San Pedro del Lago - Lago Atitlan - Guatemala

After 5 days in San Pedro del Lago, we have decided to enrol in a Spanish course for the next 7 seven, which includes living with a Guatemalan family for the next 6 nights. We had considered doing a 6 day diving course in the Bay Islands of Honduras, apparently the cheapest advanced dive course in the world with some incredible diving, but the lack of monetary resources has meant we will take the cheaper and probably more productive option of consolidating all the Spanish we have learnt over the past 5 months.

This town is probably the Central American equivalent to Byron Bay - eco lodges, fire twirlers and meditation centres around every corner attracts a very alternative type of traveller, some visit on day trips, others get stuck here for months. And there is a bank and internet so there is no reason to leave this tranquil little town on the edge of Lago Atitlán.

Tragically we have lost all the photos from before the Huayna Potosí mountain climb in Bolivia. Obviously we still have the poorer quality images that we uploaded into the gallery, but those photos are about half of what we had/have. So it looks like we won't be able to develop any of the photos pre-Huayna Potosí, we also just found out that the CD we burnt with all the Cuban pics has also not worked, so we've lost all the high quality pics from Cuba. A fairly deflating experience after imagining reliving the experiences through the photos, but what can we do I suppose?

Time for a coffee and then some scrabble or chess until the free movie starts at 7:30 (every night). I hope everyone is going well and the Canberrans aren't freezing to death. I am vaguely entertaining the thought of a return to Canberra one day. Having done a little reading on the Chinese economy I'm fancying getting involved in the economic development in China, which would require some more study while getting experience in a DFAT related area, probably best infiltrated via the DFAT AAU in Dept of Finance. Anyway - it's an option I'm entertaining at the moment, along with retiring and becoming a self-sufficient farmer, so who knows....