Antigua – the old capital city of Guatemala, rather than the Caribbean island – is so beautiful that it lures you in and says, “Hey.  You’ve been travelling for a while.  You must be tired.  How about you stay here for a bit?  A week?  Two?  Oh, why not a couple of months.  Why not forever?”

It’s a mix of old post- and mid-restoration colonial architecture that has been steadily ruined by natural disasters for the last few hundred years, and small red brick and tile houses.  It has cobbled streets, loads of gorgeous plazas and about a million restaurants and arts and crafts shops, all of which makes you want to stay and eat good food for the rest of your life.

There are tons of ex-pats living here, and you can see why.  If you were going to settle somewhere, Antigua has everything a third world city can offer you.  It’s surrounded by the volcanos that periodically wipe everything out (it’s a risk worth taking for a town so lovely) but has enough city stuff to keep you entertained.

It really is popular with travellers for longer periods of time though, because it’s very common to go to a language school for a bit and get some Spanish down before trotting off to other less tourist-oriented countries to use it.  It costs about US$90 for a week, four hours every day.  Not bad, hey?

Anyway, we’ve been here for four days, and it took a serious effort of will to book the bus tickets to Lake Atitlan for tomorrow.  We are strong.