Ramada Conquistador Guatemala City

... Razlike v slojih prebivalstva so velike in takoj opazne. Ob cestah lahko vidis sedemletne fantke, ki si sluzijo denar s ciscenjem cevljev, berace...mimo tebe pa se lahko pripelje tudi avtomobil za vec kot 100 000 evrov. Na eni strani se lahko sprehajas po lokalni trznici in kupujes zelo poceni, na drugi strani pa lahko zapravljas ogromne kolicine denarja v modernih nakupovalnih centrih.

We land. Clear customs. Blaire gets a black and white stamp, Steph and I both get colour. This bothers Blaire for the next two days. It doesn´t help that we continue to remind her of this fact.

We gather our bags and head our. Ashik is waiting there for us (he flew in earlier from Vancouver). Well mostly me since he ...

... Fortunately--since I had absolutely no idea where I was going and could not get ahold of my host family via phone--the minibus from Guatemala City happened to drop me off no more than two blocks from my new home. After wandering around a bit, I came upon several very nice young men standing on the streetcorner and I said: ¨Excuse me, I am from America and I cannot seem to find my way. I have this very large backpack which is full of very heavy ...

... earthquarqu**s) ev**ywh**e. The day aft** we t**k a chicken bus till Chichicastenang*, a small village near Antigua wh**e y*u can find a huge indigena market, and wh**e we ate s*me chiquen tamales, wh**e the *nly chicken I f*nd inside was a b*ne. And *n Friday we climb an small v*lcan* in Antigua, which is active, and th**e was lava cming *utside in an small riv**. I was less than 2 met** far away fr*m the lava!!! Amazing ...

... nd flour, the Gu*tem*l*ns *re throwing them *t e*ch other. It w*s * hil*rious street fight between gringos *nd the loc*l children. Devious little blighters. We got covered from he*d to toe in flour *nd eggs. We couldn't w*sh our h*ir for fe*r of turning into * torill*. One night our new d*d c*me home *nd told us not to be frightened but 20 odd people were coming *round to pr*y. Well, it w*s nice of him to let us know. So we sc*rpered. We find out ...

... chatted with us for awhile. Turns out she was Nineth Montenegro, founder of GAM and famed human rights activist in Guatemala. She was known to be a radical non-violent opponent of the military governments in the 1980s, and got going after her husband, a union leader, was disappeared. The only reason she wasn't murdered was because ...

Spent an easy couple of days in this touristy town. It has been modified to make it safer. They created a tourism bureau and tourist police here and it´s a great place to organise the rest of your trip. There is also an active volcano to climb up, but we´ve been spoilt by Hawaii and gave it a miss. The town is really colonial pretty ...

... of columns around the church. To date, the Army has retained impunity for their war against the natives here, and it is still a contentious issue. There was a prosecution of elements of the Army that assinated the Archbishop here after he published a report indicating that the Army was responsible for the vast majority of the murders of over 250,000 indeginious people here in the 80s. Here are a few pics from the Historic District in downtown Guatemala City.

... downside of travelling on your own is that needing a wee whilst in possession of your big rucksack becomes a bit of a problem - its not wise to leave it unattended, but you also dont want to drag it into a swamp-like excuse for a toilet either. The upside is that it often serves as the ice-breaker with other gringos....soo I made friends with a really nice family from Grimsby at the bus station. They looked after my bag whilst I went ...

... words that I am not familiar with such as 'Shaluka-ka therapy', 'metaphysics and astral travel' or 'retreat' for the most skilled. My last stop on the lago de Atitlan was in San pedro, a much more typical village with a good mix of locals on one side and gringo hippies on the other. Most of the people were there for the relaxed atmosphere and the plethora of Spanish language schools. As a backpackers' heaven, it was the cheapest place to be around the lake. A stopover in ...