We woke up bright and early today and brought our things
downstairs to the terminal where we gave our tickets to the receptionist and
waited for the bus to arrive. I had no problems sleeping the night before but
Austin told me the ceiling leaked and it kept dripping on him. I’m happy I
wasn’t sleeping on his side of the bed! Soon the bus came. It was nice, a lot
like an especial but less crowded with people. Crossing the border into
Guatemala was interesting. We all had to get out of the bus and show our
passports to immigration. After looking at my passport and then back at me, my
immigration officer eyed me suspiciously and then went over to a computer for a
few minutes. (I have long hair in my passport picture). But he came back and
wrote in my passport that I was good to go.
There were men outside the immigration office and around the buses who would change your money for you into Guatemalan Quetzales. The
exchange rate is 7.8 quetzales to a dollar. Well these men would give us an
exchange rate of 7 quetzales for a dollar so we decided that we should just
change a little bit of money with them just in case we needed it to get to a
bank or something. Better safe than sorry. So we changed $20 with them and then
got on our bus.
We drove the rest of the way to Guatemala City with no
problems. When we got off of the bus, there were shuttles right there, run
through Tica, that would give us a ride to Antigua (our next destination) for
$10 each. This was a perfect scenario. Those prices were very good and we knew
it was a safe and reliable shuttle. We got on and within a few hours we were in
Antigua.
By the time we arrived, we were pretty exhausted. We had
heard of one very popular hostel and decided to stay there. If we didn’t like
it we could always change the next day. So we asked the shuttle to drop us off
in front of Jungle Party Hostel. We booked 2 beds in a dorm room for that night
and set our things down. There was still a fair amount of daylight though so we
set out to explore Antigua a bit before settling in for the night.
Antigua was beautiful. And much larger than I had expected.
There was a central park right in the middle of town with a huge fountain, lots
of benches and grass all around. We stopped at the first restaurant we came to
because it was well past lunch time and Austin was starving. I wasn’t hungry
yet though so only he ate. Just a quick plate of spaghetti at a fairly nice
restaurant. The prices were a bit better than El Salvador, assuming you don’t
eat papusas for every meal there. There were lots of tourist shops too, all
selling the bright embroidered bags or purses or shirts or anything you can
think of. There were also many people walking the streets selling Jade and
Coral jewelry (if you can believe it’s legitimate) or fresh cut fruit, drums,
wooden flutes, and all sorts of different souvenirs. We stopped by a bank and
they exchanged out money for the exact 7.8 exchange rate. So we swapped out the
rest of our money and continued on our way. We saw a pizza place with awesome
prices so we stopped there, picked up a pizza and headed back to our hostel. We
decided that we would see what Jungle Party had to offer. We talked to our
dorm-mates some. Two of the girls were leaving and they had bought more than
they could take home. They were reorganizing their things so they could mail
what they couldn’t carry. They couldn’t fit a few things in their bags though
so I ended up walking away with the first three Harry Potter books. They were
the Brittish versions so it’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and the covers are all very different.
We then went out into the bar portion of our hostel. We had
a few drinks and started talking to people. I sat down with these two men. They
were born in Guatemala but had dual citizenship in Switzerland and had been
living there the last 5 years. They were both brilliant and it was very fun to
talk to them. Alex was the first one I spoke to and he told me all about
Switzerland and how different it is than Guatemala and even from the United
States. It was intriguing. Eventually we decided to go for a walk around town.
Antigua is considered to be very safe at night and so none of us thought too
much of it. Alex, his friend, Austin and I set out and I guess others thought
it was a good idea too because by the time we were out the door, there were a
couple more people tagging along.
Walking down the street, we passed a man who was selling
cocaine. I was a little shocked as no one had ever tried to sell me cocaine
before but we all just said no gracias and he moved on. He asked everybody
individually though if they wanted cocaine and I don’t know if it was that, or
what happened but one of the people who tagged along, an apparently very
hot-headed guy, punched the cocaine dealer. Hard. I didn’t see it but Austin
did and we took off right then. We went back to the hostel and I stayed up in
the dorm, listening for Alex, hoping everyone made it back alright. While I was
waiting, I heard a lot of banging and shouting coming from inside the hostel but
I wasn’t going to involve myself. I’d had quite enough adventure for one night so
I just waited. Eventually I heard Alex’s voice, talking and laughing and so I
went to sleep, relieved and very tired after a long, exciting, somewhat scary
day.
No comments:
Post a Comment