Blogs from Guatemala City, Capital Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 14

Hey Everyone, After a pretty uneventful journey, we arrived in Guatemala. We sat next to a really friendly Guatemalan woman on the plane, and shortly after takeoff, she informed me that we should expect a 'fun' landing as the runway in guatemala was surrounded by mtns and very short. She continued to mime the plane nose diving and then screeching to a halt, so needless to say I was a bit anxious. In the end. The landing proved not so eventful. On a whim, we took a shuttle bus from the airport to Antigua guatemala, which has a quaint colonial feel to it. We got ourselves a hostel, and spent the remained of the evening wandering around the cobblestone streets and peering at the ruins of old churches destroyed by earthquakes, which are scattered around the ... read more

It is so amazing how easy it can be to meet people everywhere you go. It never fails, as long as you are outgoing and friendly, how quickly and easily you will meet locals. Wait a minute, I seem to be jumping ahead. Lets go back to the beginning. So we are flying to Guatemala and we meet a gentleman on the plane. We are talking to him the whole way over, and it turns out he owns furnitue factory in Guatemala City. He also has a location in Miami and lives about 15 minutes from me. He is a young guy and pretty friendly so we continue asking him questions on the plane ride. When we arrive he offers to take us to whereever we want to stay, as we have no clue where the ... read more

We said goodbye to Major Lucien Lamartiniere and boarded our flight to Guatemala, via Miami. Our transit time in Miami was short and we were a little worried when we realised that our bags weren’t checked all the way through - in the United States now you have to collect your bags and then re-check them in, even if you are a transit passenger… So we impatiently started the process of getting through all the appropriate lines: the line for customs, the wait for our luggage, the line for quarantine, and the extra-long line at the security check-point! Luckily for us our plane was delayed by an hour, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it. So our poor hosts in Guatemala were waiting at the airport for us for two hours by the time we finally arrived. ... read more

It's about 10:30pm here in Guate, and most everyone is fast asleep from the day's adventures. As I lie awake in an attempt to update you all, the music from nearby parties combines with the traffic of chicken buses below and American fighter jets overhead. It's not quite your typical lullaby. (As some of you may or may not know, President Bush is currently in the middle of a somewhat unwelcome tour of Latin America... and it seems as if the US is using these extremely loud fighter jets to remind people that they'd better not try anything. And this is supposed to be a "friendly" visit? We sure do have funny ways of showing it. Sorry... Politics. I'll move on.) Well, our plane landed safely in Guatemala City early Saturday morning, and after piling our ... read more

Amistades y familia querida, nous voilas rendus a la capitale du Guate, immense ville puante, pleine de gens de tous genres. Je vois beaucoup de clochards et de mendiants, de vieillards et d enfants pauvres. Nous venons tout juste de passer 4 superbes journees a Livingston, berceau de la culture garifuna. Sincerement, j ai bien aime rencontrer une culture differente dans le meme pays! Les garifunas de Livingston sont en fait issus des diffrents pays puisqu a la base de l histoire ce sont en fait des noirs venus D inde, d Afrique et des caraibes. Je dis venus mais on peut plutot dire qu ils ont etes apportes pour les rendre esclaves. Maintenant Livingston est impregnee de l atmosphere reggae-mollo et dans les rues on entend plutot parler le garifuna, melange heureux de francais d ... read more