Well I am typing this from a small internet cafe on a side street near where I am staying in Guatemala City, or Guate as it is known to the locals. Was a bit of a culture shock to leave Andrew and Bogo and the lovely, cosy apartment and be transported 7 hours later to this crazy, dirty, bustling place that is Guate..It was probably made even more acute by the fact that at 9.25 yesterday morning I was sitting in a plane on the runway at Logan waiting for it to be de-iced as it was in the middle of a snow-storm, flash-forward to 3pm that afternoon to the heat and smog and all around Latin American-ness of my arrival here..
Anyway, was picked up by a young taxi-driver who proceeded to drive as if he was in Roma but I just kept closing my eyes and 20 mins later I was there at the posada.
This is one of those places that looks like just a shabby door in the wall on an unassuming side-street, a bit like the riads that Paul and I used to stay in when in Marrakech, but when you enter there is a small courtyard and a tinkling fountain. It was all lit up with candles in the evening and there are lots of interesting Guatemalan artefacts around. Rene and Francesca are wonderfully helpful but I have to admit that I did feel very far away from home and was missing A like crazy....poor man, he is being very patient with me!
Anyway I have managed to find my way around Zona 1 of the city; it's pretty straight forward to be honest, just being a bit well, non-Hispanic looking I do seem to be getting a bit of attention, but it is not too bad, just disconcerting....there do not seem to be too many other travellers around, well at least not that many with strawberry blond hair!
I even managed to go to a little shop, get my US cell phone unlocked, buy a Guatemalan SIM card and buy some minutes on it with a lot of miming, smiling , 5 words of Spanish and some very patient and accomodating locals....but it's done, which is a good thing.
I am going to head off to Antigua on Friday...sounds liek a gorgeous town ' full of travellers but maybe I need that for a while to acclimatise. I am gogin to study Spanish for a couple of weeks as this is the number one thing that will make this whole experience much more valuable.
Am posting a couple of pictures for those non-Facebook people, mum, for you especially...will write more soon...
