get a discount. The local buses, the collrctivos, are a hail and ride service and they might knock up the price by 50p or so. This isn’t a big deal as transportation here costs 1million times less than the UK. Sometimes the people I have travelled with debate and get pissed off we foreigners are getting ripped off. I don’t actually give a shit as my wealth back home is far greater than the people in mexico. To them squeezing a few extra pesos is a massive bonus. To me, a few extra pesos is like, 5mins work in the office. I’m still unsure how the roadside pitstop cafes and garages earn money. While driving past them on the bus, the staff are doing nothing but waiting for business. I’m not an expert on business or economics, it just seems that they setup shop and hope someone stops by occasionally. Who knows if they make much or any money. Maybe I’m just too western to understand the value or I’m too much of a city boy the appreciate the slow pace these people have. It was the same in Thailand too.

I thoroughly recommend mexico as a holiday destination. Nothing bad has happened and everything is cheap compared to the pound. I don’t quite know how much I’ve spent, but I don’t think I’ve spent as much as my plane ticket to get here.