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Published: July 14th 2006
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Intro to Xela
Amost everyone calls Quetzaltenango by its Quiche Maya name: Xelaju, or simply Xela (pronounced Shay-la). Not as insane as the capital city, and not as gringofied as Antigua, Xela sits somewhere in the middle, and is many travelers' favorite Guatemalan city. The commercial center of southwestern Guatemala, it's Guatemala's second-largest city and the center of the Quiche Maya people. Towering over the city to the south is the 3772m Volcan Santa Maria, with the active 2488m Volcan Saniaguito on its southwestern flank. Xela's good selection of hotels makes an excellent base for day trips to hot springs, lakes, and traditional villages. In recent years, Xela has built a reputation for its Spanish schools. Many students prefer them to those in Antigua because the environment here more closely approaches the total-immersion ideal of language study.
Our Experience
We managed to find a shuttle leaving Antigua for Xela (Quetzaltenango) at 12:30PM for a reasonable price, so we opted for that. It actually picked us up from our little hotel (which was pretty convenient given that Antigua doesn't so much have a real bus port). Now, the shuttle that picked us up was a minibus bound for Guatemala City where we would then change to a bigger bus for Xela. Sounds like a fine idea right? Sure, if the driver knows where he's going. There were 6 other people in our shuttle, and those 6 people were going to 3 different destinations (keep in mind here that Guatemala City has no main bus port - it has a bunch of small bus terminals. Each small bus terminal might specialize in running to a couple different places, so you have to get yourself to the correct terminal). Everything started out fine; the driver knew where the airport was, and one person was dropped off. Then he had to find the bus terminal for people going to San Salvador. This proved to be a mighty challenge as he made multiple U-turns and asked two random people
for directions. Finally, the San Salvador bound people were good. Next up: the bus terminal for buses to Flores (keep in mind that of course we're last on his list). This was less difficult and only took about 25 minutes to locate. Then we were up. After driving around in a couple circles (seriously, I saw the same landmarks over and over) and asking yet another person, he found our terminal, and we were off (total time in shuttle: almost 3 hours... an hour and a half more than it should've been). At least we got to see more of the city 😊.
The bus ride to Xela was more or less uneventful. Lila took a couple naps. I relaxed, etc. We arrived in the evening, grabbed a taxi to Parque Centro Americo, and found our hotel. It ended up being a really nice place: cheap with a really cool inside courtyard area with a tree and benches. We dropped our stuff off and headed up the street to this tiny restaurant with a thatched roof. No, it wasn't a hut; it was inside a building like most streetside stores and cafes. It simply had a thatched roof inside
that added to the atmosphere. After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and got ready for an early next day.
1PM check-out times are great. We were able to do everything we needed to before we had to check out. We got up pretty early, dropped our laundry off at a landry place around 8:15, and grabbed breakfast. A big breakfast. At first I thought we had only gotten one pancake by accident. Then the fruit plate came out. Then the yogurt. Then another pancake. It was the first meal that I couldn't finish the food on both of our plates. I left a fairly big tip because our server actually went to a grocery store and bought butter when we asked for it. I figured every restaurant keeps butter on hand.
We walked around town for a bit and then went to the natural history museum. This wasn't exactly the type of museum we have back in the states. It was just the top floor of an old building, and it seemed a bit crammed with just a myriad of different aspects of local natural history: plant samples, animals (stuff, in jars), etc. Pretty
McInternet
McDonalds offers internet access in many of its restaurant locations in Guatemala. The sign above the computer says you get 30 free minutes of internet access when you purchase a Value Meal or Happy Meal. cool. Then we walked around the Parque Centro America. It was a pretty good site in the day time, and we got a number of good pictures. After that, we stopped by an English book store, bought a few books, and headed up to the community theatre. They didn't care if we just walked in a looked around, and I was impressed: a nice big stage and two levels of balcony seating around chairs in the middle. (Lila's Note: The interior of the theater was bit grander than the Monticello Opera House, but about the same size and style.) We then left the theatre, walked around a bit more, stopped by this little railroad museum, and finally picked up our laundry.
By now it was roughly time to leave, so we went and packed up our stuff, checked our e-mail, had a yummy meal at McDonald's (which offers McInternet), grabbed a taxi back to the bus area, and found the next bus leaving for Panahachel.
Up Next...
Panajachel on the shores of mighty Lago de Atitlan.
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anonymous
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mcdonalds?
yummy meal at mcdonalds? i thought you hated mcdonalds joe...how interesting...