Guatemala City

Good news: my plane didn't crash, and I wasn't served a drink with amoeba-infested ice cubes. The flight was quite pleasant, actually. I sat next to a Ms. Sabrina and Mr. Sebastian, aged 12 & 7, who were traveling to Guatemala for a coming-of-age party, a wedding, and a funeral. They chatted me up the whole flight. We talked about our favorite cartoon shows, watched an episode of "Good Luck, Charlie", and they gave me the scoop on the best candy shops in Antigua.



The landing was amazing. For those of you who've been anywhere considered "lush", Guatemala City is probably similar to what you remember: densely packed tin-roofed houses clinging in clusters to hillsides, rising directly out of equally dense green foliage. I was fully engrossed in observing this city planning, and then I looked toward the horizon and /holy sh*t/ there was a volcano there! A perfect, green cone of a volcano. Pacaya, to be exact. Never seen one of those before.

Not wanting to brave a chicken bus on my first day in the country, I opted to spend the night in a hostel adjacent to the airport. Bad decision: once you got inside the hostel you couldn't leave unless by taxi or shuttle. No strolling about in my zona allowed, especially for a solo gringo female. The repercussions of doing so were unclear, but they're probably why most of the hotels had security guards holding shotguns by their entrances. Luckily, I met a couple of interesting people in the hostel who helped pass the time.

Those interesting people were Gabriel and Pete. Gabriel is a far-too-well-traveled young Canuck who just finished a 3.5 month stay in Guatemala. His trip included the following tidbits: 8 weeks on a Mayan organic coffee plantation eating "typical poor Mayan" food, a resulting 4 days in the hospital for treatment of amoebic dysentery, and, after his intestines and liver recovered, 4 weeks of tutoring at Pop Wuj (the program I'm enrolled in) that increased his Spranish from nonexistent to comfortably conversational. The latter is promising to hear. The former, his unfortunate intestinal problems, were actually a boon for me: he gave me his leftover Cipro. Score!

Pete was helpful in that he taught me how to correctly pronounce "huevos" so as to communicate "eggs" and not "testicles". Important knowledge if you want to start your day off with a proper breakfast. He also helped me schedule a shuttle to Antigua in español, where I am now. And oh, what a different place from Guatemala City is Antigua!