With ten minutes to go before 4am we stepped out of our room and into the lobby. Some of our fellow travellers were already there. The first to introduce herself was Nicole and we got chatting to her about Lake Atitlan. She and her husband had been in Antigua for the last 3 days and wished they had done the lake. Instead they had done the volcano hike yesterday.

We weren't the first to the lobby but we weren't the last either. That dishonor fell to Marco the tour guide who was actually 15 minutes late!  With no apology or even a buenas dias, he put his head down and walked past us all to the minibus, which had arrived on time.

"That's a bit unprofessional" whispered Julie, out of earshot.

We all fed our bags through the back window where the driver arranged them carefully in the back row of seats. It was a full tour group of 16 people so we were keen to get on before the double seats were taken. My seatbelt wasn't working, the piece you insert into the locking mechanism was bent out of shape.

I tried to get let Marco know but he chose not to hear me. Mine wasn't the only belt not working but we got no response from him. He was clearly young and inexperienced, out of his depth even. It didn't bode well for the rest of the trip.

Finally, at 4:30am we set off, sneaking out of Antigua towards Guatemala City. We all tried to get some sleep.

On the outskirts of the capital during a period where I was awake and watching the road ahead I suddenly blurted out a "Fucking hell!" I did so as quietly as possible but I couldn't hold in my shock.

I just watched as this lorry drifted straight off the road, about 200m ahead of us, hitting a billboard head on, coming to a sudden stop. We were coming downhill, to a slight bend. The driver must have fallen asleep as the lorry didn't change its direction, it just carried on in a straight line, off the road. The driver didn't have time to react, as I didn't see the brake lights come on.

A second or two later we drove past it. I looked back and saw the billboard had actually been hit side-on and it had gone through the windscreen, on the driver's side. It would be a miracle if whoever was behind the wheel survived that impact. 

Shortly after 6am the sun began to rise as we drove constantly down hill. I drifted in and out of sleep, catching glimpses of the glorious views. Julie was asleep in the window seat which was fine. We had travelled this road before so our main objective this morning was to get as much sleep as possible, not capturing the views.

We eventually descended from the Central Highlands and after a slight delay whilst the traffic crawled around a jack-knifed lorry, we turned off the road into the car park of Hotel Longarone. 

It was all very familiar, escpecially the peculiar cartoon dinosaurs of an abandoned kids attraction.  It was the same pit stop four years ago.

A long table was laid out for us all. We sat roughly in the middle of the group as the conversation swirled around us. It was the first time we properly met the group. Our brief encounter in the lobby was far too early to be sociable.

We first introduced ourselves to Evie who was sat opposite us. "It's short for Evgenia so just call me Evie"  she said. I thought she was Dutch because of her accent and her Northern European complexion but she was actually Greek, from Delphi. I never would have guessed. 

So with Evie and Nicole, that was two names in the bag, only another twelve to go!  

What happened next really helped. The waitress came around to take our orders and asked everyone their names. So we had Poppy the police officer from London, Francesca from Puglia in Italy but now also lives in London, then we had Kate and Katie, for the purpose of this trip at least, to differentiate between them. 

At the other end of the table we had Nicole and her husband, three guys who sounded German but given my track record on accents I wouldn't count on it, two young women who were definitely American. Then there was another lady and an older gentleman who we hadn't spoken to yet. They were too far away for us to strike up a conversation or overhear their names.

Our food came out. I remember trying the Huevos Ahogados last time and not really enjoying it, so I ordered simple poached eggs on toast. They were cooked perfectly. Julie remembered enjoying the French Toast last time, and she enjoyed them again this morning.  

Back on the bus we all returned to our seats and set for the second leg of the journey down the Carro Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (CA-9) highway.

About an hour and a half away we passed the entrance to Quiriguá, a Mayan archaelogical site which I had wanted to visit. I tried on our last trip but I guess the tour company didn't think it was worthy of stopping there.

There's no spectacular temple, but it does have one of the tallest free standing stone mounument in the Americas, a 10 metre 8th century stela carved with mayan hieroglyphs. Surely that's worth an hour of our time. 

Anyway, as we whizzed past we wondered if we could reach it from the hotel tomorrow? 

Seven hours after leaving Antigua this morning we reached the bridge over the Rio Dulce, the river that flowed out of Lake Izabal down to the sea.

As soon as we got off the bridge we turned a sharp left and drove down to the water front to a small harbour. It was time to transfer to a boat to complete our journey to the hotel.

With all our luggage piled in the front we filled the boat with our large group. In fact I'm not too sure how we all got on. 

