Guatemala - Antigua & Guatemala City

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I arrived in Guatemala City with just my hand baggage ... and seeing it was such a short flight I hadn´t thought to pack extra clothes in my hand luggage .. I won´t be doing that again!

I only stayed in Guatemala City that night as there was a hostel near the airport and I didn´t want to travel on to Antigua without my luggage. The next morning I went back to the airport but still no sign of the luggage.

I took a shuttle on to Antigua as I was starting language school that afternoon. The language school itself was a nice place .. unfortunately I didn´t get a very good teacher. He was only 19 and couldn´t speak English so if I asked him how to say something he would just ignore the question. Other people I spoke to said they had fantastic teachers there .. but I was just unlucky. However it was only for a week .. and I didn't even manage to make it every day!

Antigua itself is a lovely place. It is an old colonial town set in a valley surrounded by three majestic volcanoes, one of which is still active and you can see plumes of smoke coming from the top. The town is set on a grip pattern with quaint cobbled streets and squat buildings. Most of the buildings are only one storey, maximum two, and most houses, hosteal and hotels are all set round lovely courtyards.

Antigua however is not the place to be without clothes!! As there weren´t really any clothes I wanted to buy as replacements. Luckily I did have my two warm tops with me as it gets really cold at night and first thing in the morning.

I spent 4 nights in Antigua and decided on the Thursday night that I would head to Puerto Escondido in Mexico on the Friday morning, as at least I´d be able to buy some decent clothes there! However 5 minutes before I left the hostel, the airline called me to say that they at last had my bag. Hurray!

The only other drama I had when leaving Guatemala was that the shuttle driver dropped me off in Guatemala City to get my bus to Tapachula in Mexico and bought me my ticket (or so I thought). In fact he had bought me the wrong ticket to Xela that only cost Q43 .. so I got that refunded them had to buy the proper ticket for Q185 .. which I had already paid to the travel agent .. so I got well & truely ripped off! So all in all after a week of getting pissed off with the airline (who were bloody uselss .. they had no clue where my bag was) .. and then getting ripped off by the bus driver .. I was quite ahppy to be heading to Mexico for a week.

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