The first week.

Central America Caribbean
November 23rd 2009

Published: November 23rd 2009

Tomorrow it´ll be a week. I must say, it definitely feels like it. I landed in Guatemala City around one o´clock on monday and took a bus to Zona Uno, to look for a hotel. How rediculous I was, sitting on a public city buss with a huge Backpack on my lap that was nearly suffocating me, afraid to talk to anyone and totally overwhelmed, I´ll admit. I hit zona uno but I still didn´t know where the hotel was, so I just got off and started walking, for about an hour to be honest, making a few circles and looking for street signs on the buildings, but finally I found the Meza, got a room, and locked up my backpack.

With my pack safely locked down I went out to explore the city. A short walk over to the Parque Central led me to the Catedral and I idled through its massive columns looking at ancient art. Everything was bathed in the soft airy light from the skylights in the dome. After a short breather on the pews I strolled around. I didn´t really know what to do with myself, to be honest, because I was really beat from the early plane ride but it was way to early to go to sleep. I just soaked up the city life. Later that night I had a one way conversation with a drunk old man in a chinese restaurant, him lecturing me on boxing and Guatemaltecans I think, but I couldn´t understand more than about two words he was slurring so bad.

The next morning I went back to the Parque. The museo wasnt open yet, and I ended up skipping it altogether. The library was open, so I checked that out. An employee showed me to an aisle of French translations even though I explicitly said I was looking for Asturias. Thats the lost gringo effect for you. I finally found the asturias but I couldn´t really understand it and I wasn´t about to spend the day in the library was I? So I went outside and started taking busses. They led me downtown to zona 10 and the parque centroamerica, and eventually to Kaminaljuyu (which is different than Nimajuyu, i found out the hard way). Kaminaljuyu was my first experience with mayan ruins. It was basically a bunch of grassy hills containing unexcavated buildings and an excavated acropolis. I took a few pics and headed back to the Pension, tired form a long day of busses. I met the folk who live there. There are italians, salvadorans, guatemaltecans, you name it, an microcosm of the crazy world. We spoke in broken english and my broken spanish and it worked out ok.

That night I happened to get the lowdown on the museums in the city from one of the hotel operators. So the next morning I set out with a hand drawn map in hand and a vague plan. I went to the zoo and the archaeology museum. One had lots of animals, the other had ots of pots and giant stelae. I thoroughly enjoyed both. I also got some information on excavations, more news on that later. I went back to Zona Uno and met a girl from Costa Rica in the mesa and we got dinner and hung out in the courtyard. My spanish is getting a hell of a lot better.

Times running out. Abreviation ensues. I went to the Museo Popol Vuh in the Universidad San Fransisco Marroquin. Quite good. I checked out the ritzy zona viva and went to the Museo Mirraflores, insid a shopping mall built on top of the ruins of Kaminaljuyu. Wierd to say the least.

The next day I got up and walked through the market practicing my bargaining skills, and later went to the U del Valle to look into excavating. Not much luck.

The next day I went to amatitlan and then Antigua. More on this later.

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