The number one problem was over planning; or at least, over planning without understanding how much time was really needed to experience a destination.

I’m mostly talking about our whistlestop tour of Guatemala. An amazing country full of ruins, jungle, beaches, colonial towns and tiny villages, we seriously just scraped the surface by only spending a week here. We took our time in Tikal and the island village of Flores, but then skipped down to Antigua, where there was plenty to see, including several active volcanoes dotted around the countryside. We realised pretty quickly that we needed a few more days at least to explore the tiny towns and adventure playground of beautiful, volcano-formed Lake Atilan…

But because we’d already booked our flight to Nicaragua, we were locked in. In the end, we booked into a two-day biking, hiking, and kayaking trip at lake Atilan that was well worth the budget blowout — but it would have been nice to go with the flow and have more time. Hopefully, we’ve learnt from this oversight! We’re now basking in hot weather and sunny days in Granada, Nicaragua, after four chilled days on Little Corn Island (on the Caribbean side of the country).

I’m hoping for more beach time in the coming days but trying not to plan ahead too much — you never know what you might stumble upon or where you might want to spend more time!