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Published: June 11th 2011
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David here...
We had a 06:00am bus to catch that would take us from Honduras to Guatemala, a place we had only recently decided to visit. We left the hotel room to find the kittens outside our window, so we said goodbye to them and jumped into the shuttle minibus. There were only 5 of us in there so it was not too much of a squeeze. We got to the Guatemala border in about 30 minutes and paid $3 to leave the country and $2 to enter Guatemala. We then had to endure over 7 hours in the (hot) van as we got stuck in traffic a couple of times. We finally arrived in Antigua at around 14:00 and found our hotel, Casa Cristina, with no problems at all. The room was clean and comfortable even though it had no windows and we settled in. The hotel had free internet access and free tea, coffee and biscuits and a small book exchange, so pretty much everything we needed.
We had not had much to eat so we decided to mark our arrival into a new country (the 14th of this trip) by tracking down some beer and nachos.
We stumbled onto a place called Fridas, which was doing 2 for 1 on nachos, so we guzzled those down with a couple of Gallo beers. Feeling relaxed we wandered into the centre of town to take a lookaround. The place is very touristy, with westerners on every corner, even some in the central park juggling, which is never needed. We got touted with scarves, bracelets, necklaces and even drugs while in the centre, and soon got sick of saying ´No, Gracias´. We relaxed at the hotel while doing research on where to go in Guatemala and then headed out for something to eat that night. We stopped off at Kafkas for a couple of beers before going to Pushkas, the first Indian restaurant we´d seen since Fiji. We went for a Thali and the food was quite nice, but much more Morrocan than Indian. Our curry thirst has still not been quenched. After the meal we wandered round and found a bar for a nightcap before heading back to bed.
The next day we walked round the town, went for coffee and cake on the main square and walked up the hill to take in the city from
up above, a great view. That evening we wanted to have some typical Guatemalan food however the place we picked out was closed so we wandered round to a colourful Mexican restaurant, Restauran te Las Mañanitas, we had spotted the night before. The food was really good and the staff were friendly, a nice meal. We then headed to a bar listed in the Lonely Planet that is supposed to play Classic Rock, however when we got to El Muro, or The Wall, we found out that it was half empty, not playing rock and you had to pay a Q20 cover charge to get in. We decided against it as no where else in town charges to get in. We then went to Jardin Baveria near our hotel, found it open (it was closed the night before - Wednesday) and had some good German beer, a couple of herb drinks that were a bit like Jagermeister and some lovely Pretzels. All in all, a good night and a good way to end our time in Antigua.
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