Total number of days: 24
Number of countries visited: 1
Number of countries expected to visit: 3
Number of different beds slept on: 9
Number of times hitchhiked: 4
Percentage of hitchhikes I had to pay for: 25%
Number of offers to spend the night at someone’s house: 2
Number of times accepted: 1
Ratio of meals from street food to restaurants to [...]

Three things happened when I stopped being a pussy and started taking the chicken buses instead of tourist shuttles between cities.

By almost any measure, ziplining down a mountain looks like a perfectly safe activity. You’re strapped by two harnesses, one for the legs and another for the shoulders, all held together by a beefy carabiner. You wear a hardhat and two thick canvas gloves, one of which has a hard pad for braking: as you [...]

If you ever want to have a near-death experience, I suggest taking a shower in a $3-a-night Guatemalan hotel.

Santiaguito erupting right on schedule.

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The four-hour hike up Volcán Santa Maria starts at 1 am sharp. They tell you to bring a flashlight, but for much of the trail you don’t need it. The full moon exposes every rock, root and crevice.
Climbing a mountain at night is intensely film noir. The lush vegetation and earth [...]

The grey sand at Monterrico slopes dramatically between the town and the sea, so that when you walk along the surf, all you see above the sandbank are the straw rooves of the hotels, scores of them, as far as the eye can see.

After a day in Antigua Guatemala, you realize that your beautiful bride has been lying about her virginity.

You first lay your eyes on her, her unspoiled cobblestone curves, her plump plazas, the pastel blush of her houses, all seemingly unsullied by men. Then it hits you: is that a McDonald’s?

They offer you a horse before you set off on the 2.8-kilometre, 1.5-hour hike up Volcano Pacaya. Most people decline, but the horses go up anyway.

“Taxi? Taxi?” the horsemen offer periodically, as if secretly mocking us: “Foolhardy humans! You think your pretty, well-maintained nature sidewalks prepared you for this?

The bored-looking man at the entrance of the taco joint in Guatemala City was holding a rosary while clutching the barrel of a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. He was chatting with an equally bored mariachi trumpeter from the taco joint across the street. It’s Wednesday, a slow night in Zona 10, the neighbourhood for the city´s [...]