Guatemala City

---

This country is amazing. I'm slipping into another zone. I arrived in Guatemala city, spent the night and another day. The poverty and the shock of walking through the streets of an unindustrialized city, hmm, what to say.
It's the biggest city in Central America, yet it's so incredibly poor.
I walked through
hilled calles of adobe dwellings, peaked in doorways where mayan women mixed corn masa in barrels. In others, families would purchase baskets of dough, load them in taxis (not many can afford cars) to transport to family run restaurants or street food carts.

Luckily I met a French man whom I toured around with while in Guatemala city, otherwise I'd be chained to my hotel room after 6. At sundown the streets are dark and desolate and without a chaperone I would have had to go to bed hungry-!!

I'm in Xela now, about 4 1/2 hours from the capital, and in the mountains. Arrived yesterday afternoon, met a couple from Maryland who are here studying as well. This morning, went on a run with one of them, then met a group of guys (one of whom started a coffee farm in Mexico and has been all over Central America) he led us on an excursion up the mountains where we bathed in hot springs and hiked down at sunset, walked through a tiny Mayan mountain village and caught a "chicken bus" with the locals back to town.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fatimih/sets/72157594554485148/

I'm in a cute little restaurant a couple blks from my hotel or refugio really (the place I'm staying at runs a close second to camping out with a bathroom of running cold water near by- I fell in love with my wonderful 30 deg. sleeping back immediately!

Despite my rugged hotel, I managed to stumble upon a little restaurante run (in the
evening) soley by two tough Mayan women who wait on and cook for, hold on I'm
counting....25 people at once! Even better, they caught on to the genius idea (so popular in the First world, but an economic impossibility in this one) of free internet wireless, naturally multiplying their business as there's several language schools within blks. I am cashing in on this, though desperately disguised in the corner as to avoid all the natural congeration of english speakers overwhelming this place!

---