Where are we?

Hi! How is everyone doing? We are doing awesome. Guatemala is way cool. We´ve left Flores which we really liked a few days back and traveled down to Guatemala City by bus. From there we caught a shuttle to Antigua where we´ve met some of our friends from Honduras. There are 8 eight of us (Monica & Luis, John, Andy & Lena and Diana) having a blast in Antigua. What a great group. Monica is from Guatemala but we met her on Utila, Honduras, Luis is from Utila, Andy & Lena are from Norwegian and England, Diana is from Germany and John is from Houston. We met him on the island of Utila as well.) And here we are all meeting in this great colonial town, Antigua. We were told this place was nice but now we´ve been here we definitely agree. There are tons of restaurants, shopping, art galleries, nice night life and fabulous people. We are also surrounded by 3 volcanoes. We are really digging this town. http://images.google.com.ar/images?hl=es&q=Antigua+Guatemala&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=6Eb7SdiHJp3CmQefx8XDBA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title Bob and I found this huge mansion for all of us to stay in. We´re living in a 6,000 square foot house that´s in the heart of this great town. The house was built in the 1500´s and solid as a rock with tall ceilings, oversize dining rooms, living rooms, dens, bedrooms and fire places in each room. We have amazing views of the city from all sides of the house. If you were to look at this place from the street you would never know what lied behind the yellow wall. The grounds are spectacular. We have a front lawn and huge front porch with a water fountain. In the fountain lives a large turtle. The guys pulled him out the other day and had a little fun with him. He´s pretty quick. The backyard is large and has a great sitting area as well. O´did I mention we have a cook, Irma and a gardener, David. Husband and wife team and they are fantastic. Each day our rooms are cleaned and in the evening our beds are turned down. None of us wish to leave. We took a tour to Pacaya Volcano. After a century of being dormant it started erupting violently in 1965 and has been flowing ever since. The elevation changes yearly due to the volcanic destruction but last reported was 8500 ft. The trip was a little over an hour to get to by mini bus. Once we were there we were hounded by tons of kids wanting to sell us walking sticks. Back away, little ones we wish to get out of the van. We each bought one not sure we´d need a walking stick but they were cheap. We had a Spanish speaking tour guide so, we understood half of what he was saying. ¨We¨ really means Bob and I. Everyone in our group speaks Spanish. All I have to say is Thank God we bought these walking sticks. I gotta say the 1st 10 mins into our hike was brutal, straight up incline and the last 500 ft was all up hill on loose ash. The hike was intense at parts but overall not too bad. It took us about 40 mins to get to the flowing lava. I´m so glad I stuck with it because once we got to the volcano it was amazing. A large stream of red fire lava flowed down the mountain. We were so close to it you could feel the heat under your feet. We were told to wear old shoes because it could melt the rubber on your shoes. I definitely wore the wrong shoes. I´m not traveling with tennis shoes or any type of closed shoe...that will change when we make it back to the states to repack. I do have some great support sandals but still wasn´t the right shoe to wear but I made it. I thought the walk down would be better. Haha! I busted my butt once and so did Bob. There were several spots where we walked that was steep and lose dirt. Had I used my walking stick properly...just maybe I could have avoided the fall. I didn´t get hurt but I was lucky that I didn´t land on horse shit. It was right next to where I fell. Yes, we could have done this tour by horse. Lesson learned...next time. We all enjoyed this tour and would recommend for those wanting to challenge their bodies. http://images.google.com.ar/images?hl=es&q=Pacaya+Volcano&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=skP7SckNxY-YB6HQ4KcE&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title Other than that tour, we´ve been very laid back. We walk the town, eat fantastic meals and enjoy the clubs. We did find a poker game and Bob was the big winner. What a group we are traveling with. Every single one of us are gamblers and love Texas Hold´em. Monica has all the connections and found us a game to sit in. Thank you, Monica. Tonight we plan to have a dinner party at the house. Monica´s birthday is Tuesday but we´ll start celebrating tonight. She´s from Guatemala City and has lots of friends and family in the area. John who is a chef by trade and I will be cooking all kinds of finger foods to serve all the guests. I´m so excited about being in the kitchen with him. Guatemala has been wonderful so far. The exchange rate is 8 Quetzals to our $1.00 and so much cheaper than Belize. Woohoo! The house is costing us $1,000 usd for the week and that works out to be $20/nt/person. Not bad for a mansion, a cook, daily cleaning, laundry, grounds keeper and in the heart of town square area. I fell in love with their Mercado. It´s huge and loving all the fresh fruits and veggies. Our cook always has fresh cut fruits (mangos, pineapples, watermelon, and strawberries) for us daily. It´s the start of raining season here. Every afternoon we´ll see a nice thunderstorm. You know I´m liking that. Hopefully the links I´ve provided gives you some pictures to look at. Unfortunately, we don´t have WIFI at the house and have to use the Internet cafe. As soon as I download our pics to the laptop, I´ll post to the blog. Hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy. That Swine Flu is bad news. Hopefully we´ll be able to get back to the US without problems. Our friend Diana is suppose to be flying home to Germany next week from Roatan Honduras. Her flight has already been canceled. Germany isn´t accepting flights from Central America. I haven´t heard that happening in the states yet. We plan to leave Antigua Monday early morning and head to Lake Atitlan for a few days. There we´ll probably find a house to accommodate all of us and then take short excursions to other villages from there. We´ll be in touch. Love to all - Bonnie & Bob.