Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Cawler, in one of my absolute happy places.

Let me tell you the sea. All around me are volcanic ridges with a couple of huge volcanoes and that was you won't be surprised

to learn a bus going past and here comes another one and another one and that's

because I'm in a central American bus station not just any old bus station this

is the one for Antigua Guatemala.

Thank you. The former capital of Guatemala, far more appealing place than the actual capital today, Guatemala City.

But this is just such a hive of activity. Even though it's in town, I guess, about the size of, well, let's say Stratford on April, there is a hive of activity.

Buses going off obviously to the capital, Guatemala City, but also to the surrounding villages.

You find out where your bus is by listening to the people shouting,

or indeed by asking the locals,

the buses themselves are gorgeous.

That one has just gone past, is actually a pretty un-reconstructed

American school bus, those yellow buses that are used to transport kids around in America.

Well, how lovely. And it's great the way that they don't even bother to kind of change much about it.

But some of them do, and that's where it gets really exciting, really beautiful,

when they decide okay we're

not going to have on the back school bus stop when lights flash we're going to do something more

exciting so here we have a cowboy of riding running some kind of bull actually. It says, it's a good type of my viejo.

It's a good ride with me, is how I'm translating it.

Please don't write in.

I was forced to learn Russian, not Spanish, at school.

It's got cartoon characters.

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