We liked the town of Xela - unlike Antigua which is great fun, but full of tourists and quite gentrified, Xela seems to be a real Guatemalan town. Meaning that it has real shops and stuff, not just full of hotels, restaurants and tourist places. The town isn´t particularly attractive, but it has a certain appeal.
On our first day in Xela we went out to the natural hotsprings, Fuentas Georginas, about an hour from town. It was super super hot as it had been raining heavily during the week. we could only stay in the water for 10 minutes or so at the time. We´re pretty sure that the locals had fun watching us silly gringos hopping in and out of the pools (and Caroline was very glad she had worn her T-shirt and shorts into the water instead of bikini to minimize the gawping).
The big event of our trip to Xela turned out to be the full-moon hike up the Santa Maria Volcano. We set off on the hike about 1am, and made it up to the summit in plenty of time for sunrise. Sadly, the weather was cloudy so we didn´t get much light from the moon and the sunrise was pretty but not spectacular. However, the most cool thing was watching the active Santaguito Volcano below us which is active every 50 minutes, spurting out a large mushroom of smoke and steam.
On the way back down a local flyboy showing off gave us a flyby, and we swear we could have almost touched the wheels of the plane as he skimmed the peak.
