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Other entries in Guatemala City

Arrival in Central America

So I`ve arrived in Central America, at last, after months of stalling and talking about it.

I was wrecked on arrival from LA. A 2am departure after a long day of traveling. I flew with TACA Airlines, who have `the most modern fleet of airplanes in the Americas`. I'ld forgotten about all the boasts about stuff being the biggest, newest, deepest & fastest.

On the plane I was sitting beside a small old guy, who was the same height as me when I was sitting down. During the flight, he decided he wanted to get out and tried to jump over me. I tried to get out of the way, but wasn't fast enough. We managed to break the seat, so that it wouldn't go up straight anymore. When we were going to land the air hostess kept telling me to straighten up. I hold the seat up to keep them off. If you are flying TACA in the next while I would try to avoid seat 25B. I did manage to see a smoking volcano from the plane, haven't seen that before.

As we got off the plane we were informed that this was the most advanced airport in Central America.I managed to get through customs and immigrations without any problems. Got a taxi to hotel spring.in zona 1. My room was being tidied when I arrived. Had to wait about 20 minutes. Given that it was 8:20am not bad service. I went straight for a nap. When I woke up, I had no idea what time it was. I didn't know what time zone I was in and I hadn't changed my clock to local time. For a while I thought I had slept all day, but soon realised it was only for an hour and a half.

So off out to explore Guatemala city. I soon realised that its not a whole lot different to a lot of other South American cities. With two main exceptions, there doesn't appear to be any mosquittos (good) and there are lots and lots of armed security guards (bad). I wandered around mostly, got my bust ticket to Xela for Sumday, got some of the local currency and got bearings. There doesn't seem like there is too much to do here, but will leave that for the following day.

According to the guys in hotel, its not safe to leave hostel after dark. There is one area that has lots of armed guards at night, but its a bit away and would to get taxi's there and back. So it basically means that I will be getting up early and heading to bed early.

Got up early this morning, And headed off Parque Minerva. Not the most exciting place in the world. There was an interesting 1:10000 model of Guatemala, but that was about it. Then at midday I stumbled across a student parade 'Huelga de Dolores'. Its basically an anti-government / anti-Bush with plenty of lewd posters and floats. Plenty of Che Guevara Flags, and lots of impowering speeches.

Twas all in good fun though. A lot of the students were drinking beer. One lad with a shovel did try to talk to me, but he was out of his tree and my spanish isn't so good. Another lad drew something on my face with lipstick. One float even set itself of fire.

That's all for now, must go get some food for now before it gets dark,

Have Fun,

Steve.

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