We set off upstream passing Hotel Tortuga where we stayed four years ago, which was a shame because we really liked its rustic charm.

We passed the fort of San Felipe de Lara standing guard at the narrowest point. Julie and I planned on visiting it tomorrow whilst the rest of the group head out to Livingston for the day.

We followed the shore for a little while longer before finally arriving at the four star Banana Palms Hotel Resort & Marina, our home for the next two nights. Despite its uninspiring name it actually looked like a very nice place.

At the hotel reception we all gathered together to get allocated our keys and an opportunity to get to know a few more names. The two young Americans were Kristin and Caitlin, although we didn't know which one was which. Then came Andrew, a Canadian Mountie (Mounted Police Officer) no less, and Nicole's husband.

The older gentleman of the group turned out to be solo traveller David, and the other lady was Shaila, friend and travel companion of Evie. We only had the names of the trio of Germans to complete the roster.

Before we all went to our rooms Marco suggested an excursion in the afternoon to a hot springs and waterfall simply called Cascade Calientes. "It's not too far away." he promised.

Julie and I decided against it. Perhaps we should have gone, we hadn't really made an effort to get involved with the group as of yet, but we were tired. It was difficult to argue against a lazy afternoon by the pool.

We carried our bags to our room to find they were twin beds not a double again. We had asked Marco to request doubles for the remainder of the trip but obviously the message hadn't reached Banana Palms.

We hunted down our tour guide and voiced our disappointed. To be fair to him, he apologised and promised to rectify the situation.

Within the hour we were moving rooms. "That's better" said Julie when she saw the double bed. It must also have been an upgrade because it had a balcony with hammock which the other room didn't have. Marco did good. 

Whilst the rest of the group headed off for the hot springs we found the main pool, pulled up a lounger, and then quickly decided to leave because the hotel was playing some techno tunes really loudly. It was like we were at an Ibizan nightclub. Not exactly conducive to a siesta.

Fortunately there was a smaller pool, not far away, where the sound didn't carry. 

It turned out we weren't the only ones not to have gone to the hot springs.  We didn't feel as bad when we saw that Katie had stayed and David also.

We got chatting to David. He was a quietly spoken American who wasn't a big fan of group travel, prefering his own company. However he likes the organised itinerary of a tour where all the logisitcs and travel arrangements were already in place to get him from A to B. You couldn't argue against that.  

By about 2:30pm we were getting hungry and decided on lunch. I didn't have much choice and ended up eating guacamole and fries. Julie had a grilled chicken which she thoroughly enjoyed. The standard of the food was high.

Keeping us company were several critters called an Agouti. They were a type of rodent with large hind feet, almost like a wallaby. They were cute yet unappealing, in equal measures, like a cross between a rabbit and a rat. Thankfully they lolloped around slowly like a rabbit and did not scurry around like their dirty rat cousins. 

After lunch we continued our siesta in the peace and quiet of our room. Most of the afternoon I spent swinging in the hammock. Having spent almost a week now of travelling it felt great to kick-back and do absolutely nothing for a few hours.

A message came through on the What'sApp chat that the group were meeting up for supper at 6:30pm. It was a little early for us, we had not digested lunch yet!

It would have been easy to have excused ourselves but we decided to make the effort to  join them. If only to integrate ourselves with the group a little because we weren't going to spend any time with them tomorrow either, having decided not to go on the organised trip to Livingston. We had already been to there, four years ago.

Most of the group were there, all were tired and hungry. They hadn't had eaten since breakfast this morning!

Marco wasn't there, he had been replaced by a new tour leader Jonathon. Apparently it was always the arrangement. The original leader couldn't do the tour so Marco stepped in at short notice until another guide could be found to complete the itinerary.

We initially decided not to order food but when everyone else's took over an hour to arrive to the table we thought we better get our order in.

Julie went for the prawn dish which looked nice on the plate and luckily also tasted nice. Unlike my pasta dish which looked nice enough but was the worst pasta dish ever served in the history of pasta!

 They had obviously put it under the hot lamps to keep warm but they must have been there for a lvery ong time, enough to cook the top layer into a crisp. I put my fork in and lifted the entire contents of my bowl in one movement. It looked like I had a birds nest on the end of my fork.

I was too tired to complain. I flipped it over so that the softer underbelly was on top, then picked at what ever I could salvage from it. Thankfully I wasn't that hungry.

By the time we finished everyone else had already gone to their rooms. They had another early start tomorrow.

It felt good knowing that we had no urgency tomorrow morning.