At 6pm I met up for the group meeting for our Intrepid trip at the Posada and where we got to meet and introduce each other for the first time and get a briefing from our guide, Juan, for the next nine days.

There was a mix of thirteen other people on the trip including from Switzerland, Canada, USA, Scotland and Germany. I also got to meet my roommate for the first time, Frank, an auditor from Germany. He was well travelled too and had been to 100+ countries. His wife and kids preferred more conventional holidays so allowed him to escape on his own to more exotic locale.

For most of last year the trip had avoided Nicaragua due to anti-government protests. Juan recounted that when the troubles first began they had to stay holed up inside their hotel in the Nicaraguan city of León and just order pizza as there was a curfew and it was too unsafe to go outside in the evening.

Luckily everything had calmed down now though and he wasn't expecting any issues on our trip.

Even though it would be a Saturday morning, due to the notorious traffic in Guatemala city we had to get an early start tomorrow at 5am to avoid the worst of it.

As we would miss the posada breakfast the ladies were busy in the kitchen making sandwiches for us to take instead.


After the briefing we then went for a walk to Café Rainbow for dinner.


The live band playing away with burning brazier and marshmellows.


Chatting with our guide Juan who was from Guatemala and lived a 30 minute walk away in San Isidro.


Tequila shot for everyone to get into holiday mode!


The menu was largely Tex-Mex so I went for the chicken fajitas.


With having to get up at 4:30am tomorrow we then called it an early night and headed back to the Posada.